The Ezra Klein Show

There’s a quieter transition happening beneath the pageantry of this week’s inaugural events — a transition not of power per se but of the rules around how power in Washington works. And the new rules look very different from the old ones. In this conversation, I’m joined by Aaron Retica, an editor at large for New York Times Opinion (and my column editor), to discuss what President Trump’s inaugural address and first round of executive orders signal about the administration to come. We talk about the end of birthright citizenship and the renegotiation of American belonging, why Trump is so fixated on Greenland and the Panama Canal, his retro-futurist vision of American power, the unsettling arrival of a new tech oligarchy and more. Mentioned: “What’s Wrong with Donald Trump? [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/opinion/donald-trump-ezra-klein-podcast.html]” by Ezra Klein “Democrats Are Losing the War for Attention. Badly. [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-chris-hayes.html]” by The Ezra Klein Show, with Chris Hayes Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast [https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast]. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs [https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html]. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts [http://nytimes.com/podcasts] or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Trump is a master at wielding attention. He’s been owning news cycles and squatting in Americans’ minds for much of the last decade. And for his second term he has an ally in Elon Musk, a man with a similar uncanny skill set. Trump and Musk seem to have figured out something about how attention works in our fragmented media age — and how to use it for political and cultural power — that Democrats simply haven’t. So what is it? What do they understand about attention that their opponents don’t? Chris Hayes is the host of MSNBC’s “All In,” and has written a forthcoming book, “The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/719661/the-sirens-call-by-chris-hayes/].” And he’s a brilliant thinker on how our modern attention economy works and what it’s doing to our politics. We discuss what Hayes sees as a revolution happening to our attention, which he compares to the Industrial Revolution in its scale and impact; why the old rules about attention in politics no longer apply; the key insight Trump had about attention that fueled his rise; why Musk didn’t really overpay for Twitter; and how Democrats can compete in this new attentional world. Mentioned: “Your Mind Is Being Fracked [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-d-graham-burnett.html]” by The Ezra Klein Show with D. Graham Burnett “The Great Crypto Crash [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/cryptocurrency-deregulation-future-crash/681202/]” by Annie Lowrey Book Recommendations: Amusing Ourselves to Death [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/297276/amusing-ourselves-to-death-by-neil-postman/] by Neil Postman How to Do Nothing [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/600671/how-to-do-nothing-by-jenny-odell/] by Jenny Odell Rejection [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/rejection-tony-tulathimutte?variant=41333563588642] by Tony Tulathimutte Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast [https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast]. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs [https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html]. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts [http://nytimes.com/podcasts] or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Joe Biden wanted to show Americans that there was a better path than Trumpism. He worked to build a “foreign policy for the middle class.” He centered industrial policy. He took a more competitive tack with China. He kept America out of wars. The hope was that if Americans saw foreign policy serving their interests, then that would dim the appeal of someone like Donald Trump. Then Trump won again — stronger than ever. Jake Sullivan is Biden’s national security adviser and one of the key architects of this foreign policy for the middle class. In this conversation, I ask him to walk me through why he thinks the country is better off today than it was four years ago. We discuss the status of America’s relationship with China and the risk of a future war; whether the U.S. should have used its leverage to force Ukraine to the negotiating table; how the enormous arms support of Israel serves U.S. interests; what Trump’s re-election says about Bidenism; and more. Mentioned: Brookings speech [https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/04/27/remarks-by-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-on-renewing-american-economic-leadership-at-the-brookings-institution/] Book Recommendations: Science, the Endless Frontier [https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691186627/science-the-endless-frontier?srsltid=AfmBOorPC_Mx1ZzMdrcwHxPZ7YRKzCNNUbJJYPAYOxC8vdd2Eocj-7aK] by Vannevar Bush Nexus [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/762444/nexus-by-yuval-noah-harari/] by Yuval Noah Harari The Situation Room [https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/george-stephanopoulos/the-situation-room/9781538740767/] by George Stephanopoulos Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast [https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast]. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs [https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html]. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts [http://nytimes.com/podcasts] or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The preview we’ve had into Donald Trump’s second administration already feels, by American standards, disturbingly abnormal: Picking a former “Fox and Friends” host for defense secretary. Billionaire after billionaire trekking to Mar-a-Lago to curry favor with the president-elect. The Washington Post withholding an opposing endorsement. Meta ending its third-party fact-checking. But all of this is actually pretty normal — not in the U.S. but in many other countries. Researchers call them personalist regimes, in which everything is a transaction with the leader, whether it’s party politics or policymaking or the media. It’s a style of politics that follows different rules, but there are still rules. And understanding personalist politics, and their tried-and-true playbook, is a way to help make the next four years legible. Today’s guest is one of the leading scholars on personalist regimes, in both their democratic and their authoritarian forms. Erica Frantz is a political scientist at Michigan State University and a the co-author, with Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Joseph Wright, of “The Origins of Elected Strongmen: How Personalist Parties Destroy Democracy From Within [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-origins-of-elected-strongmen-9780198888079].” In this conversation, we discuss what personalist regimes are and how they operate, the personalist qualities of Trump and the signs of democratic backsliding that Frantz thinks Americans need to track in the coming weeks and years. This episode contains strong language. Book Recommendations: Dictators at War and Peace [https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801479823/dictators-at-war-and-peace/#bookTabs=1] by Jessica L. P. Weeks Autocracy Rising [https://www.brookings.edu/books/autocracy-rising/] by Javier Corrales The Trumpiad [https://waywiser-press.com/product/the-trumpiad/#description] by Cody Walker Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast [https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast]. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs [https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html]. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts [http://nytimes.com/podcasts] or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

I like to begin each year with an episode about something I’m working through more personally. And at the end of last year, the thing I needed to work through was a pretty bad case of burnout. So I picked up Oliver Burkeman’s latest book, “Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250353986/meditationsformortals/].” Burkeman’s big idea, which he also explores in his best seller “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374159122/fourthousandweeks/],” is that the desire to be more productive, to squeeze out the most from each day, to try to feel on top of our lives, is ultimately insatiable. He argues that addressing burnout requires a shift in outlook — accepting that our time and energy are finite, and that there will always be something more to do. In other words: What if you began with a deeper appreciation of your own limits? How, then, would you live? Burkeman’s book is structured as 28 short essays on this question. In this conversation, I ask him to walk me through some of them. We discuss what burnout is; what it means to accept your limitations and let go of control; the messages children absorb about productivity and work; navigating the overwhelm of information and news; and more. This episode contains strong language. Mentioned: “How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work]” by Anne Helen Petersen Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang “Stop. Breathe. We Can’t Keep Working Like This. [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-cal-newport.html]” with Cal Newport on “The Ezra Klein Show” “The Man Who Knew Too Little [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/style/the-man-who-knew-too-little.html]” by Sam Dolnick Book Recommendations: The Uncontrollability of the World [https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Uncontrollability+of+the+World-p-9781509543175] by Hartmut Rosa Fully Alive [http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/fully-alive/421701] by Elizabeth Oldfield Death [https://www.joantollifson.com/book-death-the-end-of-self-improvement.html] by Joan Tollifson Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast [https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast]. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs [https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html]. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts [http://nytimes.com/podcasts] or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.