I have a tendency to end the year feeling pretty worn out. And that’s partly because I struggle to rest properly throughout the year, to build rest into a routine and stick to it.  

That’s how I was feeling at the end of 2022, when we originally taped this episode. And it’s certainly how I’m feeling at the end of this year, so this felt like a valuable episode to revisit. 

Judith Shulevitz’s wonderful book, “The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time,” draws out lessons from the Jewish ritual of the Sabbath that everyone can benefit from, regardless of whether you’re Jewish or religious at all. The Sabbath, as commonly practiced, involves taking a day a week off from work, turning off your phone and spending a lot of time with family and your community. To Shulevitz, there’s a radicalism in this ritual — a stinging critique of the speed at which we live our lives, the ways we choose to spend our time and how we think about the idea of rest itself. She sees the Sabbath as more than just taking a break from the world, but also as an act of creating a different one. I left the conversation feeling awed by how such an ancient practice can contain wisdom that feels so urgent right now. I hope you enjoy — and that at the end of this year, you find time for some true rest. 

Mentioned:

The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel

I and Thou by Martin Buber

Book Recommendations:

Adam Bede by George Eliot

The Seven Day Circle by Eviatar Zerubavel

On the Clock by Emily Guendelsberger

Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Guest suggestions? Fill out this form.

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 Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. The show’s production time 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 or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

There’s a lot to process as 2024 draws to a close. 

In our end-of-year Ask Me Anything, the supervising editor of “The Ezra Klein Show,” Claire Gordon, joins Ezra in the studio to ask your questions – on politics, and lots of not-politics too. Ezra talks about the ways this year has affected him personally: how his views on government have changed; his efforts to stave off burnout; and his off-again, on-again relationship with social media. 

They also discuss the making of the show: the accusation that certain episodes have “normalized” Donald Trump; how we’re going to approach covering the next administration; the story behind our new theme music; and what’s going on with that arm tattoo.

Thank you to the listeners who sent in questions, and to everyone who’s tuned in this year. Without you, this year would have been a lot lonelier. (We also wouldn’t have jobs.) We’ll be re-airing one of our favorite episodes this Friday (on the art of rest). And then we’ll be back here with new episodes in 2025. Wishing you a great end to 2024. Happy new year!

This episode contains strong language.

Mentioned:

“Magical Tree Creatures” by Pat McCusker

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. 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 fact-checked 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, 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 or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

In 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, ushering in, by some estimates, nearly half a trillion dollars of investment in green energy and manufacturing. But what will happen to this huge investment as Donald Trump enters office?

Jigar Shah is one of the best people to answer this question. As the director of the Loan Programs Office at the Department of Energy, he has spent his career finding new ways to finance green infrastructure. And he’s more optimistic than you might expect about the road ahead.

In this conversation, guest host Robinson Meyer, a contributing writer for New York Times Opinion and the founding executive editor of Heatmap News, asks Shah for a progress check on decarbonization. They discuss what has changed about the economics and financing of clean energy; what has worked well in the green energy transition, as well as the trade-offs it has entailed; and what may or may not change as Trump enters office.

Book Recommendations:

Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

What If We Get It Right? by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

Romney by McKay Coppins

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. 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 [Who]. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and 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 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 or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Donald Trump will enter office at a time when presidential power has significantly expanded, because of a string of Supreme Court decisions in recent years. These decisions can be understood to have two functions: They give presidents a “sword” to act more decisively and unilaterally, and a “shield” that protects them from prosecution against actions taken in their official capacity. What will these capacities mean for Trump’s second term — especially as he has promised to radically transform the federal government?

Gillian Metzger is a professor at Columbia Law School who has studied the presidency, the administrative state and the Supreme Court’s relationship to both. In this conversation, guest-hosted by Kate Shaw, a New York Times Opinion contributing writer and law professor, Metzger discusses two key Supreme Court cases — the Trump immunity case, which gave presidents broad protections from prosecution, and the Loper Bright Enterprises case, which overturned the Chevron doctrine, expanding judicial power. Shaw and Metzger also cover how much leeway Trump actually has to take some of the bolder executive actions he’s floated, including ending birthright citizenship; what still remains uncertain about the federal government’s regulatory powers in the post-Chevron regime; and more.

