What I’m Thinking at the End of 2024

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Ezra Klein Show – "What I’m Thinking at the End of 2024"

Release Date: December 24, 2024
Host: Ezra Klein, New York Times Opinion
Co-Host: Claire Gordon

In the episode titled "What I’m Thinking at the End of 2024," Ezra Klein engages in a comprehensive "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) session alongside co-host Claire Gordon. As the year draws to a close, the duo reflects on the tumultuous events of 2024, addressing a spectrum of topics ranging from political ideologies and government regulations to personal experiences of fatherhood. The conversation is structured around listener-submitted questions, providing insightful perspectives grounded in Ezra's liberal worldview and personal experiences.

---

1. Liberalism vs. Democratic Socialism

Key Discussion:
Ezra delves into his ideological stance, distinguishing between liberalism and democratic socialism. He articulates his belief in life's inherent unfairness and the idea that individual success is often influenced by factors beyond personal control.

Notable Quotes:

• "I'm a liberal because I believe life is fundamentally unfair... we deserve partial credit at best for how we do in it." [02:30]
• "I tend to be different than a lot of democratic socialists in America... I value harnessing the genius of the private sector more highly." [06:57]

Ezra emphasizes his support for capitalism, not as an end in itself but as a means to drive innovation and effective solutions. He contrasts his approach with that of democratic socialists, highlighting his skepticism about the feasibility of certain large-scale policy changes within the current political climate.

---

2. The Role of Technology and Regulation

Key Discussion:
The conversation shifts to the intersection of technology, regulation, and policy. Ezra underscores the importance of technological innovation in addressing societal challenges, such as climate change and public health.

Notable Quotes:

• "Operation Warp Speed is one of the greatest public health achievements ever... without the MRNA technologies, we couldn't have kept lockdowns going." [07:00]
• "Regulations are a tool. You have to ask are you getting the outcomes you want?" [37:58]

Ezra critiques both liberal and conservative approaches to government regulation. He argues that liberals often become defenders of institutions rather than reformers, while conservatives tend to weaken or remove regulations without a clear outcome in mind. His focus is on outcome-oriented policies that leverage technology effectively while mitigating potential negative consequences.

---

3. Twitter, Blue Sky, and Social Media Dynamics

Key Discussion:
Ezra shares his nuanced views on Twitter and the emerging platform Blue Sky. He expresses concerns about Elon Musk's influence on Twitter and the potential for groupthink on emerging platforms like Blue Sky.

Notable Quotes:

• "I'm not sure it's good for the way I think... it has a tendency to pull me into stupid controversies." [11:00]
• "Blue Sky has a possible problem of it has a selection problem... making it harder to think independently." [10:53]

He balances his critiques by acknowledging the role of social media in fostering factional conversations, especially within the political left. Ezra emphasizes the importance of using these platforms judiciously to avoid being co-opted by prevailing group dynamics.

---

4. Normalization of Trump and MAGA in Politics

Key Discussion:
Addressing concerns about the normalization of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, Ezra defends his journalistic approach of engaging with all political spectrums to maintain an open-minded perspective.

Notable Quotes:

• "Don't expect this show to be a resistance show... I am a reporter. I am curious. I am trying to understand things so I can make up my own mind." [15:02]
• "The Trump vibe is going to be the year of the Trump vibe in 2025... he is gonna have much more capacity to shape sentiment." [50:07]

Ezra emphasizes the importance of understanding even the most contentious political figures and movements to provide a well-rounded analysis, rather than dismissing them outright as abnormal.

---

5. The Filibuster and Legislative Processes

Key Discussion:
Ezra discusses his long-standing opposition to the filibuster, especially in the context of a potential Trump-controlled government across all three branches.

Notable Quotes:

• "It hasn't changed... I have been saying for years we should get rid of the filibuster." [19:13]
• "The filibuster is often a way that political movements avoid accountability for what they are trying to do." [19:13]

He argues that the filibuster hampers democratic accountability by allowing minority factions to block legislation, thereby preventing the majority's policies from being effectively implemented. Ezra contemplates the complexities that would arise if the filibuster were removed, especially under a government aligned with his political adversaries.

---

6. Reflections on Government Regulations and Liberalism

Key Discussion:
Ezra shares a shift in his perspective regarding government regulations, moving from a protective stance to a more critical view of how ineffective or poorly designed regulations can stifle progress.

Notable Quotes:

• "I now have a much more skeptical view of a lot of existing regulations." [30:23]
• "The biggest problem around liberal governance is that it is obsessed by process and it mistakes process for outcomes." [37:58]

He critiques projects like California's high-speed rail, citing them as examples of regulatory failures that prevent effective implementation of beneficial technologies. This introspection is part of his broader examination of how liberalism can sometimes impede the very progress it seeks to achieve.

---

7. Personal Reflections on Fatherhood

Key Discussion:
Transitioning from political discourse, Ezra addresses a personal question about the joys of fatherhood. He shares heartfelt insights into the emotional rewards of parenting, emphasizing the intrinsic value of his children's existence beyond personal gratification.

Notable Quotes:

• "There's real pleasure in it... getting to see that it's not all about you." [24:44]
• "The joy of parenting is not the joy of parenting. It's the joy of your child's existence." [29:59]

Ezra reflects on the meaningful connections and the profound impact of witnessing his children's growth and consciousness, contrasting it with the often transactional nature of contemporary decision-making.

---

8. Rapid Fire Round

In the latter part of the episode, Ezra and Claire engage in a rapid-fire segment, answering a series of quick questions that range from favorite X-Men characters to musical preferences and personal habits. This segment offers a lighter counterbalance to the intense discussions of the previous sections.

Highlights:

• Favorite X-Men Characters: "Dark Phoenix era Jean Grey and Krakoa era White Queen... Magneto above White Queen." [41:27]
• Favorite Band When Younger: "Michael Franti and Spearhead... the album Stay Human." [43:47]
• Unwinding Techniques: Ezra discusses his struggles with burnout and shares personal strategies for mental well-being, emphasizing the importance of balance. [45:04]

---

9. Looking Ahead: Vibes for 2025

Key Discussion:
Ezra speculates on the cultural and political atmosphere of 2025, projecting an intensified "Trump vibe" influenced by his administration's agenda-setting capabilities and the broader media landscape.

