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Hello, ladies and germs reindeer and elves crazy Bulgarian sitting across from me. That's a long story. Folks. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is my job to sit down metaphorically, or physically with smart people. Excellent people. Those who know what they're doing and various worlds and tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, Etc, that you can use. And this time, we did something that I'm usually allergic to we actually
He
talked about politics. Now. We did talk about how this gent lost 60 pounds. We did talk about his Ascension into the ranks of the best respected media companies in the world. Top 15 companies, according to Ink magazine recently in the last week. In fact, talk about Ezra Klein and before you cut bait and run because I said politics realize that I never talk about
Politics. I feel like an ignoramus and that is by Design. We don't talk about the t-word. You don't talk about presidential stuff, we talked about, how can you influence the rules of the game by which this country is run, or your city or your state? Because I've decided that it's time for me to perhaps Jump In The Fray Ezra at Ezra Klein on Twitter and other social sites. Like the Facebook is founder, and editor-in-chief of vox.com and explanatory news.
That now reaches more than 100 million people. Each month, through articles videos, newsletters, and podcasts. Before that. First, a previously. He was a columnist and editor at the Washington Post, a policy analyst, and so many acronyms, a policy Analyst at MSNBC and a contributor to blur. My God. Hey crazy Bulgarian and do I need more caffeine? I think I do. He was named one of the 50, most powerful people in Washington DC by
GQ Esquire says, he quote gives economics, columnists a good name and quote, which Ezra hopes is accurate. He's written for the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books and his primary podcast as recline show. Very, very popular is a long-form interview show where he talks to the smartest people. He can find including past guests, like Bill Gates, what Rachel Maddow Andrew Sullivan Atul gawande. Love to interview him to slack, founder Stewart Butterfield, the Today Show's Trevor Noah and many more. He also co-hosted the we
Is a or maybe it's weeds, but that is lowercase. So I'll call it the weeds, a weekly policy podcast with his colleagues, Matt Iglesias, and Sarah Kliff. We talked about a whole lot here. It's a shorter episode perhaps around an hour hour and 15 minutes and we cover a lot of ground. So I think you guys will enjoy it and this really came from a personal place. I have opted out of political discussion for a long time. Do not worry. This podcast is not
not going to turn into any type of ranting machine. Really is very proactive. How do you influence policy if you don't like, well, let's say, sharks having their fins cut off because someone granted Chinese fishing rights to Costa Rica. What can you do? That actually, is something that happened related to me or if something you care about like a start-up or anything, is about to be snuffed out by some questionable, tactics in a place like DC, which happened to me once, or elsewhere. What can you do? And turns out there are things that you can do.
And this is this is about the tactics and strategies you can use to not just be a chess piece on the chessboard, not just to be a good chess player, but perhaps to actually change the rules of Chess, so that you can stack the deck in some respect. That is it. So without further Ado, please enjoy my conversation with Ezra Klein.
Azra, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I always think that you live in New York City, which you do not, but we happen to coincide. In this case. I'm living in New York City for today and I want to set the tone or set the the visual for people who are obviously not here. Besides my imaginary friends. At least. I am wearing a shirt that Jocko willing gave me and you can Google him to figure out who he is and it says no the darkness and her in a room in a hotel that was set aside to be quiet and we had to close the
So, it is literally dark / romantic /, romantic our hearts on the wall. We're in hipster, Penthouse prison in New York city. So the, the question that I really wanted to jump into first, and this may be an odd jumping off point, but I had read that you were bullied when you were a kid. Yeah.
Tell us about it because I really don't have any of the details but I was asked, I've been asked a lot about bullying recently. And so I've been exploring in my own head basically going back as far as I consciously. Remember in school. I was the not an unpopular kid, but the least popular kid and
When I was a kid, I changed schools a number of times because I was being bullied in different places. I change than one back. And when you do that, by the way, something important about when you leave one place because something is going wrong, then the same thing goes wrong. So you leave that place. Then you go back in the same thing goes wrong. Is that you do get a sense rightly or wrongly that it is you and over time that really wears you down. So I want to be careful that mean the bullying is not that I got the shit kicked out of me and every day but
Is that relentlessly? I was
teased or mocked or kept out of things. I had my stuff hit and I mean, it's very sort of common kid stuff, but it is a painful way to grow up. One of the things about that experience, which I would say lasted more or less into mid high school for me. And then a lot of things change for me and we can we can talk about what they were, but was that it gave me a real appreciation. Of the way context, decides people's lives.
Because in a lot of contexts, when I was young, a party, I think for me in the school context, which really didn't fit for me, things went very badly. I failed at everything. It wasn't, by the way, just said I was being bullied. I also did a terrible job in school. I barely graduated. I barely got into college, and then when I was able to change the context of my life later on, change it in college, change it with blogging change it by going into journals and by moving to Washington DC, my life transformed, really dramatically, and that too, was a bit of a lesson.
Where I had to find a place a context where the qualities that I have were adaptive rather than maladaptive that wasn't school. But it, but it did exist. Let's dig into that a little bit. When you were going from place to place. What did you think at the time was wrong with you? Or what? Were you routinely teased for? So, a bunch of things. So I was very heavy growing up. I was so I weighed in my sophomore year of high school.
School, 60 pounds, more than I do. Now to give a number on it. So one just being fat. As a kid, gets you bullied. Maybe not in every case, but certainly in a lot. I would not say I was a perfectly great dresser. Although, although one thing I will say on that is I did as part of my trying to get away from this, go to a school for a couple years and had a dress code. Not that. I thought that was the issue that didn't really help anything. So clearly that was not the are very, very well, right, but it's not a great dresser.
I am a sort of loquacious argumentative person, you know, and I think that the edges of that or probably even harsher when I was young and stranger in the context in which they were applied. Right? So it's one thing to be a bit of an argumentative person when you work in journalism and politics. It's another thing to do it in elementary school. So that probably didn't help another thing though that when I look back, if I could have, I'm not sure I would change my life because I like
How it's worked out, but if I, if I were giving advice to my younger self, something that I didn't do something that I do regret, is it? I didn't go and find and take comfort in spaces. It might have been more natural to me. So that wasn't really possible. I think in elementary school, by the time I was in high school. I was I didn't leave the situation and find another, which is to say, I didn't go into theater or go into try to work for the school newspaper or do things that would put me in a context.
Maybe a little more suited to me. Instead. I tried to be on the football team. I was I was on the football team. I was a wrestler. I was really trying to find acceptance and so I kept also budding my buddy myself into these situations that put me at risk, isn't exactly the word. But but in in space for this would happen that isn't to blame myself for it, but it is to say that, I don't think I almost somehow understood that I had choices. Right? And so I didn't make any it had become in my
Head, as if the only option was to succeed in this one context to, that was repeatedly and continuously rebuffing me. Now. The word contacts is something. I want to want to Define for folks in this particular case, in this instance. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to ask you to do it but is that simply choosing where you are, who you surround yourself with? Basically, the interrogatives of Journalism, if you were to answer those for yourself, is that the context that you then created for yourself?
Of in college leaders that we mean by Kanye, I think, I mean a lot of things by it. But I mean the situation you're in. So let me use a non bullying example. I mentioned that I did poorly in school and I really did. I'm not one of these kids who's who's coming here and saying, oh I had a 3.5 in high school and you know, but oh everybody else had a four-point. I graduated high school 22.2. I failed out of lot of classes. I was in remedial math by the end, and I've done a lot of thinking about why that was and I
I really think that I had a basically, a learning disability. I have a tremendous amount of trouble absorbing information from someone lecturing. If you put me even now when I'm older and more disciplined and have much more reason to absorb the information that is coming at me as a journalist. I basically won't call into a teleconference call because I just know I can absorb anything. And so I would spend all day sitting in this classroom where somebody was talking at me and
I just couldn't, I couldn't focus on it. I couldn't absorb any of it. And because there is this cultural message in America. Where, when you see kids in school on television, everybody's always doodling and daydreaming and, you know, thinking about something else and I mean that's the meme about it. So I thought everybody was actually doing what I was doing and never ever under any circumstances paying attention for even two minutes and that wasn't true. Obviously, other people were paying attention. They were taking notes. They did know what the hell is going on, when they looked at their homework.
Later, when I went to college College doesn't really ask that of you. You don't really have to attend class. If you don't want to, you can read the book. And then you can write an essay. There are other ways for me of absorbing information, that I am much better than average. At. I'm really, really good at absorbing information in conversation, really good at absorbing information from reading. And so, the extent that I could be in a place where I could do that, I could actually succeed academically and so it was the difference between those I was the same person.
