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Is there anything special about human beings? A long list of characteristics—some obvious, some surprising—sets humans apart from other creatures. (Who knew that having a chin was so unusual?)

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Continuing on the "Spirit" section of The Phenomenology of Spirit, giving a sort of social metaphysics, wherein the ethical life of a society is analyzed into two complementary types of law, human (explicit laws but also customs) and what Hegel calls "divine" (a subconscious ethical sense represented by the home and women).

Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com. Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and tons of bonus discussion.

Sponsors: Visit functionhealth.com/PEL to get the data you need to take action for your health. Get a $1/month e-commerce trial at shopify.com/pel.

Michael Laskey has produced six collections of poetry since his first pamphlet in 1988. That was also the year he co-founded the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. His career in poetry which has seen him teach, edit, and publish and has resulted in him becoming this year's recipient of the King's Gold Medal for Poetry. As his Collected Poems is published, he looks back on charting his life in poetry.

When Michael Schmidt met Elizabeth Jennings, he was a student and she was a celebrated poet. As managing director of Carcanet Press he become her publisher. A relationship that endured until her final collection in 2001. In her centenary year, he talk about her distinctive qualities as a poet and shares his favourite poem of hers.

Michelle Penn takes inspiration from the Latin American iteration of the retablos art form for her new book - Retablo for a door. The poetry collection in part explores the female experience, but also turns its attention to subjects as varied as the first atomic bomb test, and Leonardo da Vinci's drawing, Vitruvian Man. She discusses why she found retablos such a useful creative aid for her poetry.

In Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State, academic Rachel Douglas-Jones reflected on the poetic power of redaction to interrogate and understand the General Data Protection Regulations. She explains why redaction, currently in the news for its power to obscure, can also lead to revelation.

Presenter: Ian McMillan

The Irish writer Colm Tóibín speaks to Take Four Books about his new short story collection, The News From Dublin, and together with presenter James Crawford, they explore its connections to three other literary works. His new collection, published by Picador, consists of nine short stories, the last of which, The Catalan Girls, runs to a hundred pages and is about three sisters who have been living in Argentina and decide to return to Catalonia.

For his three influences Colm chose short stories by three Irish writers: The Country Funeral by John McGahern first published in 1992; Frank O'Connor's Guests Of The Nation from 1931; and the Glasgow born Irish playwright and writer Eugene McCabe's Music At Annahullion from 1985.

Producer: Dominic Howell

A gorgeous and lavish new publication tells the story of the Kinks in the ‘60s via the key events in their unsteady trajectory plus concert bills, letters and ephemera assembled by Andrew Sandoval, the kind of non-digital research that’s filled his archive with yellowing back numbers of Disc & Music Echo. It’s “nirvana for any fan”, the title hinting at the level of detail – ‘The Kinks: All Day and All of the Night, the Day By Day Story Part 1: 1940 – 1971’. He joins us here from Los Angeles to talk frock coats, deathless tunes and own-foot-shooting setbacks, and what he learnt about the band from compiling it. Which involves …

… their magical run of 16 hits from 1964–68 (by a sole songwriter)

… the five people who ran and managed the band and what they had to put up with

… the last chance saloon backstory of You Really Got Me and the Jimmy Page rumours

… the Kinks’ alleged black-listing on the American tour circuit

… Ray’s “unauthorised autobiography” and perpetual self-sabotage

… Granada TV’s record of Alan Bennett and John Betjeman as possible co-writers for Arthur

... the 12,000 miles required to re-record three seconds of “Lola”

… the ways Reprise, Pye and Marble Arch sold the Kinks catalogue  

… and Ray and Dave’s live debut as “the Kelly Brothers”.

Order copies of ‘The Kinks: All Day and All of the Night’ here: https://beatlandbooks.myshopify.com/

Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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Addie Citchens reads her story “The City Is a Graveyard,” from the March 16, 2026, issue of the magazine. Citchens is a Mississippi Delta-born, New Orleans-based writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her first novel, “Dominion,” was published in 2025 and was short-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and long-listed for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.

It’s been a busy first year for the US Defense Secretary. From signal chat controversies to Operation Epic Fury, Pete Hegseth has been making headlines.

Born in Minneapolis in 1980, Hegseth had what could be described as an ‘All-American’ upbringing. A basketball player at school he continued playing during his University career at Princeton where he majored in Politics. He also enrolled in the ROTC (reserve officers’ training corps) which turned out to be a career defining decision.

After stints in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hegseth returned home and began his career on the political side lines - heading up two veterans charities. But his campaigning job dried up after a whistle blower report alleged he was drunk and abusive at work. Next he moved to Fox News where he caught the eye of President Trump, a notorious consumer of the right wing network. This was the beginning of Hegseth’s meteoric rise to power.

His confirmation for Defense Secretary hearing saw him answer questions about sexual assault allegations and claims he didn’t have enough experience for the job. But Hegseth successfully defended himself and was soon installed at the Pentagon.

Mark Coles explores how he got there.

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Author and broadcaster Samira Ahmed used to watch A Hard Day’s Night once a week and she’s just written an enthralling account of the shoot and its impact for the BFI’s Classic Films series. A movie, she points out, that celebrates Britishness and suburbia made largely by immigrants that broke every Hollywood rule, a film made to capture the essence of the Beatles before the bubble burst “which turned out to be the start of something not the end”. She talks to us here about …

… the film’s connections with the Goons, the Young Ones, Dr Strangelove, Star Wars, Billy Liar, It’s Trad Dad and the Nouvelle Vague

… and its influence - from the Dave Clark Five’s Catch Us If You Can and Paul Jones’ Privilege to Charlie XCX and the Moment

… how the train sequence for I Should Have Known Better invented pop video

… the play John and Paul wrote (Pilchard!) that was a homage to its scriptwriter Alun Owen

… Paul’s two-day solo shoot with Isla Blair and other (mercifully) deleted scenes

... Profumo, pirate radio, the changing Britain of 1964

… Pattie Boyd, Anna Quayle, Alison Seebohm and other stand-out female stars

… Wilfred Brambell’s gigantic fee and how badly his part has aged

… why George and Ringo emerged as the stars

… surely the greatest scene? – “She's a drag, a well-known drag. We turn the sound down on her and say rude things”

… “hair that moved!”: the film’s impact in the USA

… “beat-up and depraved in the nicest possible way”

… and how the dubbed-on dialogue about Ingmar Bergman made the German version “a film for cineastes”.

Order Samira’s book here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/hard-days-night-9781839029394/

Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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On Point news analyst Jack Beatty on the corrupting influence of the president’s power to wage war, and the failure of the 1973 War Powers Resolution to check that power.

***

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.

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