Notable Quotes:

• "2025 is gonna be the year of the Trump vibe." [50:07]
• "Elon Musk is on the team and many more people in media and in technology... shape sentiment." [50:07]

He anticipates that the fusion of political leadership and influential media figures will further entrench Trump's impact on American culture and politics, altering the nation's socio-political dynamics.

---

10. Closing Remarks and Acknowledgments

Ezra concludes the episode by expressing gratitude to his production team and listeners, acknowledging the hard work and dedication that have sustained the show through a challenging year.

Notable Quotes:

• "Thank you to everybody who's worked on the show so hard this year... they've done amazing, amazing work." [52:40]
• "Thank you to everybody in the audience who's been with us on the show this year." [52:59]

He also shares a personal reflection on his tattoo, symbolizing his connection to California's redwood forests, and briefly touches upon the show's new theme music inspired by Miyazaki’s forest spirits.

---

Conclusion

Throughout the episode, Ezra Klein demonstrates a blend of analytical rigor and personal vulnerability, navigating complex political ideologies while also sharing intimate aspects of his life. The AMA format allows listeners to gain a deeper understanding of Ezra's perspectives on liberalism, governance, and personal well-being, making the episode a rich and engaging listen for both regular followers and newcomers.

Key Takeaways:

• Ezra advocates for an outcome-oriented approach to liberalism, emphasizing effective regulation and technological innovation.
• He maintains a critical stance on both liberal institutional defense and conservative regulatory removal, seeking a balanced synthesis.
• Personal reflections reveal Ezra's commitment to fatherhood and the challenges of maintaining mental well-being amidst professional demands.
• The projected "Trump vibe" for 2025 signals a continued and possibly intensified influence of Trump-era politics on American society.

---

Notable Timestamp Highlights:

• [02:30] Ezra explains why he identifies as a liberal rather than a democratic socialist.
• [06:57] Discussion on capitalism and its role in societal progress.
• [10:53] Thoughts on Twitter's evolution under Elon Musk.
• [15:02] Clarifying the purpose of his show as a space for open-minded reporting.
• [19:13] Longstanding opposition to the filibuster and its implications.
• [24:44] Insights into the joys and complexities of fatherhood.
• [50:07] Predictions for the cultural and political landscape of 2025.

---

This episode encapsulates a year of intense political and personal introspection, offering listeners a multifaceted view of Ezra Klein's thoughts as the calendar year concludes.

Transcript

[GiveWell Ad]

This podcast is supported by GiveWell. You're a details person, you read the nutrition facts and you check the footnotes. So when giving to charity, check out GiveWell, a nonprofit that researches and recommends great giving opportunities. Over 125,000 donors have already used GiveWell's research, collectively saving over 200,000 lives. Make a tax deductible [e-mail] first time donors can have their donation matched up to $100 as long as matching funds last select podcast and Ezra Klein at checkout.

[Ezra Klein]

From New York Times Opinion this is the Ezra Klein show. So happy holidays. Welcome to the near end of a year that has felt like many, many, many years. And we thought before it all ends we would answer a couple more questions. Hopefully slightly more fun ones than that. Are more election focused. Ask me anything. And then we are going to be back with new episodes in the new year and have some stuff that I'm pretty excited about in the pipeline. But thank you to everybody who's been listening this year. It has been thank you to Claire Gordon who's here with me and has been an amazing partner in building the show this year and editing it and getting things out at the last minute. To her and to the team, they've all been incredible and getting the show out the door with as fast as news was moving was no small thing and took no small number of long nights. So thank you to you.

[Claire Gordon]

Oh, thank you Ezra. It has been a year. I am not yet quite ready to process it all. And these aren't all fun questions. People are here for your political analysis.

[Ezra Klein]

I thought you told me this one was gonna be lighter.

[Claire Gordon]

Well, there will be some fun at the end when I'm gonna continue the tradition from last year of a rapid fire round.

[Ezra Klein]

Okay.

[Claire Gordon]

But to start with short, simple, sweet from Juna Elena Amiya, why are you a liberal and not a democratic socialist?

[Ezra Klein]

Are all of my ama's gonna start with very complicated definitional questions?

[Claire Gordon]

Isn't that a good table setting?

[Ezra Klein]

Good lord. Okay, I think it really depends what you mean by liberal and democratic socialist because those things mean different things in Europe where there are deeper traditions of both. And I think here the liberal democratic socialist and left dimensions overlap but are different and are referred to as different by different people. I will say let me try to do this in stages. I'm a liberal because I believe life is fundamentally unfair. I believe both life is fundamentally unfair and I believe we deserve partial credit at best for how we do in it. Right? Not our fault that we were born to poorer Parents not our fault we were born with dyslexia or without the iron will somebody else might have had. And also on the other side of that often not our fault that we were such hard workers, that our particular mix of intelligence and capacity was the right fit for the society we were in at the right time and we had the resources or good luck to take advantage of it. I am very well suited to a society that highly values abstract communication and not that well suited to a society that requires you to know where you're going or work a lot with your hands.

[Claire Gordon]

I'm just curious because I've heard you say that before. Is there a particular moment or something you read or a life experience where you felt this click for you as a sort of a philosophical worldview?

[Ezra Klein]

I did really badly in school and then I did really well as an adult. And I don't think I was more or less responsible for either one. The things that have made me successful in some ways were the same things that may be unsuccessful before. My monomania around things I'm interested in and difficulty with things I'm uninterested in my desire to be in a quiet room reading and writing by myself all the time. I don't think when I was 14 and couldn't get it together that was a moral failing. Some part of my mental software was different. So my own life, I just. I did not in some level deserve how badly I did when I was younger. And I don't deserve how well I've done as I've been older. I mean, I do my best with what I have, but the what I have and frankly even the doing my best doesn't even feel like something I chose. It feels compulsive. There are many times when I'd frankly like to do a worse job. And it's not in me. It's more anxiety producing in me not to work than to work. It won't have come out yet, but I'm about to tape with Oliver Berkman, the self help author, and in his book he's quoting somebody saying that most successful people are an anxiety disorder harness for productivity. I don't think that's entirely wrong. So that's a lot of why I'm a liberal. And then you get into this question of democratic socialists are liberal. The place I find that I tend to be different than a lot of democratic socialists in America, people I know who are more in the Bernie Sanders camp has a lot to do with what I think is politically possible. It's not that we disagree necessarily on the ideal healthcare system, but. But we disagree on, can you get there from here? Can you abolish the private health insurance people currently have and like, will people trust the American government enough to do that? Can you raise taxes to the extent you would need to fund that set of programs? Is that what people want? Is that possible? And I probably am just simply more open to the idea that corporations do bad things, but also do great things. I was hearing an interview Bernie gave on the Daily, and he talked about how nothing Elon Musk has done at Tesla, like did anything for working class people. And I thought that was such a weird comment because if you believe as Bernie Sanders does and as I do, in the importance of the electric vehicle transition and how good cleaning up that air pollution and reducing those emissions would be for working communities, then Elon Musk has done a tremendous amount for those people. Whatever else you think about his politics, what or his tendencies, harnessing the genius of the private sector is probably more important to me, and I value it more highly than a lot of people call themselves democratic socialists. So there's probably an affective dimension to that around capitalism and effective.

