The Ezra Klein Show

Political analysts used to say that the Democratic Party was riding a demographic wave that would lead to an era of dominance. But that “coalition of the ascendant” never quite jelled. The party did benefit from a rise in nonwhite voters and college-educated professionals, but it has also shed voters without a college degree. All this has made the Democrats’ political math a lot more precarious. A...

If you’re a Democrat, how worried should you be right now? It’s strangely hard to answer that question. On the one hand, polls suggest Democrats should be very worried. President Biden looks weaker than he did as a candidate in 2020, and in matchups with Donald Trump, the election looks like a coin flip. On the other hand, Democrats staved off an expected red wave in the 2022 midterm elections. Bi...

It’s been just over 100 days since Hamas’s attack on Israel, and the costs of the war are staggering. In polling from late fall, 64 percent of Gazans reported that a family member had been killed or injured. Nearly two million Gazans — almost the entire population — have been displaced from their homes, and analysis of satellite imagery reveals that about half the buildings in the Gaza Strip have...

The fact that Donald Trump is the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination in 2024 has created a chasm in our politics. In the past, Democrats and Republicans at least understood why members of the other party liked their chosen candidates. Most conservatives weren’t confused why liberals liked Barack Obama, and vice versa for George W. Bush. But for a lot of Democrats, it feels impossible to imagin...

There’s this incredible dissonance at the center of our politics right now. On the one hand, all the polling suggests that Donald Trump is about to win Iowa Republican caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. He seems overwhelmingly likely to be his party’s nominee, and so possibly our next president. On the other hand, he could be constitutionally disqualified from taking office. Colorado and Main...

Being on the internet just doesn’t feel as fun anymore. As more of our digital life is driven by algorithms, it’s become a lot easier to find movies or TV shows or music that fits our preferences pretty well. But it feels harder to find things that are strange and surprising — the kinds of culture that help you, as an individual, develop your own sense of taste. This can be a fuzzy thing to talk a...

I’m convinced that attention is the most important human faculty. Your life, after all, is just the sum total of the things you’ve paid attention to. And we lament our attention issues all the time: how distracted we are, how drained we feel, how hard it is to stay focused or present. And yet, while there’s no shortage of advice on how to improve our sleep hygiene, or spending, or physical fitness...

“We rarely think about chips, yet they’ve created the modern world,” writes the historian Chris Miller. He’s not exaggerating. Semiconductors power everything from our phones and computers to cars, planes, advanced military equipment, and A.I. systems. Chips are the foundation of modern economic prosperity, military strength and geopolitical power. This conversation with Chris Miller, author of “...

The holidays are one of the most social times of the year, filled with parties and family get-togethers. Many of us see friends and loved ones who we barely — or never — saw all year. Maybe we resolve to stay in better touch in the new year. But then somehow, once again, life gets in the way.  This is not an accident. More and more people are living lives that feel lonelier and more socially isola...

It’s become something of a tradition on “The Ezra Klein Show” to end the year with an “Ask Me Anything” episode. So as 2023 comes to a close, I sat down with our new senior editor, Claire Gordon, to answer listeners’ questions about everything from the Israel-Hamas war to my thoughts on parenting. We discuss whether the war in Gaza has affected my relationships with family members and friends; wha...

India is known as a country of paradoxes, and a new one has recently emerged. At the same time that the country is poised to become a major global player — with a booming economy and a population that recently surpassed China’s — its democracy is showing signs of decay. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his administration have silenced critics and independent institutions. India’s social media disc...

Before Oct. 7, Israel appeared to many to be sliding into a “one-state reality,” where it had functional control over Gaza and the West Bank, but the Palestinians who lived there were denied full rights. In 2021, a group of hundreds of former senior defense and diplomatic officials in Israel published a report warning that this was a catastrophe — for Israel’s security, its democratic values, its...