“The Demise of Deference — And the Rise of Delegation to Interpret?” by Thomas W. Merrill

“The DOGE Plan to Reform Government” by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy

Book recommendations

Creating the Administrative Constitution by Jerry L. Mashaw

The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy by Daniel Carpenter

“Curation, Narration, Erasure” by Karen M. Tani

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. 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 Elias Isquith. 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, 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 or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This election felt like the peak of the TV-ification of politics. There’s Trump, of course, who rose to national prominence as a reality-TV character and is a master of visual stagecraft. And while Trump’s cabinet picks in his first term were described as out of central casting, this time he wants to staff some positions directly from the worlds of TV and entertainment: Pete Hegseth, his choice to run the Pentagon, was a host on “Fox and Friends Weekend”; his proposed education secretary, Linda McMahon, was the former C.E.O. of W.W.E.; Mehmet Oz, star of the long-running “The Dr. Oz Show,” is his pick to run Medicare and Medicaid; and he’s tapped Elon Musk, one of the most powerful figures in American culture, to lead a government efficiency effort. 

Two years ago, we released an episode that helps explain why politics and entertainment are converging like this. It’s with my old Vox colleague Sean Illing, host of “The Gray Area,” looking at the work of two media theorists, Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, who uncannily predicted what we’re seeing now decades ago.

And so I wanted to share this episode again now, because it’s really worth stepping back and looking at this moment through the lens of the media that’s shaping it. In his book “The Paradox of Democracy,” Illing and his co-author, Zac Gershberg, put it this way: “It’s better to think of democracy less as a government type and more as an open communicative culture.” So what does our communicative culture — our fragmented mix of cable news, X, TikTok, YouTube, WhatsApp and podcasts — mean for our democracy? 

This episode contains strong language.

Mentioned:

“‘Flood the zone with shit’: How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy” by Sean Illing

“Quantifying partisan news diets in Web and TV audiences” by Daniel Muise, Homa Hosseinmardi, Baird Howland, Markus Mobius, David Rothschild and Duncan J. Watts

Book Recommendations:

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann

Mediated by Thomas de Zengotita

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. 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 Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Sonia Herrero, Carole Sabouraud and Isaac Jones. Our production team also includes Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin, Jack McCordick and Aman Sahota. 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 or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

It was possible to see Donald Trump’s first election victory as some kind of fluke. But after the results of this election, it’s clear that America is living in the Trump era. And for Americans who’ve struggled to process this fact, you have lots of company around the world. From Hungary to Brazil, right-wing figures with openly authoritarian goals have been voted into power, to the concern of many of the people who live there.

A political phenomenon that spans countries like this — especially countries with such different levels of wealth, political systems and cultures — requires an explanation that spans countries, too. 

So we wanted to re-air this episode that originally published in November 2022, because it offers exactly that kind of theory. Pippa Norris is a political scientist at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She’s written dozens of books on topics ranging from comparative political institutions to right-wing parties and the decline of religion. In 2019, she and Ronald Inglehart published “Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian Populism,” which gives the best explanation of the far right’s rise that I’ve read. And it feels so much more relevant now in this country, after Trump’s decisive election. 

In this conversation, we discuss what Norris calls the “silent revolution in cultural values” that has occurred across advanced democracies in recent decades, why the “transgressive aesthetic” of leaders like Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro is so central to their appeal, the role that economic anxiety and insecurity play in fueling right-wing backlashes and more.

Mentioned:

Sacred and Secular by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart

“Exploring drivers of vote choice and policy positions among the American electorate”

Book Recommendations:

Popular Dictatorships by Aleksandar Matovski

Spin Dictators by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman

The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you're reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion" in the subject line.)

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” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Roge Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by our senior engineer, Jeff Geld. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin, Jack McCordick and Aman Sahota. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. 

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Right after the election, I talked about how the results reminded me of 2004. George W. Bush won re-election that year — and unlike four years earlier, the popular vote, too. Democrats were truly, undeniably in the wilderness. But two years later, they found their way out. Democrats won the House for the first time in 12 years. And two years after that, with the election of Barack Obama, they completed their trifecta. Does that comeback story have any lessons for Democrats today?