[Claire Gordon]

And it sounds like maybe more into capitalism.

[Ezra Klein]

I'm probably more into capitalism, but I think a lot of them are too. I think if you look at how a lot of my friends who are more on the outside live, the purchasing patterns don't look that different and what technology they're using doesn't look that different. So there's a bit of what you're willing to credit the market with doing and being able to do. And let's take nothing away from Bernie Sanders or frankly from democratic socialists. Just why I feel like I tend to end up on this side of the debates. I think probably one place I'm different from a lot of liberals and Democratic socialists is I would like to put invention and innovation and technology much more at the center of, of any kind of social justice agenda. It is now seems like a million years ago in American politics and we are elevating, or Trump is elevating to the various health agencies, people who opposed a lot of this. But I think Operation Warp Speed is one of the greatest public health achievements ever. And the work behind it, it's really amazing. And it allowed something that no other policy could have done. If we had not invented the MRNA technologies that could have gotten us to those vaccines so quickly, we couldn't have just kept lockdowns going. And I think a lot of things are like that. We're not going to be able to hit our decarbonization goals without clean cement, without clean jet fuel. We just don't have that yet, at least not in anything that we can afford at scale. And so there are all kinds of problems we just cannot solve effectively or affordably with the technology we have today. But we could with technology we see right over the horizon. And I would put that much more at the center. So I am maybe not just a liberal, but I am an abundance liberal.

[Claire Gordon]

And a techno utopian.

[Ezra Klein]

No, I'm an abundance liberal because I'm not a utopian about it. Right. I think technology is really important, but if you don't embed it in good policy, it can also be a driver of inequality, of illness, of war, of social fracture. Believing you can solve problems with technology is not the same as not believing you can create problems with technology. I hate when people say not blaming you for this, but I am a little pushing on it that anybody who believes you can solve problems with technology is a techno utopian. No, you want to solve the problems you can solve and then not create problems that don't need to be created. Which is like how you want to use any tool. Right. You can hammer in a nail or you can crack somebody's skull. To believe in the possibility of technologies, not to believe that it is utopian.

[Claire Gordon]

Well, speaking of technology that is ambivalent, Travis Roberts wrote in with a question about Blue sky and curious to hear your thoughts on Blue Sky's burgeoning post election popularity. But I wanted to add onto that you've recently rejoined Twitter. You asked Ann Applebaum how she felt being on Twitter now that Elon Musk is using it in a more obvious political way.

[Ezra Klein]

Yeah.

[Claire Gordon]

How do you feel about Twitter now? Being on Twitter now?

[Ezra Klein]

I'm not sure. I'm not sure how I feel about Blue Sky. I'm not sure how I feel about Twitter. We are recording this some weeks before it's going to come out. So it is possible I will feel differently about both of them by the time it comes out. I have very negative feelings about the way Elon Musk is using and controlling the platform that he controls. That does not mean, I think that liberals abandoning it en masse will destroy it to a large extent. I think Elon Musk destroyed it sufficiently that I feel better being on it. I think it wields a lot less power than it once did. I think it is much less a generator of at least left wing groupthink. It might be more of a generator of right wing groupthink under him because he has such a megaphone on it and is using it in such purposeful ways. But that is sort of less true among the liberals.

[Claire Gordon]

The Woke mind virus.

[Ezra Klein]

That's a good question, I think, as I said in the other ama, I do not think that happened on Twitter. I think that happened in society over the last couple of years, so to speak. And I think that he would say it hasn't happened right, that the woke mind virus is out there spreading and that that's why you need Donald Trump on the wall to stop it. Blue Sky, I think, has a possible problem of it has a selection problem. It's pulling liberals who are upset about the state of Twitter into one place. And so I'm a little more worried about it being a generator of group think and in group policing and dynamics that I think make it harder to think independently. I'm not sure I should be on any of them. I'm not sure it's good for the way I think. I'm not sure it's good for the books I want to read. I'm not sure it doesn't have a tendency to pull me into stupid controversies, not even my own, just whatever is obsessing the platforms at the moment. And on the other hand, it feels like a moment of factional conversation among people on the left, which has been interesting to me. I'm certainly trying to make some arguments around abundance and where the Democratic Party should go and what has gone wrong in blue state governance that do not all feel like podcasts and columns. So some of it is coming out in those places. But I try to make sure I am using these things and not being used by them. And pretty quickly I tend to feel I'm being used by them right as they colonize my mind more and more. And so if that happens in the next few weeks, you probably won't see me there anymore and that I'm making no claims about personal virtue. I don't clink my glass when I leave and make an announcement. I'm there when it feels like it's a useful thing for what I'm trying to do. And I try to leave when it feels like it harms what I'm trying to do. And I'm right now in the bubble between those conditions and I'm not 100% sure which side I'm going to fall on.

[Claire Gordon]

Is there a sign that any of us outside who care about your mental wellbeing should know to stage an intervention.

[Ezra Klein]

If you see me getting on fights in like real fights on X or blue sky you should pull me out.

[Claire Gordon]

Or being in a bad mood because something happened.

[Ezra Klein]

Yeah, that kind of thing. Yeah. That's when I tend to leave. Right. If one of these platforms is harming your day to day quality of life so you can micropost at other digital avatars, I mean, then you're making a mistake. I have made that mistake many times. I did an interview for this Wall Street Journal piece with some podcasters after the election and I said a line there that I think I might have said here in the past, but that the thing that I always notice is that Twitter makes me dislike people I like and podcasts make me like people I dislike. And it's still kind of true. And I'm not sure I want to be in a place where I feel like it makes my view of other people less sympathetic and makes them more simplistic to me because the constraints of the place make everybody, including me, more simplified.