Sin, but in one the particular set of strengths and weaknesses, I had led me to be one of the worst performers and in another the exact same set of strengths and weaknesses, put me. I wasn't the best performer in college, but I was, I did very well and that to me was a big lesson. What was your
What was your major in college policy? That makes sense? You know, I wish I hadn't done it even though, nowadays. I love political science, it is. And at the core of my work and I think among journalist. I am unusually focused on it as a way of understanding American politics. I had a lot of trouble in college, understanding how it related. I was already doing political writing then and it just somehow didn't click. And I do wish I had spent that time learning about a discipline or a topic that I
I did not plan to go into, so if I could go back, I think I would have been a philosophy major.
A surprising number of people. I've interviewed on this podcast were ended up being philosophy Majors. It's, which I've been I think is an excellent choice and I get asked a lot because of my proximity to say the to Fellowship. Well, I should say, rather my proximity geographically to Silicon Valley, and a very anti College sentiment or romanticizing, quite a bit. What kids should do or parents. Sometimes, ask me about what they should do, as it relates to college in their kids and the
Only answer been able to come up with that. I've been reasonably happy with. Is that the goal of a liberal arts education is to make you a well-rounded human being not to prepare you for maybe to equip you with the meta skills, but not to prepare, you necessarily for specific trade and the the follow-up that I wanted to ask was.
You went from elementary school, high school. Not realizing that you didn't have to accept option. A in front of you had other choices like you said, was there a moment when you realized specific conversation or something your parents? Had you anything in college. We said, oh wait a second. I can actually pass or do well in this class by simply writing the essays and taking the tests and I can choose the type of information in the format that I absorbed. Yeah. So let me say a couple things here. One is that I was
He and privileged to have other choices. So my family wasn't Rich by any means. But my father is a university professor. And so, the SATs were thing in my household. I my parents could pay for me to go to a prep course, which I also had trouble paying attention to but but nevertheless. So I do want to say one thing here, which is that I'm very conscious that the second chances. I got not everybody would have gotten, sometimes if for a lot of people, if you don't do well in high school, that's
Did it for you. You get tracked into something very, very different and I was lucky, I did well on. I'd always taken tests very well. Something. I'm just good at and that got me into the UC system. I also was lucky to be in a state of California that has a great College public college system. And the you seized at least at that point had something called eligibility. Where, if you got, it was a sliding scale GPA and as I tease, but if you got above a 1400 on your SATs, you got into Santa Cruz or UC Riverside, just
And I was able to do that. So I went to Santa Cruz, which is great. But so that's one thing having having those choices isn't always fully under your control. But the other thing is that I don't think there was an epiphany moment and to some degree. I wasn't shocked. It wasn't that I thought I was dumb. I knew I was a good writer and I knew that I was actually pretty smart. I could talk to people about things during high school and even before that. I was a pretty voracious.
Owner. And so when I got to a place where I could actually choose, what I was learning about, which I also think is a non-trivial dimension of this being able to say, I want to learn about politics. I see the relevance of it to my life as opposed to and now you're in chemistry. And that isn't it to downgrade chemistry actually at this point. Wish I knew a lot more about chemistry, but I had thought that would work a bit better for me. And so I wasn't shocked when it did. I can help you with the chemistry, but purely
Breaking Benjamin type of ad hoc experimentation, which is probably not what you're looking for. You mentioned in high school, not writing for the school paper. Correct? You were trying to do football wrestling and so on. At some point, you did try to write for the school paper. Correct. Santa Cruz City on a Hill. Press man. All right, I've heard of it. I've heard of it. I'm a subscriber know. It's not true. But what happened had that go? I got nothing happened.
The whole, the whole story, there is nothing happened. I got to Santa Cruz, which is an awesome, awesome place, by the way, and there are even just able to visit and college is wasted on the young. Yeah, Santa Cruz. Is this place where it is built in a redwood Grove. I may get the exact details of this wrong, but no building is allowed to be higher than two-thirds of the height of the tallest nearby Redwood. So everything is just dominated by these amazing trees and this is
Single and it's just this phenomenal Grant of land. There are dorm rooms in Santa Cruz that have a redwood, and Ocean View dorm rooms. So for Santa Cruz is great and I, yeah, yeah, I was, I just got in there. I was trying to figure out what I would be doing what I wanted to be doing, and I applied to work at City on Hill press, which is the student newspaper and it just got rejected, which was not strange. I mean, I didn't do the student newspaper and
In high school, I had no obvious aptitude in that. I will say though it, is there different ways. You can frame the story of your life. One of them is through the things you achieved. It often feels to me that the true one for me or at least in as true. One is through the things that I wanted and didn't get that turned out to be extremely lessing's. So, at about the same time. I applied for Santa Cruz, City on Hill press. I don't know why, I just said that. So formally,
The student newspaper, I'm sold. I'm sold. It's still, it has this vaunted space in my imagination. I had started. What at that point was an unknown thing, which was a Blog. We were right in the beginning of the early political blogosphere. This is 2003. Before you tried to pitch the Press. I was bored. I went to Santa Cruz and his great, but I was a college kid and, you know, I just didn't have that much to do. So, I had begun reading some of these bloggers and in particular, there was a kid at another College.
Across the country named at Iglesias who had a really good blog that I really liked. What was it about politics? And it's just this super smart, analytical Harvard student writing about politics and it become a pretty. Again in the early blogosphere. Pretty Central blog. It was him. This guy named Kevin drum, who was actually my hometown of Irvine, California, but I looked at mad and I thought, well, if this college kid can have a Blog then maybe I can, but if I got in into city on a hill,
I'm sure I would have just done that, right? It would have been much more absorbing would have had a big, big social component. The people, I know who did student newspaper work. They really got into it, but I didn't get that. Why? It's always better to. I've nobody ever told me. I don't think it was all you do. Call us. Yeah, I don't think it's a big deal for them in life. I think I just didn't get it. Okay, good, but if that left me with a lot of time to focus on on blogging which at that moment, didn't at all seem like a good trade.
Buddy in 2003, thought blogging was going to be a pathway into journalism or into anything else. Nobody even knew the word but turned out to be it. Arguably, the central pivot moment, in my life. How much time did you spend on it? In the when I took two, that it's funny because we talked about context changes before, but the real context changed me wasn't High School to college. It was high school to blogging when I found that something happened to me, where I was writing. I wasn't writing for a big.
Audience, I had by 2004. Let's say what your college would that be, this would be going into my sophomore year. Sometime by 2004. I was getting, I think 35 liters a day.
I think that I cared more about those 35 liters a day. Then I have ever cared. I mean, I love the the audience, but I felt so amazed that 35 people and on some days when I got him at Iglesias like a hundred and fifty people would come to the site, it blew me away. And when I found that when I found this space where what I could do was read, what I was interested in and then process it through writing. And that's an important thing for me because going back to this idea of, how do you absorb information?
I'm good at absorbing it by reading, but the real way I come up with ideas is by talking about a writing about what I have efinitely. The inputs. That's it. Kevin Kelly. The founding editor of wired says to. He says I write to find out what I'm thinking. I got to Joan Didion line. Yeah, no blob Kevin Kelly spot here. I may actually be misappropriating a quote attributed to Kevin but he elaborates obviously, but it's something like I don't know what I think until I start writing I could act deeply true and
I found blogging and, you know, again, I'm writing for 15 than 30 then 45 people a day and I just took it from the beginning. I just got addicted like really addicted. It was a little Blogspot blog, and I would wake up at 7:00 in the morning as a college student and be writing blog posts. So that my East Coast audience, all nine of them had something to read. I was writing in college. I was writing 15 things a day on the blog. Wow, I barely ever
Partied in part because I still actually I did not figure things out socially for a couple years, what? Tell a couple years later still. So I didn't have many friends. When did you lose your weight sophomore year of high school? So around the same time of high school of high school. That was a big turning point in my life, too. How did you lose the weight? What was the trigger? Also? I got rejected by a girl. I really liked. Yes. So that was a trigger. This is a perennial. So I had the option to absorb that as I am. Not a likeable person or, you know,
Not a lovable person or, you know, this beautiful girl didn't want to be with me because I'm heavy. And I, I'm not saying correctly by the way, I don't want to suggest that as an objective view of the reality, but that was, it was away. I absorbed it. But it was a choice between. She rejected me for reasons or because due to factors. I can't change or do two vectors I can. Yeah, and and this was the face-saving way to do it. And so something kind of clicked there. I'm not really
Sure, what are y. But for six months? I ate the exact the exact same thing every day and I ran three miles a day. Would you eat? I'd have to. Alright. I'm going to try to remember this. I woke up and I ate a
Whatever bro, I two eggs with salsa for breakfast every day and then at ten am buildings. No, they were just like fried Oak and I was not a good cook, right? Right exhaustion. I had not read the 4-Hour, Chef so fried eggs with salsa. And then at 10 a.m., Whenever sort of break was at my, at my high school. I had a pure protein bar, which I still eat those today but back then those tasted.
