The Ezra Klein Show Folgen

Historically speaking, we live in an age of extraordinary abundance. We have long since passed the income thresholds when past economists believed our needs would be more than met and we’d be working 15-hour weeks, puzzling over how to spend our free time. And yet, few of us feel able to exult in leisure, and even many of today’s rich toil as if the truest reward for work is more work. Our culture of work would be profoundly puzzling to those who came before us.James Suzman is an anthropologist who has spent the last 30 years living with and studying the Ju/’hoansi people of southern Africa, one of the world’s enduring hunter-gatherer societies. And that project has given him a unique lens on our modern obsession with work.As Suzman documents in his new book, “Work: A Deep History From the Stone Age to the Age of Robots,” hunter-gatherer societies like the Ju/’hoansi spent only about 15 hours a week meeting their material needs despite being deeply impoverished by modern standards. But as we’ve gotten richer and invented more technology, we’ve developed a machine for generating new needs, new desires, new forms of status competition.So this is a conversation about the past, present and future of humanity’s relationship to work and to want. We discuss what economists get wrong about scarcity, the lessons hunter-gatherer societies can teach us about desire, how the advent of farming radically altered people’s conceptions of work and time, whether there’s such a thing as human nature, the dangers of social and economic inequality, the role of advertising in shaping human desires, whether we should have a wealth tax and universal basic income, and much more.Mentioned: “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” by John Maynard Keynes“‘Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren’ 75 Years after: A Global Perspective” by Fabrizio Zilibotti“Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek” by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck LuceBook recommendations:  King Leopold's Ghost by Adam HochschildEntangled Life by Merlin SheldrakeOther Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith 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.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 failed. Donald Trump is not the president. But at the state level, the Republican war on elections is posting startling wins. They are trying to do what Trump failed to do: neuter elections as a check on Republican power.A new report by three voting rights groups found that 24 laws have been passed in 14 states this year that will allow state legislatures to “politicize, criminalize and interfere in election administration.” And a May analysis from the Brennan Center found that Republican-controlled legislatures in 14 states have passed 22 laws that made voting harder, with dozens of others currently moving through the legislative process.This is an example of what I’ve sometimes referred to as the “doom loop of democracy”: highly gerrymandered Republican state legislatures in key swing states passing legislation that gives them more power to discourage Democratic-leaning groups from voting, throw out legitimate votes and overturn election results — all of it backed up by Republican-dominated courts.Ari Berman is a senior reporter at Mother Jones and the author of “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.” He’s done excellent coverage of these state bills. So I wanted to bring him on, in part, to understand these bills on a more detailed level: What do they actually do? What kind of impact will they have?But we also discuss the Republican Party’s minoritarian path to power, potential nightmare 2024 election scenarios, how voting rights became a culture war issue, whether the United States is becoming a “competitive authoritarianism” political system, why the biggest scandal in American democracy is what’s legal and even expected, what HR1 — even if it had passed — would and wouldn’t have fixed and much more.Mentioned in this episode: “What Georgia’s Voting Law Really Does” by Nick Corasaniti and Reid J. Epstein“The Insurrection Was Put Down. The GOP Plan for Minority Rule Marches On.” by Ari Berman “Call it authoritarianism” by Zack Beauchamp“Statement of Concern: The Threats to American Democracy and the Need for National Voting and Election Administration Standards” by multiple“Advantage, GOP” by By Laura Bronner and Nathaniel Rakich“2020 Census: What the Reapportionment Numbers Mean” by Dave WassermanRecommendations: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le CarréRace and Reunion by David BlightDirty Work by Eyal PressYou 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.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sarah Schulman’s work — as a nonfiction writer, novelist, activist, playwright and filmmaker — confronts the very thing most people try to avoid: conflict. Schulman, far from running from it, believes we need more of it.This was true in Schulman’s 2016 book, “Conflict Is Not Abuse,” which argues that people often mislabel conflict as abuse without recognizing the power that they have to potentially abuse others. Viewing oneself as a victim can be one way to earn compassion. But powerful groups often use their perceived victimhood as an excuse to harm those who are more vulnerable. And more individually, people often don’t see when they have power, and they often fear or dodge the work of repair. It’s a challenging and prescient book, with a deep faith in the healing power of not just communication, but of collision.Schulman’s latest book, “Let the Record Show,” is a history of ACT UP New York, the direct-action group that reshaped AIDS activism in the late ’80s and early ’90s. It’s a book about necessary conflicts: between the AIDS community and the U.S. government, and between queer people and a widely homophobic society. But it’s also about conflict among people who generally agree with one another and are working toward a common goal. Schulman calls the book “a political history,” but it’s also a work of political theory: a proposal for how social movements can become more effective by embracing dissensus rather than striving for consensus.We began this conversation discussing ACT UP, conflict and Schulman’s theory of political change. But we also ended up discussing Israel and Palestine, a topic she has written widely about. And Schulman shares her thoughts on contemporary L.G.B.T.Q. politics and what she thinks has been lost as queer culture has become more mainstream.Mentioned in this episode: Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 by Sarah Schulman Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair by Sarah SchulmanRecommendations: Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University by Matt BrimVanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All by Martha S. JonesMemorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha TretheweyYou 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.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.