[Claire Gordon]

Well, on podcasts, making you like people you dislike. I wanted to ask this question from David Lieberman because I know that you have thoughts about this. He writes, I find your hosting of insiders in the MAGA Trump world extremely enlightening. I would be much less informed without it. At the same time, your treatment of these insiders as representatives of just one more segment of opinion, while no doubt an admirable model of open mindedness, casts the current political scene as normal in a way that it isn't. Normalizing maga, normalizing Trump by having certain people on the show. Do you have any thoughts on that? And that charge?

[Ezra Klein]

I don't know what counts or doesn't count as normal. On the one hand, do I think Donald Trump is normal or even a very stable genius? I don't. On the other hand, he has been elected or almost elected president three times now. So who's more normal? Your glasses wearing Brooklyn podcast host that you're listening to.

[Claire Gordon]

I do wear glasses on YouTube and.

[Ezra Klein]

A lot of days. But for my stereotyping of myself, I do. Or Donald Trump. I think the effort to treat him as continuously abnormal is a way of trying to not see other people, including him. That doesn't mean you don't oppose things he does or that his world of people do. And I think that, you know, my show, the Ann Applebaum and shows that will be still to come will be pretty. There are lines that feel very clear to me. Right. Particularly weaponizing the government. And I want to be very alert to that. But I want to be pretty clear. Don't expect this show to be a resistance show. I don't do this and have these interviews because I'm open minded. I am a reporter. I am curious. I am trying to understand things so I can make up my own mind.

[Claire Gordon]

I think that's, I think that's the definition of open minded.

[Ezra Klein]

I don't actually. I'm not trying to be open minded about the Trump administration. I'm trying to understand it, not because I'm not sure where I'll fall on certain things. In some cases, the things I most need to understand and develop a more textured picture of are the things I know I hate the most. But feeling in deep opposition to something is not a license to, not certainly in my line of work, to try to understand it. And I've been thinking a lot as we think about programming the show next year, about how to balance this. I think there are going to be things inside the Trump administration that are directly on the authoritarian pathway, that are him actually trying to do what gets called academically an authoritarian breakthrough. And there are going to be other things, maybe the Department of Governmental Efficiency or things that happen in Marco Rubio's Secretary of State, tenure or tariffs that are not like that and that need to be simply reported on as normal politics. And so this is another dimension that I think the effort to make normal a binary things are or are not normal makes hard. It's an administration, it's going to govern the country for the next four years, and parts of it are just going to be politics and policy, and parts of it might be something else entirely, an effort to change or corrupt the system itself. And, you know, I intend to try to take everything at its level. And the fact that one thing is happening doesn't mean you have to cover the other thing in either direction. I think this is going to be really hard to balance. I did less of this in the first Trump administration, to be honest, and I think liberals in general treated more of the first Trump administration as illegitimate. He didn't want the popular vote. There was this whole Russia investigation. It was all crazy. His administration was full of normal Republicans leaking about what a maniac he was. It was much easier even for the people reporting on it to sort of treat him as aberrant because in some ways his own administration treated him as aberrant. And it seemed possible this was just a one time fluke in American politics. You know, the butterfly flapped its wings and we got this and that's not what it is anymore. It wasn't, in a way, what it was then. And my first job on this show is to be a good reporter. I understand the show is an act of continuous reporting and I'm not being a good reporter and not doing a good job if I'm not actively reporting on this administration. So we'll see what shape that takes. Many of them don't want to talk to me, but it is not going to be a closed door policy because, because Trump goes over some line in one area and then, you know, there's no more talking about the tariffs or something. It's not the way I'm going to do my job.

[Claire Gordon]

Last question on Politics from Matthew Davidoff. I've heard you argue very convincingly against the filibuster. Now we're set to have a Trump controlled or Trump friendly majority in all three branches. Has your opinion changed at all?

[Ezra Klein]

It hasn't changed. Obviously my ideal world is not that the filibuster goes away at the exact moment the people who I think have the worst views on society are in power. I wish Democrats had gotten rid of the filibuster and maybe if they had, they, I mean, they had such a thin majority they probably couldn't have done much with it because Joe Manchin would have stopped what they were going to do anyway. But there have been different moments over the past decade when I think Democrats could have delivered a lot better if they didn't have the filibuster to worry about. They could have built the Inflation Reduction act quite differently because they would have been using the weird rules of budget reconciliation. Now, do I want Republicans to unwind the filibuster and pass anything they want? No, in the sense that I don't want things I think are bad to happen ever. Will I declare it somehow unfair or illegitimate if they do that? I won't. I have been saying for years we should get rid of the filibuster. And interestingly, I do think getting rid of the filibuster will present them with some really difficult problems. One thing I don't like about the filibuster, and I've made this point many times, is that the way I think democracy is supposed to work is people elect their representatives, their representatives deliver more or less what they promised and people then decide if they like what got delivered. And the filibuster is often a way that political movements avoid accountability for what they are trying to do. And it's a very useful tool for someone like Mitch McConnell to hide behind the filibuster so that his more MAGA drenched or more conservative colleagues can't pass things that he thinks will be unpopular. Oh, we tried, but the filibuster can't pass a national abortion ban. I don't want a national abortion ban, but I think it's gonna be a real difficult situation for Majority Leader Thune if there's no filibuster. And you see Republicans wanting to legislate on reproductive rights. And to the extent the public sees that, that gives them information about what Republicans are about and what they really want to do. And I think this is true for sort of every area you might think about in American politics. I do think the public does respond to one degree or another to the results of governance, particularly. There's a lot of governance happening. So my point is not that it would be great for Republicans to get the filibuster because it's better for things to be worse because that can create more electoral backlash. But I don't think getting rid of the filibuster would be an unalloyed good for Republicans or for Democrats, because all of a sudden they're playing with live ammunition, the things they promise when they have a trifecta they don't really have a great excuse for not doing. And so then there's a question. Are you promising things people actually want? That would be an interesting thing to see how they handle.

[Google Gemini Ad]

This podcast is supported by Google Gemini.

[Amazon Music Ad]

Google Gemini is an AI assistant you can talk to anytime you need help brainstorming, prepping for something important like an interview or exam, or just learning something new. The best part is you already know how to use it. Just open the app, start talking and Gemini will do the rest. And by the way, this script was actually read by Gemini. You can download the Gemini app for free on iOS or Android. Must be 18 to use Gemini Live.