Like garbage, let me tell you, I'll just let me be real clear my shock and a, I don't know why this was what it was, but a meanie bobbly pizza crust with two slices of deli meat, turkey on it. Okay. I'm quickly running out of remember. I don't remember what I did for lunch. Actually, I would get home and I think itís pack of popcorn usually and then I would microwave to Lean Cuisines for dinner. That was what I had every day. How did you decide on that particular regime?
There was some way that actually happened. I had been told I went inside. I think I went and talked to, and trainer at the gym. I got like a free trainer thing, you know, like, you can go and have a console to the gym and he told me, like, how many calories? I should be eating and I just literally figured out a count to get there, and then I didn't stop. I don't think I could do that today. I don't really know where that came from in me, but it happened and that was that was also.
First time in my own life that I had been able to take control of something and really succeeded it. And a lot of confidence emerge from that for me because until then there were a lot of things about me that just seemed to be immutable. They were how I was and then all of a sudden it turned out that that wasn't how I was. That was just how I had been until I made a series of changes and out of that. I've become in my life.
And in my attitude towards life probably obsessively calibrating and hopefully self-improving. But I'm always have, you know, and I'm talking to somebody. It's much more than that. I don't know anything about that, but I always have sort of three or four things that I'm constantly trying to track and change and play with. Because it just gave me a real sense that you are who you make yourself to be there. Few things. I want to highlight. See you figured out number things in high school and then in college one of which was
Do I have to pay for this therapy session or is it a person's be? There's an intro first ones free. The one of which was the format of information that you absorb best. And what would I want to just mention for people is that this is a critical piece of the puzzle to figure out. So I was chatting with Ed catmull, president of Pixar that his book, creativity ink. Yeah an amazing. Amazing tastic book and he had in a sense the exact opposite experience that you had. So
He found that he could not absorb. He was trying to read, and I'm making up this example, would say the Odyssey or any type of poetry or anything that actually began with being transmitted as an oral tradition. He couldn't absorb it on in print, and he started listening. And so that is here in the exact opposite direction and started listening to, I think it was the teaching company while he was on commutes to absorb information. Well, actually it's funny related to that something I have learned later.
Life is that I can absorb information from listening extremely. Well, if it is the secondary thing I'm doing so I cannot sit. I actually cannot sit at my computer and watch a TED Talk. I can't do it, but I can listen to a podcast while I walk my dogs or clean my house or whatever. And so I absorb now, particularly because I have less time to read because it my job has more of a Management schedule. I absorb a tremendous amount of information through podcasting, while I am doing other things, and I don't know why.
That makes it possible for me. But it somehow does similarly, in my office at work. I have a lot of trouble paying attention during meetings. So my office is littered with things that I can play with my hands. It's just full of squeeze balls and magnets. And I just every so often just go on Amazon and search fidget toys and I will buy anything chitauri. I can find and it's full of them. And people think, oh, you have this quirky little office? And the actual reason is that I can pay attention much.
Better. If I'm absorbed physically somewhere else. It makes me think of it, all of his flesh to mine. But you've seen the movie Big with Tom have the one, that's one of his first meetings and they walk in when he's at the toy companies crashing these cars together as a trying to
talk to him.
But let's flash forward to the present first, just a moment and then we'll back track again. So the first is, what are what do you have? You listened to most say in the last year? In terms of, you know, you just fishing for compliments. No, no. No, I
didn't like this lip measuring 20, but
But
he doesn't. I need to, I need to tip hundreds with it. Oh, I'm a fan of your show. So I can actually pull out my podcast list here. Yeah, I'll just wait, you're gonna oh, of course. I always listen to the Ezra Klein, show in the weeds, the two greatest, non Tim Ferriss podcasts in American Life today. So podcast I like listening to our like your show. I'm a big fan of you made it weird the Pete Holmes podcast, which is just a great interview. I like the long form podcast.
All Rico decode. Kara Swisher, who's part of VOX media as a great interview, show practically in the election season. I listen to a lot of the axe files, which was David. Axelrod's is David axelrod's interview show. It's a great. That's a good one off. Message by Glen thrush I think is good. That's a political show. I love conversations with Tyler Cowen. Toggle. Tyler is brilliant. These guy. No, well, I've actually been on that show with him and he just has a mind that works. Unlike any mind. I've
I've ever come into contact with before he makes his mind different. He's a polymath in a truer sense. So I'll just give you example. From when I was on his show. We were talking about the conversation in America about diversity and inclusion and tolerance and pluralism and multiculturalism. Right? It's up a trump campaign related conversation and Tyler, who knows that during my honeymoon. I went to Singapore for two days and knows that I'm half Brazilians. I've been to Brazil a lot says, well, Brazil and Singapore.
I have such different conversations about multiculturalism and diversity. When you look at the way they experience these issues versus America. Do you think they've figured something out that we haven't?
An embedded in. That question is, one that Tyler is so smart that he actually has a distinct point of view about the discourse on multiculturalism in Singapore. But also thinks other people might also have to do. So just listening to him is a real tour through somebody who is smarter the mind of somebody who's smarter than you are. I love Death Sex and Money. That's a great show. Just makes me also think we just have a toddler but some of my conversation with Eric Weinstein, he's
The managing director of teal Capital, but he's, I don't know why details coming up so much, but the, he's a, he's a mathematician and physicist, and I'll say something like, well, of course, you know, what a mirror Orchid is, and then they'll go, and they'll just continue on that. He's got that. Not going to pipe up. Switched on pop is great. Bye, Charlie. Manning and Nate. I'm blanking out his house name, but it's a good pop culture podcast. So I probably where the vast selection of podcasts. I know a lot of people get overwhelmed with
Input. Maybe. They just feel like there's too much to read too much to listen to How the exponent by Ben Thompson. I like that one. How do you choose? How do you choose which SS come up? They you you look at what has come up and see what's interesting. I actually find most days. I don't have one. I want to listen to. I it's not that everything every episode of every one of these podcast is interesting to me. Hopefully, there enough still are so what is interesting, and I'll catch that. It's probably not properties.
It. But in the question about about other ones, that didn't mention. No. No, that's okay. There's there were, there were a lot there. If you had to give a not listen to attend talking would give a Ted Talk on something that you're not known for at all. So no politics.
Something that you are very interested in that is is not something people readily associate you with something. Maybe you read about on the weekends or evenings. Whatever is what would that be? Well, my you talk about, it would probably be about some angle on the ethics of meat eating, which I feel real strongly about hmm. And and not not simply eating meat is bad. Yeah, but one thing that I become really convinced by and I've become convinced by a guy named Bruce.
Track who's actually on my podcast and said this to me, I've been thinking about it ever since. So one. I think what we eat is a very profound moral choice and and I've argued and I do believe elsewhere that 50 years from now, a hundred years from now, when it's really easy to not eat factory farm meat because there's all this lab-grown meat and really tasty. Synthetic, meat people will look back on the way. We treat it animals in this era and judge us very very harshly agree with that. I think we are going to look very
Bad because, you know, we're torturing a lot of sentient beings constantly and but that said, one thing that I have become convinced by his it if you want. I don't think that it is good. That the only ways here you can be quote unquote at the goal is to become a vegetarian or a vegan one. I think it's just too hard for a lot of people into. It's actually not the right way to think about what you're trying to do here. Not being consequentialist enough about it. If we get everybody to cut meat consumption by half, that is so much better than
Tripling, the number of vegetarians from. I think it's roughly around 5% now to where it would go. So, what I think we need to be thinking just really about reduction here. But the thing that Bruce explained to me, which I haven't thought about a lot before was that people think that what they should do is go vegetarian, and that's actually not a great equilibrium in terms of animal suffering because particular because egg-laying chickens are arguably the worst treated of all of the animals. So, if you've cut out a lot of other kinds of meat and your
Eating a lot of bags.
There's some context in which you're buying backyard eggs from a farmer. I mean, you can come up with the examples here where the animals treated really, really well and great if you're able to Source like that. God bless you, but I think a lot of people have ended up a little bit accidentally in spaces where they've maybe cut out red meat. So eating a lot of chicken, but it turns out you can finish a chicken in a night. It takes a family of for like a year or two years to finish a cow and and what Bruce, who used to run campaigns for PETA. And now does investing around, I think he likes to call to clean meat.