Here are two thoughts I believe need to be held at once: Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7 was heinous, murderous and unforgivable, and that makes it more, not less, important to try to understand what Hamas is, how it sees itself and how it presents itself to Palestinians. Tareq Baconi is the author of “ Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance ,” one of the best books on Hamas...

Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of the release of ChatGPT. A lot has happened since. OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, recently dominated headlines again after the nonprofit board of directors fired C.E.O. Sam Altman, only for him to return several days later. But that drama isn’t actually the most important thing going on in the A.I. world, which hasn’t slowed down over the past year, even...

Every day, we consume a mind-boggling amount of information. We scan online news articles, sift through text messages and emails, scroll through our social-media feeds — and that’s usually before we even get out of bed in the morning. In 2009, a team of researchers found that the average American consumed about 34 gigabytes of information a day. Undoubtedly, that number would be even higher today....

It is too early to talk about a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. With the trauma of Oct. 7 still fresh for the Israeli public and with the ongoing devastation in Gaza, any talk of conflict-ending solutions is cruel fantasy. But it wasn’t always. Peace efforts in the Middle East have been tried over and over again. It is not a history without breakthroughs. There was a time when a pe...

This is a conversation about the relationship between Jewishness and the Jewish State. About believing some aspects of Israel have become indefensible and also believing that Israel itself must be defended. About what it means when a religion built on the lessons of exile creates a state that inflicts exile on others. About the ugly, recurrent reality of antisemitism. You know, the easy stuff. In...

A New York Times and Siena College poll released Nov. 5 showed Donald Trump leading Joe Biden in five of the six key swing states, with a notable jump in support among nonwhite and young voters. In response, Democrats freaked out. But then two days later, voters across the country actually went to the polls, and Democrats and Democratic-associated policy did pretty well. In Kentucky, Andy Beshear...

Earlier this week, we heard a Palestinian perspective on the conflict. Today, I wanted to have on an Israeli perspective. Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and the author, most recently, of “ Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor .” In this episode, we discuss Halevi’s unusual education as an Israeli Defense Forces soldier in Gaza during the first inti...

Before there can be any kind of stable coexistence of people in Israel and Palestine, there will have to be a stable coexistence of narratives. And that’s what we’ll be attempting this week on the show: to look at both the present and the past through Israeli and Palestinian perspectives. The point is not to choose between them. The point is to really listen to them. Even — especially — when what’...

The day before Hamas’s horrific attacks in Israel, the Arab Barometer, one of the leading polling operations in the Arab world, was finishing up a survey of public opinion in Gaza . The result is a remarkable snapshot of how Gazans felt about Hamas and hoped the conflict with Israel would end. And what Gazans were thinking on Oct. 6 matters, now that they’re all living with the brutal consequences...

“Two things are true: Israel must do something, and what it’s doing now is indefensible.” So writes Zack Beauchamp, a senior correspondent at Vox. Almost a month has passed since Hamas fighters slaughtered over 1,400 people in Israel and the state mounted its furious response. For weeks, Israel has laid siege to Gaza, cutting off water and electricity to the tiny strip of land and carrying out air...

After factional infighting dominated the G.O.P.’s struggle to elect a House speaker, it feels weirdly quaint to revisit Mitt Romney’s career. He’s served as governor, U.S. senator and presidential nominee for a Republican Party now nearly unrecognizable from what it was when he started out. At the end of his time in public office, Romney has found a new clarity in his identity as the consummate in...

Grief moves slowly and war moves quickly. After Hamas assailants killed at least 1,400 Israelis and took hundreds more hostage, Israel dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Gaza in the first week of a conflict that is still ongoing. So far, more than 5,000 Palestinians are reported dead and many more injured. There’s no one way to cover this that reconciles all that is happening and all that needs to b...

Oct. 7 was Israel’s Sept. 11. That’s been the refrain. I fear that analogy carries so much more truth than the people making it intend. Thoughts? 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 o...