[Goldman Sachs Ad]

Do you like podcasts, music and audiobooks? Because when you subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited, you get all three in one app. Imagine listening to your favorite podcasts and music on the go to work, school, the gym, or better yet, vacation. Now imagine being on vacation with your favorite audiobook from Audible and then listening to a new one every month from a huge selection of popular titles. That sounds like a pretty good vacation, right? Audible is now included in Amazon Music Unlimited. Download the Amazon Music app now to start listening. Terms apply.

[BetterHelp Ad]

This podcast is supported by Goldman Sachs Investing in Sports, a four part series from Exchanges. The Goldman Sachs podcast informed perspectives on the ever evolving business of sports and the expanding investment ecosystem, with leaders at the forefront of the industry for the sharpest analysis on franchise ownership, media rights, the growing Women's sports market and more investing in sports from Goldman Sachs exchanges. Listen now.

[Claire Gordon]

Moving on from politics. No more politics. This question from Matt Holmes. That was great. What are the things you enjoy about being a father? The context is he's 33. He's never had the desire to have kids. He says that he's listened to three of our episodes on the topic of children, and he heard the things that you said about the way children are wonderful. Your son is the nicest person to you. All this touching stuff, but still can't see how the pros outweigh the cons for his life. But it seems like he really just actually just wants to be persuaded. He says, I want to be wrong. Please help.

[Ezra Klein]

Ooh. This is not the position I want to be in. In some ways, this is making me feel like J.D. vance, because I do think there's something wrong with this discourse where the question of whether or not to have kids is so similar to the question of whether or not to take a vacation to Costa Rica or the question of whether or not to go wine tasting this weekend. Like, do the pros outweigh the cons? From my personal life, when I do understand a lot of what is true about having kids, as it is amazing that my children get to experience life not because it makes my life better in every respect, though I can talk about the ways it does, but because their lives are precious things. And my parents gave up a lot to have me here. And my life has been a precious thing to me and, you know, on and on and on backwards, down the line. So even if I felt that having kids was less rewarding than it is for me, I don't love the discourse around this. There are people who can't have kids. There are people who wanted to have kids and weren't able to. Right. My point is not that they're never conditioned. There are people who have genetic conditions they don't want to pass on to kids. People don't have or were not able to have had children. Right. This is not what I'm talking about here. But I do find the kind of weighing the ledger thing a little. I find it to be distinctive to our era, and I'm not sure. I think it is an ethos that speaks super well of our era, because I do think human life is really precious and amazing.

[Claire Gordon]

Did you always want kids?

[Ezra Klein]

I used to have this joke like, do I want kids? Definitely. When do I want them? Never. So not in the sense that I thought parenting was gonna be super fun. I actually Thought I would be very bored by parenting, and I sometimes am very bored by parenting. But I always felt having kids was important.

[Claire Gordon]

Well, I get the framework of just. If you've never had that kind of conviction or it's always been muddled, it's more than, oh, crap, I'm at the age where I need to make a decision. Can someone just nudge me?

[Ezra Klein]

Yeah, I understand that that's not what he's asking, but because I hear this question so often, I mean, it's a very old AMA question for us. I just. I sort of wanna note that. I just think it's a kind of extra element of our time. Right. I mean, because again, like, for most of human industry, we didn't have birth control in any significant way. Right. It's just. It's so new to think about the choice this way. And I don't only want to say that the important thing in the choice is your experience as a parent, because such an important thing is your child's experience as a human being. And that's also an amazing thing about being a parent, is getting to see that. I've been playing Angry Birds with my older son lately, and when we play it, I just, like. I don't think anybody enjoys anything as much as he enjoys playing Angry Birds with me. He just cackles. And it's really beautiful. It's really fun. Right. Going back to the Gia Tolentino episode, there's real pleasure in it. You know, kids are connection. Watching consciousness unfold is an extraordinary thing. My younger child is three, and, you know, his language is just coming online in a very different way now. And he's talking about the past and he's imagining things. And it is an interesting, amazing thing to watch language happen. It's now so hard for me to imagine not having my kids that I almost feel like it's hard for me to make the arguments. It is really meaningful to be involved in other people's lives to that degree and then to see their life become something that is not yours and that you support, but you do not control and to recognize, like, they are growing in ways that you can't imagine. They will have some experience that has nothing to do, not nothing to do, but is not yours. And that's part of it. Right. You're just part of this human chain. And putting aside this question of are my Saturdays better? In some ways they are, and in some ways they're worse and they're not going to be the way they are forever. Right. I have a three and a five year old, right. One day I'll have a 15 year old and an 18 year old and according to the testimony of every other older parent I know I will wish they wanted to sit around playing Angry Birds and having me take them to the playground. All and I guess I would just keep on saying that what makes parenting beautiful is not that it is fun. Sometimes it's fun, a lot of times it's not. I just had a weekend where I didn't feel that good. I really did not want to do a lot of parenting. But I don't know, think about someone you love and how happy you are for the experiences they have. Right. The sympathetic joy you have for them. I think about the way like how excited my mom is for the experiences I have. A lot of the joy of parenting is not the joy of parenting. It's the joy of your child's existence. There's a really beautiful quote in the book Gilead about this by Marilynne Robinson, which is, I think my favorite book. And the book is this letter from an older man to his young son. And he says, you see how it is godlike to love the being of someone. Your existence is a delight to us. I hope you never have to long for a child as I did. But oh, what a splendid thing it has been that you came finally. And what a blessing to enjoy you now for almost seven years.

[Claire Gordon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ezra Klein]

It's not all about you. And that's, I guess maybe one of the really great joys of parenting. It makes you see that it's not all about you.

[Claire Gordon]

Final question before Rapid Fire round. It's been a long year. It's been a weird year. Many ups, many downs. What is something significant you've changed your.

[Ezra Klein]

Mind about this year that I've changed my mind about? Hmm. I mean, people have heard me working through the election results. I'm not sure that they've completely changed my mind, I guess.

[Claire Gordon]

Is Harris definitely winning?

[Ezra Klein]

I didn't say she would definitely win.

[Claire Gordon]

Money on winning, that she was the likely Victor in the 2024 election.

[Ezra Klein]

I never said this publicly for a good reason.

[Claire Gordon]

You admitted to it in our. Maybe you were in a vulnerable and tired moment in our post election.

[Ezra Klein]

Oh, did I?

[Claire Gordon]

And someone texted me how admirable it was.