What would he argued to me? Was if everybody just ate beef. Cut out eggs, cut out poultry, cut out fish. Cut out all the rest of it. Everybody just ate beef. You would reduce the number of animals killed for human consumption by something in the order of 95 to 98%. So it actually really matters how big the animal is and cows because you do need to raise them for all. They're actually treated even the ones not treated well, better particularly better than chickens and other kinds of poultry. There's no effort really anywhere to figure out a humane way to raise.
Kill fish because we just don't jump the species barrier and sympathy that way. So and I do know they're people I think there's a guy named Matt ball. I think his organization is called first step and I've been if I have that wrong, I'll send it to you for your show notes who's been making a similar argument. So this is very much not my argument. But I think that it would not be that hard for a lot of people to switch over to beef consumption and to go from there. Now, I do want to say there's cross-cutting environmental concerns people.
Argue about whether a pound of beef is significantly worse for the environment than a pound of chicken or fish. I've heard that both ways. I've not looked into it enough to know, right now. I'm confined what I'm saying is just about animal suffering. Yeah. It's this is, we could talk about this for a long time. I have read quite a bit about quite a bit of on both sides of the fence. If you will, just on the the meat-eating versus non meeting, if we're looking at it.
I
know fashion and what's been philosophically, interesting, for me at least to hear and listen to our the, how the reasons, dictate what you consume on, the less meat side of the equation. So, you have people who are say optimizing, for number of animals killed. Then you have people. I have some distinction in cognitive ability that determines what they'll eat or not. And then there's the, the carbon say emissions.
Component which I think is actually kind of falls apart with cows and sense that they're often on grazing lands. It couldn't otherwise be utilized for a many agrarian purposes. But then you run into all these thorny things and I'm not going to get into like deep Peter Singer land, but the, if you look at some of the mono crops, so for instance, you are mentioning how the with an incomplete information if you're trying to minimize suffering in the total number of animals, if you go
Over vegetarian and suddenly or quadrupling your egg intake that you might be. In fact, net netting on the side of doing more damage than just saying having one cow or quarter of a cow and with the mono crops. So. And so on, if you look at the Threshers and then number of animals, end up killing these small rodents and whatnot. Then it just becomes a very complex, moral decision, or it seems that it can become a very nuanced. I should say, roll decision. I'm not super convinced.
By the mono crop thresher argument in these field of me a little bit, like an argumentative move meant to paralyze the conversation in a place of information, abundance, right? It's true that we can never have perfect knowledge about all of the consequences of our decisions, but I think this is one where people's moral intuitions. Here are pretty clear and actually should be followed. I just never meet anybody who says yeah, factory farming is. Okay. No no. And but I will sometimes be people who say, I'm not saying you're doing this here.
To begin bringing a level of. Well, what about this? What about that? And it's true, but the, it would be wonderful if we all decided to treat the way we eat as enough of an ethical choice that we're actually trying to gather that information in a really strong way. But I think that people can make. I think the important thing to me and the thing that I've thought a lot about my own life is people can make moves it or not that painful that appear with our
Knowledge to have a really big first-order effect on suffering and that and that it's worth doing and that the the sort of equilibrium of it just being about vegetarianism or veganism. I think is probably made this a lot harder because it's just hard for folks to make jumps that big. The adherence is really low, right? So, if you're trying to move the needle, it's I think about this, a lot, as it relates to behavioral change. Just since I have thought about it and spent so much time with people who are studying this and labs.
The you run into this conundrum with saved very strict, vegans or very strict paleo for that matter. If you try to take someone from zero to sixty from standard American diet to either of those sides, the, the drop-off that you're going to have is can probably be above 90% after a few weeks. And then what absolutely good have you accomplished? It's a lot easier to get people say one step further. It's like a try. Moving to this protein and consuming a either fewer eggs, or
Really paying attention specifically to how your sourcing. And it's an interesting thing. There. There's a fair amount of Behavioral Science evidence that it's important to people to act in ways reasonably consonant with the identities they have for themselves. And so something I found because I flitted back and forth between vegetarianism and not for a long time and now I've been pretty deep in it for a bit but was that what would happen is I would say I'm going vegetarian.
And then at some point I would fail and having failed. It's not like what would happen is that I would go to 95% vegetarian. I would completely collapse back into full-on in omnivore ISM. And the reason in part was that if I had set up the success structure, such that I was vegetarian or I was not then was not is almost the same kind of failure, no matter how much meat I was eating, what kind of meat
I
was eating all of it. And so the way this actually stuck for me this time was that the way I went vegetarian a couple of years ago now was with a tremendous number of caveats. I'm vegetarian, except when I travel because I know when I travel, I often have a lot of trouble sticking to vegetarianism. So if I'm vegetarian, except when I travel and when they travel then I eat meat. Well, then it doesn't offend my identity at all. And now I'm mostly vegan. I begin at home except when I
well, I'm vegetarian and there are a couple points in the year. It's like my best friend's mother. I've been having sushi with her since I was a kid and it is important to me that I'm able to continue that tradition and so as opposed to going and having sushi with her twice a year and the collapsing out of all my other eating habits because of it. It's just, that's built into it. That's an exceptionally. And, and so I've actually found that personally very helpful to create to not be so strict on myself that when I
Make decisions that I can pretty well predict. I'm going to make that they have this identity collapsing effect on me.
So let's, let's take a left turn and go back to college. What were some of the I don't sound enough. Like I said, it has banana slug to you. This isn't this? No, I'm enjoying. I'm not that much of a left turn. No, I, yes. I had a lot of stem pet stroller, back to it, back to Garden of Life. Did you ever get a Garden of Life in Santa Cruz back to back to Santa Cruz and very good writing school and people playing didgeridoos and Street. What were the decisions or lucky incidents?
That really defining moments. Once you started the blog. When did you go from 35? Okay, if you got a lucky link, hundred fifty, when did that start to change a couple key things happened? So one is I mentioned this other college kids. So that's Matt Iglesias. And Matt is my co-founder of box. We work together now and actually have worked together for a lot of our adult lives. Also at the American Prospect and is in a very important way my mentor. But he was
He continuously as someone with a bigger site, linked to me, send people to my site and the patronage I think is actually a fair term for it. The attention of someone, I respected that much was a tremendous kind of positive feedback for me. How did he find your site? Emailed him? Okay, very early on. I emailed it to him and and he linked to it. He was very generous wouldn't want to say in your email. Oh God. I genuinely don't remember. What is it a good plan? Sure.
Was
it? I'm at love your stuff. Like I think it's high mad. I love you stuff. I think it's probably. Hi, Matt. I love you stuff. I've also started a Blog where I'm saying things that are going to prove to be wildly Incorrect and embarrassing about American politics. Although I probably did say that at the time that did, however, proved out to be the truth of it, but I've started a Blog also, you might, I'd love to if you checked it out and he checked it out. So, that was really important. And I remember, I mean, in my early, as I can remember, it took me, I think a year and a half maybe more.
To get my first Kevin drum link. My first Kevin drum like was a big deal to me. Andrew Sullivan. I think came later even than that and the Bloch sphere then was small. I mean, it was a personal place. There was instant pundit who was the big link aggregator on the right and had be, you know, the sort of Warhawk, right? And you had a trios who was the big Linger on the left and it sort of went on like that. So I did pretty assiduously try to get.
Stuff in front of those people for a period of time and all that mattered to me that escalating series of accomplishments. Hey, I finally achieved a Kevin drum. Like now I've really made it really matter to me. I went and did a while back up a little bit here. The reason I started a political blog is that I was into politics reason. I was into politics is my brother who lives in Los Angeles and is an environmental turning out. There was also into politics and was incredibly, incredibly insane lie.
Generous to his fat, socially awkward 12 year old brother and when he did political work and Away with would take me along and I'll never forget and will never stop being grateful during the bit during Bill, Bradley's 2000, and campaign for the presidency. My brother was driving around. Senator Paul wellstone. The late senator. Paul wellstone is an amazing figure in American politics. He died in a plane crash. I think it was in 2002 and my brother had this opportunity, my brother.
It must have been 26, something like that, 28. He's a lot older than I am and he had the opportunity to drive. Well, Stone. And his wife around La for a day and he had me come with him. And I can't, I still almost. Can't believe that moment. Here's my brother Gideon who has this opportunity, as a young up-and-coming Politico, to spend a whole day with a u.s. Senator. Like that's a real opportunity think. Most people would take that opportunity for it.
Themselves. And to spend that time, trying to press a senator with how smart they are. And and he took me and I spent that day talking with Paul wellstone about wrestling, because wellstone was a high school and college Russell. Such a great magic trick wrestling is a great connector. Yeah, continue. So but I was into politics and I started a Blog because I interrupt for one second is to ask two things for those people, quite frankly, myself who are wondering because I have
Always had maybe the the exact opposite inclination. I developed mostly due to family but who talked a lot about politics all the time and got into huge fights. I developed an allergy to it, but I never really knew what in the first place. They meant by politics. What is politics. When you say an interest in politics, was that mean I was interested in the decisions politicians were making to move power resources and Personnel into different spaces.
