For America's 250th, we asked Ezra Klein what freedom actually requires of us — and he took us somewhere we didn't expect: attention. We get into why the older idea of freedom was about self-mastery, not just endless choice, and what that means for how we live, parent, and govern right now. It's a Fourth of July conversation about virtue, institutions, and whether we can still build something new.
Topics discussed:
• The vision of abundance and why the future is so hard to imagine
• Attention as a collective resource — and why ours is deranged
• Freedom as choice vs. freedom as self-mastery
• Virtue, vice, and the illiberal moment
• Institutional trust, corruption, and the education debate
• Natalism, AI, and whether we're living through an aberration
• Outside of Politics: which founder would make the best podcast guest
Resources mentioned:
• Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson https://bookshop.org/a/124929/9781668023488
• Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein
https://bookshop.org/a/124929/9781476700366
• The Lost History of Liberalism by Helena Rosenblatt
https://bookshop.org/a/124929/9780691203966
• The Pursuit of Happiness by Jeffrey Rosen https://bookshop.org/a/124929/9781668002483
• The British Are Coming by Rick Atkinson
https://bookshop.org/a/124929/9781250231321
• "Now Is a Time of Monsters" by Ezra Klein, The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/12/opinion/ai-climate-change-low-birth-rates.html?eafs_enabled=false

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