[Ezra Klein]

Sure, I changed my mind from thinking at some point that Harris was gonna win to then seeing that she lost. But I wouldn't say I changed my mind. I would say that reality clicked the probabilities into focus.

[Claire Gordon]

A lot of change in someone's mind, I guess.

[Ezra Klein]

The thing I would say this may be even over a couple of years, but it's going to be a big part of my coming book. I think the thing I've changed my mind most on in politics in recent years is how destructive bad regulations can be and how seriously I take it. Now when I hear that regulations or rules are ill constructed, I think I used to have what in my view is a pretty standard liberal response. I was saying, of course some regulations can be bad, but look at these studies. We've made the error lock cleaner. We do a cost benefit analysis. There's always exceptions to the rule. But I sort of assume most of this stuff works and now I don't. I have followed up and really dug in on the details of how enough projects have worked or not worked in government. What happened with California high speed rail, what it takes to modernize digital government. That I am much more skeptical, not of regulation, but of a lot of existing regulations. My belief about how much stupidity and procedural crust can exist now in government and places for very long periods of time that people are just laboring under. And it's not gone to the point that creates a crisis, but it eventually could, right? Housing being a good example of this. I've really changed the way I approach that. I think that a lot of liberals and certainly a lot of the politics I came up in kind of felt like the right attacks government and so you have to defend it and you look for ways to defend it. And that's not where I am now. And I think I found myself more frustrated and then ultimately quite angry at the way the Democratic Party became just the defenders of institutions, not the reformers of them in a way that required not really admitting how badly they were working. And now we have Donald Trump, who wants to burn institutions down, who does not want to make government work. Well, he wants to corrupt it to his own purposes. You know, so we have thesis and antithesis and I'm interested in synthesis. And you know that the point of his politics is to create the state capacity, create the public capacity, that we can have great things and we can have enough of them. I mean, that's obviously a big part of the coming book which is on my mind.

[Claire Gordon]

Is Derek Thompson your co author? Is he as angry as you are about all of this? Or is he like, jeez, Ezra, calm down.

[Ezra Klein]

Derek is a probably more temperamentally gentle person than I am, but I don't think he feels differently about this. I think his chapters have a lot of righteous frustration in the way the book was Split up. I did more backwards looking pieces so I have more of the things about why this project didn't work. So I really immersed in some things where when I came out the other side I was like, oh my God. And I just maintain like a level of fury about the California high speed rail system that maybe other people feel is a little bit ridiculous. But to me it is a signal failure of liberalism that could not be built in a blue state when the federal government was giving them billions of dollars, when the state was putting in billions of dollars. And by the way, what they're actually doing is building a leg of it right now that nobody really wanted. This Merced to Bakersfield leg, they don't have the money to finish that leg. The people working on it have told me on the record that it doesn't make sense to build that really unless you can do the full San Francisco to LA line. That's the only way California high speed rail really makes sense. But they don't have money to build that at all. They have no sight line on that. Money is like they'll need like $85 billion or something. I mean, probably more over time. They have no idea how to get any of it. So they're just building in the hopes of building this thing that they don't have the money to finish and then don't have the money to expand into its final form will lead to some kind of political upheaval that leads to the money appearing. And I don't fault the people who are there in the high Speed Rail Authority. It's not up to them. But the entire thing is such a disaster and liberalism should be furious. Like this should not be allowed to happen and they should figure out how to make it not happen. But nobody has.

[Claire Gordon]

If this is built, how long would the trip be between San Francisco and la?

[Ezra Klein]

I'd have to go back and get the exact number, but short enough that I would take that well and happily over flying, which is really not as convenient between the two as you would think. And driving certainly sucks. I like taking the Amtrak. We.

[Claire Gordon]

I love trains.

[Ezra Klein]

Trains are a solved problem. You can go to other countries and board them. This is not futuristic technology. Go to Europe, you could go to Japan.

[Claire Gordon]

They work so much more legroom than a plane.

[Ezra Klein]

It's not even about the train. It is about the broad issue here that it's like, you hear about the Big Dig and how expensive that became the second Avenue subway. And it's like, well, I bet something went wrong in that project. No, it's just how they go now. By the way, it's not like it's so great in some other countries. UK is not proving able to build new high speed rail either. But I really have a different sense of how poorly government works and I do not have the conclusion on that my libertarian friends or my conservative friends have because I think we need government. Nobody's building this. That's not government. And by the way, it's not like California has employed all these engineers and mechanics. This is built by private companies, by contractors. It doesn't matter if the person is a contractor who's getting paid through government grants or they're employed by the government or it's a private developer who needs government permissions. If you don't make this stuff possible at the level of rules, nobody can do it. And so you can't just say get the government out of the way either because then you're not going to get things you need that are public goods. So yeah, I have really changed my mind on how suffocating government rules can be in the real world. And the fact that you can build homes in Houston and Austin and it's so hard in San Francisco and LA isn't an interesting fact about the world. It is infuriating to me.

[Claire Gordon]

I mean, does any part of you, are you excited or hopeful that there could be a bulldozing of regulations in a Trump second term that could have positive effects?

[Ezra Klein]

I'm not, because what I'm interested in is outcomes and I don't want to bulldoze regulations in order to make it possible to pump much more oil and pollute streams. Right. That's not my end goal. Regulations are a tool.

[Claire Gordon]

He loves clean air.

[Ezra Klein]

He does love clean air. The end goal. The end points matter. In some ways I do think that Republicans and Democrats have very similar pathologies on this, which is both become process obsessed and not outcome oriented. I think the biggest problem around liberal governance is that it is obsessed by process and it mistakes process for outcomes. It is not connected enough to what is actually happening once the money gets spent or the grant goes out or the contract is awarded. And among Republicans, too often they treat government as an abstraction and they are also not trying to achieve anything except the removal of regulations, except the shrinking of government, except the hampering of government agencies. So liberals often hobble government, conservatives try to weaken and starve it. Neither is connected to an outcome I want. The process I am interested in is one that says how do we make it easy and fast to site and build clean energy how in places where we have a housing crunch do we make it easy to build housing? Work backwards from the goal you want to achieve to the rules you need. You can't have a regulations good or regulations bad view. You have to ask are you getting the outcomes you want? And then work backwards.

[Claire Gordon]

I think that's a good place to end because that I think really captures where your mind has been most of the year.

[Google Gemini Ad]

This podcast is supported by Google Gemini.