The American and International Space. So in this era I graduated high school in 2002. So the year before I graduated is 911 and 9/11 was a moment that certainly woke me to the idea that politics cared about me. Even if I didn't care about it. Hmm. We were starting Wars which and I think people forget this if there was talk at that time of a draft.
And in some ways, I think arguably there were good Arguments for one that at least would have made us as a country think hard about where we were going to war and whether or not we all wanted to bear that that sacrifice. But I was I think that the reason I got engaged in politics. I mean my my family talked about it, but it wasn't. Its I don't come from a political family. I think the reason that I got engaged in politics was it was a very very political time and I found those questions to be enormously.
Staying and obviously, obviously, consequential. I'm not sure that. If I had been in this formative period, in my life, in 1996, I would have found it as obviously consequential. I'm not sure was as obviously consequential, because this is actually the time frame. There you go. It wasn't when the period of time, in which I sort of came of age. I think of, mm. I actually thought it would have calmed down, and now it looks like it's ramping back up. But politics got a lot more Central to the lives of most
People starting in roughly 2001. We've had since then a period of time that when the history of this era is written. They are not going to spend much time on the Clinton years. They're not going to spend much time on the George HW Bush years. That that era is going to be interesting for the rise of China. The dissolution of the Soviet Union, but it's not going to be interesting for what happened in America, but starting with 911 going through the financial crisis. Now, the election of trump, we are a country. That is, I had a
Professor, I transferred to UCLA on my junior year and I had history Professor there who said, I don't know if you know this, but the grip the fist of history is tightening around all of you right now. And I've always remembered that because I think it's true. She meant that this is a moment that is capital H history. Hmm. This is a moment that when people write about the 21st century, they're not going to skip over a moment when America is going to war when
Talk of a clash of this was in 2000, and probably three or four available later. This is what America's going to war. People are talking a clash of civilizations. I mean, it was a moment that felt like history and similar to, you know, we have reshaped the framework of the American Social State. We created a near Universal Health Care guarantee in America, for the first time now, we're talking about whether or not we're going to dissolve that just a couple years after it was launched. These this doesn't happen all the time. This
Not the velocity at which politics normally operates in this country, really any other. So if we go back to then your exploration, which you said turned out largely inaccurate on the blog in the early days. Was there a piece that first felt you made that you'd cracked through and I remember for instance the first post on my blog that ever at the time reached the front page of dig and it crashed my site immediately, but that was a big deal. When did when did you crack?
out of
Or what was the first piece that really put, you remember the first piece that really probably for your own actually, but I'll give a different version of what I knew. Maybe something was beginning to happen here and it's a fairly funny story actually. So in 2004, or maybe this is 2003, but it's the run-up to the 2004 election and things feel very consequential. Bush is a very polarizing president. I was at the University of Santa Cruz you can imagine which side of that polarization. I was on.
And there's a lot of talk in the blogosphere. A lot of talk to someone people about, who should run against him. Now. I very idiosyncratic, Lee, had become obsessed with a long retired politician by the name of Gary Hart who I had read and I cannot recommend this book. Highly enough, Richard Ben Kramer, great, great journalist, who's in, who died and unfortunate couple years ago. He wrote a book a mammoth book about the 1988 election, which is considered one of the landmark books in New Journalism just of
Way it is. Written is extraordinary. What is New Journalism? New journalism was a way of doing nonfiction journalism, using the techniques of literary fiction, at least the more modern techniques of literary fiction, and I want to have not an expert on this. So there's probably much more precise definition, but people like Tom Wolfe and Norman mailer and Richard Ben Kramer. It was a way of writing about the world as it happened, but with a
Informality and an experimental style that you'd really only seen in fiction until then. And I do want to say actually that these things, these books, these changes in language and how you talk about things that these are actually really important to people more so than I think, folks. Realize one reason I got into blogging is I remember coming across a blog post where somebody I don't know how old the person was, but was clearly young. Wrote about American politics and used to the word props to say, but somebody
Something good right props to them. It sounds dumb, but it actually hit me like a thunderbolt. The idea that you could talk about politics, not in the language, that George Will talked about it on the Washington Post op-ed page, or that people talked about on CrossFire on CNN or that Paul Krugman talked about it. The, the idea that you could talk about it in the language.
That you just talked.
It seems so obvious now, because now so many people do it, but it wasn't that. It's one of the really big things blogging. Contributed was a breakdown and experimentation with tone political tone was very formal and mannered, and structured. And it's much more opened up now, including not very big institutions that previously, had a much more mattered formal structure tone. So that that matters to me, but Ben Kramer, he wrote this book and this book is just do member the title. What?
Takes What It Takes the others. The book is called what it takes. Everybody should read it. And Gary Hart is really the hero. What It Takes, he is the person who he's brought down by sexual Scandal and a scandal, by the way, that seems in the era of grab them by the pussy. So unbelievably minimal. So Gary Hart comes out as a hero of what it takes and heart has a lot of fascinating Dimensions to him. But one of the fascinating Dimensions to him is he's very early through a
When he co-chaired with with another Senator Warren, Rudman, I think Warren Rudman at seeing the threats that we're going to be coming the threat from terrorism. From non-state actors, the way the American Military needed to reorganize to meet those hypotheses. What is a non-state actor? I don't say doctors to Al qaeda's a non-state actor. So previously, the Soviet Union versus America's two States, going to war with each other, Al Qaeda or Isis and America are American non-state actors understood which have very very different. They're different, very different ways you need to
Organize yourself to deal with non-state actors. So Hart had had been pretty Visionary on this and with somebody who seemed.
Like at a time, when Democrats needed a national security voice, he had actually had enough of a claim depressions here that he might be a strong candidate. So hard actually begin to thinking about running for president that year, and I somehow get signed up with an organization for him. That doesn't yet exist and I'm an intern in this Shadow Gary Hart organization and heart is heart, is testing the water. So I have now set up in Northern California, a couple of events for him.
One in, I think one in Oakland and one in San Francisco, or is some maybe is one in, I think made his one in Palo Alto and one in San Francisco and I am driving him and this is so great. So I have my little blog, I am, the blogosphere is only heart supporter. Certainly. The only heart supporter who is under the age of 20 that anybody has met recently and I am writing about him and now I'm driving this guy around and it's just so, so fucking exciting, but I'm not
Experienced platter of political events and certainly not experienced the logistics of getting up to and from them. So, these events are not that far apart from each other, either in time. Or in space. I'm driving heart around. I had a blue Ford Focus with a stick shift and I had never driven in San Francisco at all. And definitely, not in San Francisco traffic. And so I'm taking heart from Palo Alto to say.
An Francisco and we are super late because it's at rush hour. And so it's not taking however long it would have taken, but taken three times that long and we are on these Hills and I'm burning out the transmission and every one of them. So, the car is filled with this acrid stench of the destruction of the undercarriage of this vehicle. Some of these Hills will be below. I'm going to San Francisco, and they feel like they're 45 degree and they're vertical, and he is understandably, not unkindly.
Agitated at one point. He asks, if I would like him to drive, eventually, get him there all the events themselves when fine. But it was, it was an unpleasant experience for everybody involved. It was stressful. It was the next day. He announces, he is not running for president, and I have all, I'm probably not but I have always wondered if he was like I am too old for this shit. I do not need idiot. Kids burning out their Transmissions going to be late. Like I just that's not what I that's not the life. I need to lead as a human being.
But so Gary Hart drops out and I write on my blog which again, 35 people day at this point that I'm really bummed my, the candidate I support. It is not in the race anymore. I get an email from Joe. Trippi who is the campaign manager, for Howard Dean's, campaign, and Howard Dean campaign is really taking off at this point and Joe trippi worked for heart in 88 and was very involved in the early blogosphere and was very fascinated by the idea that there was this college kid somewhere writing.
How Gary Hart is great, that just seems so incongruous to him and he invited me to come out and work on the dean campaign to intern for the dean campaign that's summer which I did. Now, I had thought that I would that I wanted to work in politics and actually wanted to be on campaigns or somehow be involved in the actual work of politics. And what I learned that year was that I actually hated working in campaigns and being in politics, I didn't like supporting a candidate because it meant that to support them. Even when they said or did,
Things that I didn't like about that deemed it all, so many terrible things. It's just, I wasn't a hundred percent on that campaign or any campaign. Meanwhile, my blog was beginning to take off. People were listening to me. The, I was now at hundreds of people a day occasionally, when I got a couple big links, a thousand and I loved it. It was it was really satisfying to me. It was really fascinating to learn about things and go where my interest wanted to take me. And so that was that was really the pivot moment in my understanding of my own.
