The Ezra Klein Show Folgen

For most of us, seeing an advertisement pop up while we’re scrolling on Instagram or reading an article or watching a video is the most banal experience possible. But in the background of those experiences is a $500 billion marketplace where our attention is being bought, packaged and sold at split-second speeds virtually every minute of every day. Online advertising is the economic engine of the internet, and that engine is fueled by our attention.Tim Hwang is the former global public policy lead for A.I. and machine learning at Google and the author of the book “Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet.” Hwang’s central argument is that everything about the internet — from the emphasis data collection to the use of the “like” button to the fact that services like Google Search and Facebook are free — flows from its core business model. But that business model is also in crisis. The internet is degrading the very resource — our collective attention — on which its financial survival depends. The resulting “subprime attention crisis” threatens upend the internet as we know it.So this conversation is about the economic logic that undergirds our entire experience of the internet, and how that logic is constantly warping, manipulating and shaping the most important resource we have — our attention. But it’s also about whether a very different kind of internet — build on a very different economic logic — is possible.Mentioned:“Does Quora Really Have All the Answers?” by Gary RivlinGoogle report: “5 Factors of Viewability”“Almost Impossible”Book Recommendations:Here Comes Everybody by Clay ShirkyThe Profiteers by Sally DentonJim Ravel’s Theatrical PickpocketingThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.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.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski. 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.

Reading Rick Rubin’s production discography is like taking a tour through the commanding heights of American music over the past few decades. Jay-Z. Run-DMC. Beastie Boys. Slayer. The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Johnny Cash. Kanye West. Neil Diamond. Brandi Carlile. Eminem. Adele. And it’s not just his production credits: Rubin co-founded Def Jam Recordings and was a co-chairman of Columbia Records. What’s allowed him to work with so many different kinds of artists, across such a stunning range of genres, so successfully?In his new book, “The Creative Act: A Way of Being,” Rubin turns his philosophy of creativity into a manual for living. It is not, to be honest, the book I was expecting. It is less about music than mind states: awareness, openness, discernment, attunement to nature, nonjudgmental listening, trust in your own taste. It is at once mystical and practical, alive to the tensions of creation but intent on holding them gently. I found it unexpectedly moving.We discuss how Rubin listens to new music, the importance of staying open to the natural world, the difficulty of appreciating art that’s different from what you already like, the rituals that artists like Carlos Santana have when recording, why minimalist composers like Steve Reich are just as “extreme” as heavy metal bands, how Rubin helped Johnny Cash strip down his sound and revive his career, what it takes to level up your taste, the difficulty and gifts of awareness, the relationship between speed and art, how streaming culture is changing our taste, the kind of music that makes Rubin stop and pay attention and oh so much more. This one’s a delight.Mentioned:The Tao Te-Ching by Lao Tzu, translated by Stephen MitchellAmerican Recordings by Johnny Cash"Pulses" by Steve Reich and Erik HallMusic for Wobbling. Music Versus Gravity. by F.S. Blumm and Nils FrahmAlbum Recommendations:Forever Changes by LoveThe Beatles by The BeatlesRamones by RamonesThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.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.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Jon Caramanica, Dan Charnas, Jack Hamilton, Felix Grimm, Carole Sabouraud and Kristina Samulewski. 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.

In my columns and on this show over the past few years, I’ve argued that to achieve the goals liberals hold most dear, we need a liberalism that builds. A liberalism that builds everything from multifamily housing and mass transit systems to transmission lines and solar farms. And we need a liberalism that can build it all quickly, cheaply and effectively. But even in the places where liberals have governing power, they are often failing to do exactly that. Why?Nicholas Bagley is a law professor at the University of Michigan, the former chief legal counsel to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the author of a fascinating paper called “The Procedure Fetish.” In it, Bagley argues that liberals — liberal lawyers in particular — have helped hobble the very government they now need to act swiftly and decisively. It’s easy to see how conservatives have strategically used a thicket of procedures and paperwork to slow down government, but what Bagley shows is that liberals too have been complicit in that project — to the detriment of many of the very causes they hope to advance.So this is a conversation about what I’ve come to think of as the divided soul of American liberalism — one that simultaneously demands big government action while also constantly acting to restrain it. We also discuss the importance of the administrative state, what liberals often fail to understand about government legitimacy, how corporate interests end up “capturing” government agencies, why Bagley thinks that American politics broadly and the Democratic Party in particular have a “lawyer problem,” how government paralysis helps fuel the rise of right-wing populists like Donald Trump, what it will take to restore Americans’ trust in government, the problems with the public interest legal movement, how progressives are getting in the way of their own decarbonization agenda and more.Mentioned:“The Procedure Fetish” by Nicholas BagleyPresidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy by William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe"There Has to Be a Better Way to Run the Government" by Ezra KleinBook Recommendations:Public Citizens by Paul SabinThe Fifth Risk by Michael LewisBabel by R.F. KuangThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.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.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski. 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.