[Amazon Music Ad]

Google Gemini is an AI assistant you can talk to any time you need help brainstorming, prepping for something important like an interview or exam, or just learning something new. The best part is you already know how to use it. Just open the app, start talking, and Gemini will do the rest. And by the way, this script was actually read by Gemini. You can download the Gemini app for free on iOS or Android. Must be 18 to use Gemini Live.

[Google Gemini Ad]

This podcast is supported by BetterHelp. This holiday season, do something for a special person in your life. You give yourself the gift of better mental health. BetterHelp online therapy connects you with a qualified therapist via phone, video or live chat. It's convenient and affordable and can be done from the comfort of your own home. Having someone to talk to is truly a gift, especially during the holidays. Visit betterhelp. That's betterhelp.com Ezra For 10% off your first month, I use New York Times.

[Ezra Klein]

Cooking at least three to four times a week.

[Claire Gordon]

I love sheet pan bibimbap. It said 35 minutes, it was 35 minutes. The cucumber salad with soy, ginger and garlic. Oh my God, that is just to die for. This turkey chili has over 17,000 five star ratings.

[Google Gemini Ad]

So easy, so delicious.

[Ezra Klein]

The instructions are so clear, so simple, and it just works. Hey, it's Eric Kim from New York Times Cooking.

[Amazon Music Ad]

Come cook with us.

[Claire Gordon]

Go to nytcooking.com rapid fire round. Should we say 30 seconds? From Clark Hill, who are your top three favorite X Men?

[Ezra Klein]

Ooh, when I was a kid, I loved Gambit. I don't think that would be my answer now, but I think I have to say it, given how much I loved Gambit. What a hard question to give me a 32nd round. Yeah, dark Phoenix era Jean Grey and Krakoa era White Queen.

[Claire Gordon]

I wish I knew enough to comment.

[Ezra Klein]

Regadji and Magneto. You gotta. I mean, Magneto's an extraordinary villain. Yeah, I gotta put Magneto above White Queen.

[Claire Gordon]

Well, when you ask people for three books they'd recommend to the audience, you never let them go over like this.

[Ezra Klein]

I always let Them go over from.

[Claire Gordon]

Dylan Smith, who noticed that we have a new intro song that we dropped with no public acknowledgement, and that is by the wonderfully talented Pat McCusker, the New York Times very own audio engineer and composer. The question is, why did you want to change the theme song? And what kind of moods and emotions? What did you want people to feel when they heard.

[Ezra Klein]

Let's hear 30 second questions. Good Lord. So I wanted to change old theme song because I didn't like it that much and it didn't feel to me at this point like me or like the show. And we had a bunch of composers around the times create.

[Claire Gordon]

Oh, you can go over for this.

[Ezra Klein]

Create songs built on a sort of mood board that we created. And we would. Me and Claire and Jeff and Isaac and Aman would do these listening sessions and listen to everything and talk about it. And Pat's was just. I loved it from the moment I heard it. And it has this sort of wonderful quality of having curiosity in it, of having a sense of calm, a sense of interest. There's a little bit of anxiety there. I feel our previous song had too much anxiety and sort of nothing else.

[Claire Gordon]

Oh, so you're being very hard on the old theme song. I have great affection for the old theme song. If I ever hear it, one bar of it for the rest of my life, it'll flood me with feelings.

[Ezra Klein]

And it just fits the kind of music I like. It's interesting. It's a little bit neoclassical. I then was talking to Pat about music and we just have huge overlap in musical tastes. We were both listening to a fair amount of chiaosmos. We are both listening to the Fotay album that came out this year, Windswept, which is really great. So it's not a shock that he created something I loved.

[Claire Gordon]

Thematically connected. A question from Jamie Racinelli. What was your favorite band when you were younger?

[Ezra Klein]

Michael Franti and Spearhead. A what? Michael Fronti and Spearhead. I loved the album Stay Human, which is just very hippie music, but when I was in late high school, loved that, saw them a lot. I would just go around listening to Stay Human, which is just like bouncy. I mean, it's all little slam poetry inflected. It was a different time I went to UC Santa Cruz, but I still love that album. And I used to play a lot of it for my older son when he was young. I would particularly play A Lot of Skin on the Drum, which is this more spoken word, slower track on it in the Heat. Of the sun I bring shade for everyone like the beat on the one I'm the skin on the drum. It is one of those things you loved when you were young that actually still love when now that I'm old or at least middle aged.

[Claire Gordon]

Paraphrasing a question from Nick O'Brien. Will there be a free and fair election in four years?

[Ezra Klein]

I hope so.

[Claire Gordon]

Sam Maxwell, you've got a stressful job. How do you unwind? And no saying, reading a book or working out. No high achiever answers.

[Ezra Klein]

Although reading is a big part of how I unwind. I listen to a lot of music and that's a big piece of it. And I have trouble with it right now, to be honest. Unwinding, resting, kind of like letting the nervous system down, regulate, is a thing that as this year has gone on, has become a much more significant struggle. There's not been a new show in a few weeks. I've been taking some time off and I would like to be better at it next year. I sort of at a certain point this year decided that the work was more important than the well being and we just went for it. Which has been a lot on the whole team too, not just me. And I would like to be in better balance than I've been but, you know, friends. I have friends. I go for walks or. It's all the normal stuff, but there's no magic. If you're living a really imbalanced life, you're going to feel really imbalanced. And you know, I lived in a really imbalanced way this year.

[Claire Gordon]

Yeah. Extended periods of lack of balance really take a minute to unwind.

[Ezra Klein]

Yeah. And. And we were going into administration. That's not gonna be calm. There's something about being at the end of what you thought was maybe a sprint and seeing how much it's gonna be a marathon. I felt this way in 2016 too. And yeah, it will take some real protection of the nervous system. Something that has been helpful recently has been every morning I keep my to do list for the day and all the things that come into my head on a little piece of paper. I have one of these little pocket sized notepads and a pen that is on me all the time. And I now try to have at the top of it every single day things that nourish me. You know, it's like eating good food or movement or meditation. Right. It's like six of them usually. So that before I see all the things I have to do, I'm reminded of things I could do that actually feel good on my system as opposed to cause me more harm?

[Claire Gordon]

Wait, so it's just like reading them makes you feel good or a reminder to do them?

[Ezra Klein]

They're a reminder to do them. So every time I look back at this piece of paper where I keep all the things that come into my head to do, every person to email, every house task, I have to write the intro, I have to look at the edit. There is before that. These are like the pillars of me feeling better.