Rear where I went from thinking I would work in politics to. I would write about it and also, recognizing that I was not built or cut out to support candidates. That, that wouldn't be, that wasn't a personality that I had. And so that wasn't going to work for me in the long run. So if we then Flash Forward to say vocs or actually, no, it's not approach it that way. What are from that point forward? Some of the
Decisions. Most important decisions that helped lead you to where you are now. So a bunch of things happen and often they relate to not getting something I wanted. So I
Did not get an internship at the American prospect that I wanted, but I but then when I was panicking.
I got an internship at the Washington monthly which is it wasn't as a small policy. I think. Now I don't know how often publishes now, but it's a small policy magazine had DC as was the American Prospect for that matter.
And the monthly was an amazing place to do an internship. I mean that's where it's cemented for me that I wanted to be a journalist and I was there, it was edited by and is edited by guy named Paul gloucester's. So what it's a very policy Centric place. It is a place that is interested in how government works in the mechanics of it in the functioning and quality of the bureaucracy. So it just, it takes policy and politics here. So, I think something really important about the work I've done including it, Vox is I am merge my
Background is in the policy blogosphere. And then in the world of policy, magazine is all explained and those are very idiosyncratic world. So that used to be extremely small and my career as much as anything has been about expanding the audience for that kind of coverage from seeing it as a boutique thing to seeing it as a mainstream thing. And that's the thing. I think I'm proudest of doing but so I was at the Washington monthly Paul glass doors, who is the editor. But now I believe was the editor. He's fantastic but the two senior editors and
They seemed so senior to me now, but I realize, now they were just in their twenties, but we're Nick confessori, who is at the New York Times now and Ben Wallace Wells, whose at the New Yorker, and both of them are just extraordinary. Talented journalists, who are also extraordinarily kind to their interns and actually gave us real work to do and so I got a sense of what it would be like to be a journal. So I didn't get to go to the slightly bigger place. I ended up at the slightly smaller place and being at the smaller space place, it meant, I had a lot more contact with the people.
Can their lot more opportunity to do things. It was a fantastic experience. I transferred I didn't really even though I did better in college and I really like college. So I thought maybe what I didn't like was Santa Cruz. So I transferred transferred to UCLA turned out. I didn't like was College, don't really like being in school and my junior year. One night. I was sitting up complaining to. I was friend friends with that Iglesias at this point and we were iming because back in the day you I am dead. So I was like ASL, Matt. Hey, you're too old.
Isaiah says you know what ASL is? I don't know what an age sex location. That's a useful one. Yeah, I'm not sure it is anymore because I think it's now all moved its book profile. Yeah, but that's what you did back. Find me on IRC chat. So I'm talking to Dad knows complaining about that. Didn't want to be doing some midterm paper. I was doing and he's like we should apply for the American Prospect Fellowship.
I said, well, I'm a junior said. Yeah, but, but do it anyway, whatever leave college and actually looked, and it was possible for me to finish up real ability to do enough in the summer. I could graduate if I needed to. So I applied for the prospects fellowship and I also applied, actually for the new Republic's reporter researcher position. I never got a call back from the new Republic, which was a slightly more prestigious magazine at that point. So I might have taken that instead, but they're reported researchers actually did a lot more base.
Work for the institution. So they did a lot more copy-editing. In fact checking would have been a much worse job for me to place. Would have been much more etiological difficult for me to be at that point. The new Republic was extremely Pro. Iraq War. I was quite against it by then. I wasn't originally, so would have been very awkward fit, but I didn't even get called back with that sothis. So that went nowhere. I did get the American Prospect job.
Which was amazing. And was the perfect first job in journalism for me, the next year, if I had just done, what was normal the next year? The American Prospect ran out of funding for that job and it didn't exist. So the next year, the only two journalism jobs. I had any shot of getting to because they're the only ones that cared about bloggers were the prospect of the new Republic and the Republic didn't want me and the prospect would have been able to take me and so my whole life could have been different if I hadn't done this in my junior year.
Unusually, so I did that, then I went to the prospect. The prospect was, is a great magazine and again is part of his small collection of policy magazines. The first thing that happened to me when I went to the American Prospect, the editor was a guy named Mike to Masky, who does a great column for The Daily Beast now and runs a journal called democracy, but, but Mike called me to his office. And he always had his feet up on his desk and he called me in and I think this is my first day there week there.
R. And he says,
Go find out. What's hot in poverty. What he said. He said, you know, Katrina happened. This is about post-katrina. This is 2000, late 2005. And he says, there's a big conversation about what to do about poverty in this country. Go, go find out what's happening in that conversation.
I don't really now with more experience, recognize that as an article pitch, and
and yet it was such a great place for that. Could happen to such a great place, want to place it. Thanks. What is hot in poverty. Is a sentence that makes sense. Right? Right. A lot of places would not consider there to be such a thing as hot in the poverty reduction Community. Tula place. It would just send a young reporter with very with really no experience to learn about that. Give them a piece of fabric that became a feature for them.
And so my time at the American Prospect and then the third thing that happened there, which is really, really, really important. And it was key to my career is key to. My career is, I was a really good blogger. I'm willing to say that at that point and what blogging was? And I was good at that, but I didn't know how to do anything in journalism. I didn't know how to structure an article. I didn't know how to report. I didn't know how to pitch. I didn't know anything. Now, I'd written for, you know, like op-ed like columns for the LA week. I've done a couple little things but I
Really have any any skills aside from, right? My opinions on the internet and the American Prospect was a place that was willing to take me on the strength of my blogging because they were very early into the blogosphere and wanted to get some of these young bloggers and in return for that and have time for paying me, extremely little, teach me how to be a journalist and he did. And they did that Mike to mass kiwi. What was the acronym? Use pick up the damn phone. Pu T DP. He would always say pick up the damn phone to you.
And and you learned, okay, like one of the tools here is reporting. When you pick up the damn phone as a blogger, you don't expect anyone but answer your calls because they probably wouldn't particularly not at that point. But if you're calling from the American Prospect, they will. And one of the things was really important. In my career was, I was pretty early emerging, the techniques and ideas and ideologies and Sensibility of blogging with the processes and skills and tools of Journalism and a lot of
Of what I've been doing in different places, is pulling those two threads together. Not in ways that are unique to me, but in ways that not many people were doing because most people who are blogging, we're not young enough and free enough to go. Take entry-level underpaid jobs where they could develop the skill sets and then spend all their time working on them and most people in journalism did not want to develop the tools of blogging because it was a blogging. Weren't many ways devout part partly in opposition.
There are partly based on a critique of Journalism. And so my I was in this very lucky space and I do want to say was a lucky space. It was a product of timing. I happened to start blogging when the wave began to build and at a moment when people would hire folks, who had that kind of experience. If I've been five years later, five years earlier, who fucking knows, but
I also then had the personality to bring those things together. Let me ask you a question about that. So if you were now and I don't know how you feel about teaching as opposed to learning in an academic setting. But let's just say you had an opportunity to teach a freshman seminar at some type of college to just an incredible set of 15 students, just really receptive. Brilliant.
I could change the world and you were teaching them this combination of well, perhaps it's a writing course for those who intend to work in politics in some fashion. What would the first what might the the first lessons or areas of focus look like, like what kind of exercises we do? Have them do the first half of the course would not be about writing at all. One of
The criticisms I have of Journalism is that we are too focused and it's funny because it's a little bit distinct. Maybe even contrary to what I just said, but we are too focused on journalism as a universally applicable. Skillset toolset now it is that but because we have so much confidence in it. We do not demand enough subject, issue knowledge, out of journalists. And the first half of the course would be about how to learn how to learn.
about policies, how to learn about campaigns, how to find the right information, sources, how to know what kinds of information are credible and how to develop a
I often think of my writing as as having sort of an iceberg metaphor. Any individual piece is the tip of the iceberg, but the piece is only work because of what's beneath. They work because of the super structure of knowledge that hopefully hopefully if I've done my job, right? I've developed over a period of time, the subject matter expertise the place where I broke through you asked earlier about actually breaking through. And in my head, where I broke through came much later. The story that I broke through on was
Father, care and Health Care policy generally. And the reason I broke through on it was that long before. It was an issue. I had developed an idiosyncratic interest in it. This is when I was at UCLA on my blog and I adjust for no particular reason begun reading Think Tank Healthcare policy proposals, and then I checked out a bunch of books from the UCLA library and wrote A series, which is probably the most popular thing I done until that time called the health of Nations where I wrote up what now, I think you would
Characterize really is Wikipedia summaries of. How does the German healthcare system work? The French Healthcare System. The Canadian Japanese Healthcare systems.