Rahm Emanuel is the person to ask. He helped orchestrate that 2006 Democratic victory as the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He was Obama’s first chief of staff. And before that, Emanuel was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton. Emanuel has been a central player in most of the biggest Democratic victories of the past few decades. And people like David Axelrod and Steve Israel have been floating his name to lead the Democratic National Committee to help guide Democrats out of the wilderness once more. But Emanuel is also a controversial figure in the party. And the eras of Democratic politics he represents have complicated legacies and aren’t remembered with unanimous warmth.

In this conversation, Emanuel argues that Democrats have fallen out of touch with what Americans actually want. We discuss why Democrats lost this November, what lessons they’ve forgotten from the Obama and Clinton years and how he would plot a Democratic comeback today.

Book Recommendations:

Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills

The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn

The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes

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. 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 Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones 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. And special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

There are a lot of different opinions about how the Democratic Party should rebuild after the blow of Donald Trump’s victory. And for the next two episodes, we’re going to showcase two very different ones.

Faiz Shakir was Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign manager, and he believes that Democrats need to embrace a Sanders-style class-first populism. This question of whether Sanders or a candidate like him could have beaten Trump loomed over Democratic post-mortems of the 2016 election, and they’ve reared up again this year, as Democrats have continued to lose working-class voters. As Sanders put it in a blistering statement: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

But some Democrats have been frustrated with this criticism. President Biden has been arguably the most economically populist president of the modern era. And the Democrats who have been winning in redder parts of the country aren’t democratic socialists. So I wanted to have Shakir on for a lively debate. Shakir worked not just for Sanders; he was also a senior adviser to the Senate majority leader Harry Reid and to Nancy Pelosi. And he’s currently the founder and executive director of More Perfect Union, a media outlet focused on issues affecting America’s working class.

This episode contains strong language.

Book Recommendations:

The Tyranny of Merit by Michael J. Sandel

Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek

Don’t Get above Your Raisin’ by Bill C. Malone

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. 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. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Aman Sahota and Efim Shapiro. 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. And special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The core conflict in our politics right now is over institutions. Democrats defend them, while Republicans distrust them, and seek, in some cases, to eliminate them.

This is really bad. It’s bad for institutions when Republicans are elected, because of the damage they might inflict. And it’s bad for institutions when Democrats are elected, because when you’re so committed to protecting something, it’s hard to be clear-eyed or honest about all the ways it’s failing. And when Democrats won’t admit to the problems that so many Americans can see and feel, that creates a huge opening for the right. So, what are Democrats missing?

Steven Teles is a political scientist and director of the Center for Economy and Society at Johns Hopkins, and a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center. Jennifer Pahlka is the founder of Code for America and the author of one of my favorite books on why government doesn’t deliver, “Recoding America: Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better.” She’s also a senior fellow at Niskanen.

In this conversation, we discuss how and why the country has become polarized over institutions; the ways this was supercharged during the pandemic; the reasons government agencies are so focused on process, often at the expense of outcomes; how a second Trump administration will probably distract from some much needed institutional reforms; and more.

This episode contains strong language.

Recommendations:

“Voice and Inequality: The Transformation of American Civic Democracy” by Theda Skocpol

“Infrastructure Costs” by Leah Brooks and Zachary D. Liscow

Why Nothing Works by Marc Dunkelman

The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies

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. 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. Mixing by Isaac Jones 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 or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

I’ve been watching since the election to see what timeline we’re in. And Donald Trump’s first wave of selections for appointees were pretty straightforward. But then came the turn: Pete Hegseth, a former “Fox & Friends” host, to helm the Pentagon; Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence; and the real gut-punch, the former representative Matt Gaetz for attorney general.

In the parts of government that can be weaponized most dangerously — the military, the intelligence services, the Department of Justice — Trump is putting true lackeys and loyalists in charge. I fear we’ve entered the bad timeline.

Anne Applebaum is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a staff writer at The Atlantic, and the author of a new book, “Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World.” In this conversation, we discuss how she’s been processing Trump’s picks, what to make of Elon Musk’s role in Trump’s inner circle, the indicators to look out for when governments slide in an autocratic direction, the appeal and excitement of autocratic regimes that often get missed in our history books, the relationship between autocracies and futurists, the politics of performance and more.

Mentioned:

Join our team as a story editor

Book Recommendations:

Moneyland by Oliver Bullough

Offshore by Brooke Harrington

American Kleptocracy by Casey Michel

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones 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. And special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio.

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.