[Claire Gordon]

So it's not like Gretchen Whitmer when she had on that piece of paper before she gives a speech to remind her to like be a boss bitch. Some like something about Aunt Flow. Some like something.

[Ezra Klein]

Yeah.

[Claire Gordon]

Towering period thing. It's not that.

[Ezra Klein]

No, it's. I think there's a tendency, at least for my mind to only see all the things you need to do and to almost give no attention to the things that balance that out. And the list of things I certainly could do is always longer than what I can get done. And I am really trying to push myself in the other direction. So when I see it, it's like, oh, maybe I don't need to do anything here. Maybe I should have 20 minutes. I should take a walk. I don't take enough vacations for rest to be just a thing that happens on vacation. It has to happen more times a day. And there's like bluntly, like, I don't want to keep feeling the way I felt at the end of this year. So I am trying to change the way I look at the day to day.

[Claire Gordon]

I remember you saying a very similar thing to me around the end of last year.

[Ezra Klein]

Yeah, it's a consistent problem. I do have a tendency to burn myself out by the end of the year. Yeah, I would say that since October 7th a year ago, the show has been a lot harder. I'm sorry we are not the ones suffering the most from that. I don't mean to. There's no stolen valor. It has just been a, you know, it has been a very intense period of news. I mean, I mean, look, you're in this too. You started right around then. But bouncing between this is my normal. Yeah, bouncing between that and the election and everything else going on in the world, you know, it requires more than having like a hobby.

[Claire Gordon]

Although I could use a hobby.

[Ezra Klein]

You have lots of hobbies.

[Claire Gordon]

Do I?

[Ezra Klein]

You just staged a play.

[Claire Gordon]

Well, I wrote a play that my husband staged without telling me.

[Ezra Klein]

Yeah, you're like an interesting person with a well rounded set of views. You Belong to clubs. Everybody knows you have a fun and interesting life.

[Claire Gordon]

I'm glad I'm giving off that impression. That's important for my self esteem. Last question of the year from Elizabeth Taylor.

[Ezra Klein]

The.

[Claire Gordon]

The Elizabeth Taylor.

[Ezra Klein]

I mean, I guess we don't know.

[Claire Gordon]

She's not came back from the dead. The ghost of Elizabeth Taylor. All right.

[Ezra Klein]

She died.

[Claire Gordon]

The ghost of the most beautiful person who's ever lived came back to say. The 2020s have been whack so far.

[Ezra Klein]

That does sound like her vibe.

[Claire Gordon]

Check for 2025. What do you think the vibes are going to be? What's your feeling?

[Ezra Klein]

Ooh, I don't really want to end on what I think about this. Yeah, this is what we're doing. You don't have another one.

[Claire Gordon]

Probably cool things are going to happen with AI maybe.

[Ezra Klein]

I mean, we're in a. You know, people. Tyler Cowen and others made the point that there had been a big vibe shift around Trump, and we're in the Trump vibe era right now. That, I don't think is what it was like in 2017. In 2017, the vibe was resistance, not Trump. I think now we are going to experience truly the Trump vibe. It is not just a political phenomenon, but a cultural phenomenon. It has much more media power than it did then. So we're about to really feel what it is like to be in Trump's America. For some people, that'll be really thrilling. For some people, it will not be. But I think that that is the way the vibe has shifted in 2025, which is very different than the first time he won. He has real agenda setting capacity that he didn't before. And Elon Musk is on the team and many, many more people in media and in technology. And so he is gonna have much more capacity to shape sentiment at a time when I think the opposition to him is much less coherent and empowered. So take this for what you will, but. And I think this may not in the end be good for him or his movement, but 2025 is gonna be the year of the Trump vibe.

[Claire Gordon]

I don't think a lot of our listeners will love ending on that answer. So a final question.

[Ezra Klein]

Our actual went from my burnout to.

[Claire Gordon]

Final question of 2024 from Holly Hamilton, who noticed in the new album art that we also dropped this year with no public acknowledgement Tattoo popping out from your sleeve. What does your tattoo mean?

[Ezra Klein]

I do want to note that that was a photo choice made by our editors, not by me. That tattoo is of redwoods. I love redwoods. They're my favorite tree. I'm a Californian. There are particular parts of California, particularly in the Sierra Nevadas, that are really important to me and sort of sit in my mind as the most beautiful places in the world, but also the places I feel best in the world myself. And it is a tattoo of a scene built around redwoods.

[Claire Gordon]

So much better trees. So much better.

[Ezra Klein]

And I will say that the theme music by Pat McGusker is called Magic Tree Creatures. Magic Tree Creatures and was inspired by the little forest spirits in Miyazaki movies. So one of the reasons I liked that music so much when I heard it was it does have a bit of a feeling of being in the forest. And here in the concrete jungle of New York, there is nothing I miss like a redwood forest.

[Claire Gordon]

Way better vibe for 2025 trees tree vibe.

[Ezra Klein]

Thank you, Claire. Thank you to everybody who's worked on the show so hard this year. They've done amazing, amazing work. And thank you to everybody in the audience who's been with us on the show this year, which has not always been the easiest show to listen to. And you've all been wonderful.

[Claire Gordon]

Voice so much.

[Ezra Klein]

Yeah, it's a lot of time to spend with me. Even I find it to be a lot of time to spend with me. So I can't imagine what it's like for everybody else. But thank you. And yeah, hopefully the 2025 vibes will be. I don't know how to end that.

[Claire Gordon]

Wind rustling leaves, roots growing in the ground.

[Ezra Klein]

And hopefully the 2025 vibes will feel more. The show's production team includes Roland Hu, Eliah Sisquith, Kristin lin and Jack McCordick. Fact checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Isaac Jones with Aman Sahota and Afim Shapiro. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. We have original Music by Pat McCusker. Audience Strategy by Christina Samuluski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.

[Google Gemini Ad]

This podcast is supported by Made in Cookware.

[Made In Cookware Ad]

As a chef and a restaurant owner, I'm as meticulous about my cookware as I am about my ingredients. That's why I love Made in Cookware. Each pan they make isn't just designed to perform, it's crafted to last. As a mom, I love that I can trust Made In. It's made from the world's finest materials so I can feel good about what I'm feeding my family. I'm chef Brook Williamson and I use Made In.

[Google Gemini Ad]

For full details, visit madeincookware.com. that's M A D e I n cookware.

[Ezra Klein]

Com.