And I'd spent all this time over those next couple of years, just writing and arguing with people about health care. And what that meant. Was that by the time, it actually became an issue in American politics to report on. I had a very unusually deep knowledge of health care policy. Not Healthcare politics. I didn't have great sources. I wasn't the person who could break stories necessarily, but I had a really I had read a lot of congressional budget office. Reports a lot more than a lot of the people who in theory were actually the
Box covering health care. And so when that began happening, I could deliver pretty good news reporting and Analysis very fast. Because when somebody said something or they release something, I had a model to put it into. I recognize like this is getting a little bit rambling, but I think this is an important thing to me, so I'm going to ramble into it anyway.
One of a core idea of vocs and a core idea of mine and journalist. And how I approach journalism is that the product is the reporters body of knowledge, not primarily the new piece of information. I think that a lot of Journalism and a lot of reporter processes workflows approaches Etc. It is not a bad thing. By the way. I just think there's room for different models. It is all built on.
And finding the next nugget of news and what people are really good at. And the way stories are structured is to highlight the next nugget of news. And that is, I do want to be clear. That's an incredibly incredibly important role that we absolutely need that, but I think kind of everybody was that. I think that's how the whole industry was when in my view, one of the really important roles that we can play is to surface.
And expose the body of knowledge, the model as I think about it, the context that makes that news make sense to us. So a lot of vaux's formats are explainers our card Stacks our videos. Our post, where do 15 graphs on something, what we are actually doing there. The The Meta point of all that is that we are building out ways to expose more of the
Work more of the reporters body of knowledge so that when we give you a new piece of information, we are laying out more and more. Clearly, why we understand and believe that information to be important and that actually does require you to think and learn and work in different ways and and I'll connect this a bit back. The thing that I think journals often don't do enough of is they're so focused party when they get moved on to a beat on finding out what's going on. On that bead. They don't build enough of the underlying
The structure, they don't read found the foundational text books on. Just, how does Health policy work? How does moral hazard work? How do Actuarial rulemaking work? And when you don't do that, you, you often cannot communicate policy topics or complex topics clearly because they're not actually clear to you, right? You know, the part that's new people are telling you which part that is new. But if it's not, if it doesn't fit really neatly.
Into a broader structure for you, then it's not going to come through clearly to the audience. And I think something we do a lot as we communicate complex topics on clearly to people. And then we blame them for not getting it. Totally now. And I want to say there are a tremendous number of amazing journalists health care and otherwise who know this stuff backwards and forwards is not a systemic critique, but it is something that happens a lot. And it happens particularly when we just move people around to beats because we figure the journalistic toolkit will
We'll carry them through and getting the news and we'll get them the sources. And we'll have the person who's ever before. Help them, when often, I think you actually need to spend some you almost need to go into a room for a couple months. What I move somebody on a bead often. I will sign them articles that are not about something new but that are about something really foundational in that area. Just so they will have to do the work of learning, a lot of the basic knowledge and the article, it's not going to break any new ground, but I'll know at the end of it, they have that. Well, this this makes me think of
Bastian younger also who said to me, once I asked him how he dealt with writer's block and he said, writer's block. Just means I don't have the ammo. He said I and I'm paraphrasing here, but you never want to fix a gap in your research, with a cute, Twist of prose and you just need to do more research. And I and I will, this is a bit of a different episode than a lot of my episodes. So I'll dive into it. I've, I will make it a systemic critique, so
I will go there because I have an instance deep-rooted insecurities about feeling ignorant of politics. And it's been largely by choice because I felt like I can't distinct the. I can't distinguish, oftentimes theater and posturing from fact. I don't know how to find what is reliable and what is not? I mean, I have a few ideas but the point being that when I ask sometimes the dumb questions in say, at dinners, because something has been unclear to me.
I often do get sort of a side. I from, I'm not going to name names with people in the media who have presented themselves in a very unclear way. And so one of the questions I wanted to ask you is, you know, I'm not the smartest guy, but I feel like I could maybe wait through this and figure at least, establish a basic understanding of how this democracy and government that we live under functions, but I imagine it being
I like reading the IRS tax code and just means impenetrable text. So for someone who said, you know, what, I'm actually, not only relatively historically uninterested in politics have actively avoided it. But I feel like I want to understand how this machine works. What books or resources. What approach would you recommend? If I don't? If I'm not going to make it a 20 hour, a week thing. So aside from Reading box, aside from reading books, because let me say a couple things because everything you said there. I think it's right on, and it breaks my heart, my
Foundational experience. The thing that I've always been trying to correct his after 9/11, when I began reading the news. I remember that I would read pieces and I think I only understood 45 percent of that. So many of the terms or names that were encoded with meaning. Didn't mean anything to me. So, Senate minority leader. Tom daschle. I didn't know much about the Senate. I don't really know what the minority leader does. I don't know anything about Tom daschle, but he's the key character. Yeah, so, I am not getting this and I remember slowly I was like now. It's
85%. And then it was 65 and then was 75. And now it's a hundred and forty because there's a lot of stuff that just isn't in the article at all, but I'm able to see and I remember a very experienced editor. Once saying to me, it took me 10 years to learn how to read a newspaper story and he meant that is like, I'm great. I've learned how to I thought we are fucking up. If it needs 10 years of training to learn what's going on here and understand like the game behind the game, the story behind The Story. So, a couple of things
This is we have an internal documented box called the Vox voice about, who are we supposed to be to the audience? And one of the premises here is it. If we have Maids, if we have taken something important and made it an interesting. It is always our fault and it is never there s. That is the idea that, you know, it's interesting the fucking IRS tax code. I have written about that a lot. It is a fascinating place. That is a place where we translate a lot of our values and ideas as a
Country into actual policy and the story is encoded in that are fascinating, but we often don't write them. Well, so, in terms of, how do you do this? The first thing I would say is that it is helpful to find guides. It is helpful to find people whose tone whose sensibility whose approach you connect to we. It's often said, I the people think in stories, but I also think that they prefer to Think Through social relationships.
And if you are able to build a relationship and intellectual relationship with Matt Iglesias or Paul Krugman or Ross, Douthat or Rebecca traced her or any Lowry. My wife is an amazing economics reporter. I think that actually helps out. So that's why blogging was really good for me because there were these people who I connected to, and even what I didn't understand exactly what they were saying. I had this relationship with them, that carried me through the second thing that I do think, is mmm.
Port. And in this might be me talking through how I think. But is really helpful for me to be writing. Now, common sections are a bit of a dying thing online, but Twitter isn't and Facebook threads aren't. And I think there's a lot of shit talking about all these terrible political Facebook friends, or nobody knows anything. But, you know, what writing half informed comments about politics on Facebook. That is a legitimate form of Engagement in a way that you learn about political life. And then I do think, I really think this has gotten better.
But I really fundamentally at my soul, believe this has gotten better. I think that in the last 10 years, both a number of outlets. Again, I really think like Fox but also a number of traditional Outlets who used to be much more mannered and buttoned up and for the experts have opened up their writing styles a lot and made it a lot easier to read what they're doing. Let me jump in just because I feel like you are one of the people I've developed somewhat of a relationship with. So I want to lean on you.
Since I've I'm not going to, I'm not going to delve into it with a lot of time on the internet because I'm just a verse to it for a lot of reasons, but my primary interest I'll just tell you is that I've worked on a few specific things, meaning legislation and in a number of states related to say like shark fin importation and some other things which have actually proven effective. But outside of that my interest in politics, is I guess twofold. Now, at this point, one is
Is that it's become clear to me. You can be a great chess player, but it's on some level, much more interesting, if you are able to influence the rules of Chess itself. So I have I feel an obligation to gain a better understanding of how it works. Also from an intellectual standpoint. So if there are any books, that ain't a, someone who has been actively avoiding politics for a long time, would read that could increase my level of understanding, that would be amazing. And then the second thing and we may not have time.
For today because this is going to wrap up in just a few minutes. We'll probably do a follow-on. Is my interest is in active change. And and I remember I was told once I'm not going to name the person, but the right-hand man of a very well-known politician said to me, he said because I was talking to him about this and he said, just imagine that you have maybe maximum Six Bullets per year, you get to shoot six. And what I see on the internet is a I don't want to engage in any religious.
Or conversations over politics where no one is going to change their mind. It's a waste of my time. I don't want to engage in dialogue where the end product is not going to be change for the better of some types. Of for me. I want to figure out how I can pick my shots and using the assets that I have. And so ons doesn't mean becoming a political writer, which I don't want to do how I can influence.
The rules of the game, right? And I've one of the chip. Well them Meandering a bit, but part of the challenge that I have, is that I get hit with. So many asks, I get hit with hundreds of asks, for different propositions this. I mean, what I did stand-up for and unfortunately passed was the foreign intelligence surveillance act way back in the day. I had a long conversation with Daniel Ellsberg. Some of you may know, from Pentagon papers about this and went public with it. I didn't
Change the course of history, but I also alienated half of my audience immediately and I'm trying to figure out how to how to play with all those factors, but it seems to start with at least figuring out the fuck is going on and how it actually works. What are your thoughts? So a couple things in terms of books and I should do more thinking on this, in the book, that is probably the most influential for me and thinking about how American politics really works. Is not the easiest read, but it's a book by a political scientist named Francis.
Called Beyond ideology. And the basic argument of this book, which is very, and if you want a condensed version of it, I actually wrote A New Yorker piece called the unpersuaded which leans on this book, very ugly. So you can you can read that too. But this book, what it shows is that a lot of our intuition about politics, which is it, when the president comes out and leads on an issue. That is how things get done, is flatly wrong. That actually, we have a system in which governmental power.
Is usually divided. It's very, very easy to block things. And usually, you have different parties controlling things. When the president talks about anything, the chance of the other party polarizing against it automatically becomes higher. And she has this great data set where she uses non controversial issues and shows a whenever the president talks about a non controversial issue, an issue where the two parties don't have positions. Like should we fly up rocket ship to Mars? The president talking about it leads to a sharp increase in party line vote. So there's a lot of
Information in some of those books. The gamble which is by a series of political scientist on the 2012 election. I think it's really helpful. It's a guy named Bob Edwards, who's written a series of books on presidential rhetoric those. Those are books that they're not the friendliest, tours through American politics, but they are the most information Rich that come to mind immediately. So that's one thing. The other I do not think there is a way to
Invest in politics aggressively, that will not lead to some controversy. These are things who are disagreement Israel, but I will say that people over invest in the headline issues. They are unlikely to change Minds on issues where everybody already has a very intense position where there is a lot of room and politics to change things is to raise the salience of issues that people do not currently care a lot about. So I think that something that is
And others have tried to do over the last couple years is raise. The ceiling is raised. The salience of the filibuster as an issue. That is important in American politics, that people should care about more and that actually has change. The filibuster has weakened a little bit. My friend Matt Iglesias and others have been very aggressive Ryan. Avent another's in talking about housing density, zoning policies, occupational licensing. These are City level policies that people weren't really thinking of, as big problems into the American growth story, ten years ago, but I think are now
Developing an appreciation for them and neither party is particularly polarized on them. In fact, there's a lot of agreement. So just by raising them as issues. There's been, I think a lot more opportunity to get things done. So to the extent that you can take people and convince them to care about something new. Where maybe the battle lines in American politics are not already extremely drawn. That can be very, very powerful. So, if I were you thinking about this, I would be not looking to weigh in on somewhere.
If there is already a raging War, but to weigh in somewhere where maybe people haven't thought about this, or maybe they underrate the importance of it, but would be open to deciding that this should be higher on their priority list because that can be a very powerful thing. And there's there can still be the chance to create an equilibrium around it. That is non polarized. So I definitely would have more conversation with you about this. I'm going to do some reading first this. I'm not a complete idiot and
Just before we're going to wrap up in a minute, but I'll tell you another reason why or I ate another moment when I actually became more interested in this as a skill set, and I want to very much develop a toolkit for myself, so that I can pick my shots. Maybe involve my audience, maybe not. But I, after my TED Talk which which at the end closes with a discussion of Education reform, really dove into it for a number of years.
And looked at public school education in the u.s. Spent a ton of time. I met with some lawmakers and I remember at one point.
Being really just beaten down, exhausted involved, teachers unions this, that the other thing, and I won't bore you with the details, but I ended up having lunch with the senator and he said to me, look, a lot of people come out of say, entrepreneurship business. Look at ballet. They think they've figured out how to do. One thing. They come in here. They try to change it and they get chewed up and spit out by this bureaucracy. They don't make any lasting change. He said, perhaps what you should think about and he wasn't talking about himself, but he said I hate to put it this way, but
Perhaps you should just raise a bunch of funds and buy yourself a lawmaker, meaning the support, and whatever it might be campaigning and so on. And I thought to myself a
I was thankful. This guy who'd actually has spent quite a bit of time together. I was like, for just like saying it out, is if that's how it is and then be, that's fucked up. That's horrible and really depressing and see if that's the way it actually is. I need to learn how to deal with that. I have a couple thoughts on this. Okay. And so, and then we'll wrap up, it'll end. We'll do a follow on because we have so much more the so, number one money in politics is toxic and it is poisonous and you
Right there. It erodes trust in the system and it doesn't work like that. It is not impossible to bribe your way into some kind of political outcome, but it is quite difficult. Particularly anything that people are thinking about and hearing about now and I used to be clear. I'm talking about bribes. No, I know. But I think the way people imagine that going, when you say by a politician is that you give the politician x amount of dollars or you fund a Super PAC for them, and then, you know, basically there's money changing hands so that they will vote a certain
in way on an issue on some issues where part of the issues that are more or less out of the public eye that stuff does happen on the big issues polarization party incentives. Electoral incentives are just much more powerful and I'll just say this year has been a powerful way of thinking about what money can and can't buy because across all of the elections. Jeb Bush was the best funded Republican, Hillary Clinton was by far, the better funded general election Challenger.
Money, it is a bad thing in American politics. There's almost no version of campaign. Finance room. You can propose it. I won't support, but I think people over eight its power. So let me give you a Different Twist on that, though. The thing people really underestimate. And really under invest in is city and state politics, tremendous amounts of change can happen. They're tremendously important, things can begin there and there is a lot less polarization, a lot less opportunity to access your legislators or the
other relevant decision makers and a lot of opportunity then for things to spread. So I mean you think about the way in which marijuana is being legalized slowly, but surely across the country that is beginning in States. You wouldn't be able to fight it in Congress first, but by starting in a couple states, are able to have a national impact. And one thing, if I could change the way people, if I could change anything, the way, people engage with politics. There's actually probably good thing to say. I wish people thought less about the president and more about Congress. And
Less
about National politics and more about state and local politics. I think, at every level we tend to try to default to treating politics like an episode of The West Wing where the president is a main character than they're all these other supporting characters. And the question is, can he make a stirring enough speech? That isn't how it works? And then also isn't where most of our power is individually. Look, you live in a big state. California is an important place where California goes oftentimes. So too does the nation and you have a much and also you have the insane
Totally fucked up. California ballot proposition process which for all of its problems does create a much easier access point to potentially hosting very, very large experiments that maybe the political system would not want to host normally. So, I would think less about Congress and more about the place you actually live with people who will actually listen to you who don't have as many folks, wanting for their attention and who maybe actually have a little bit more space to run because of it. Alright guys, I'm going to do a bunch more thinking on.
I'm going to try to get over my lifelong, allergy to the word and the concept and all of the dinner brawls that I witnessed my relatives, having to actually figure out how this works and do some good. So, to be continued as you're aware, can people find you connect with you and so on. So on the internet said, box.com that is our our website and it has all the normal.
Social media manifestations. You'd expect, I'm on Twitter at twitter.com slash Ezra, Klein have to podcasts it. If particular people enjoyed the politics section of this in mind. Enjoy the weeds where I talk policy with Matt Iglesias and Sarah Kliff every week. Then the Ezra Klein show where I do long interviews with very smart people and I'll try one, when closing question. If you could put short, message on a gigantic billboard to get a message out to millions of people, what?
Be. So, actually, I thought about this question when you've asked it before, my belief in the persuade ability of people is extremely low. I think it is very hard to persuade anybody of anything, particularly if you can only do a drive-by, so I'm not going to try to persuade anybody with my billboard, but it put a billboard somewhere on the 405 where, there's a lot of traffic and I'm going to find somebody more visually creative than me to create a billboard. That brings a little bit of Wonder, and happiness, and levity into a long shitty driver.
Drive. The people have to do every day. Maybe it'll just say you're almost there. I like it. I like it. That's actually that's a very good one. You're almost there as your. Thank you so much man. Thank you, ma'am, really fun. And to be continued this this is going to be offline or online for the podcast or not for the podcast. So you guys let us know. Let me know. I will have a lot of follow-up questions and for be listening, you can certainly find the show notes everywhere doesn't make any sense at all. You can find the show notes on everything we talked about,
Four hour work week.com forward slash podcast as per usual. And as always, thank you for listening.
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