Please stop doing AI episodes
If you did this many episodes on literally anything else we’d be sick of it too

From Derek’s into: “This is the paradox — at the very moment that the political commentators are writing obituaries for Abundance, lawmakers across the country are passing some of the most significant Abundance-style reforms in decades”

In last week's AI bubble debate episode, Kedrosky laid out his argument that Anthropic and OpenAI are massively exposed to customer concentration risk with such a significant proportion of their revenue only coming from a handful of buyers. Azhar then responded with the following:

The beauty of what Paul has just said, which is: Eight customers, 80 percent of the business — that’s 10 percent per customer. That would have to be disclosed in the S-1. So we have, actually, a very, very falsifiable prediction that we will be able to check when the S-1 comes out, if Anthropic does successfully go public. And then we’ll know: Was it really eight companies representing 80 percent of the business? And that’s really helpful, because if Paul’s right, that’s a bit exotic. It’s a bit spicy.

Well, it didn't take long for us to get an answer. Anthropic just filed their draft S-1 today, and while the big headline is the massive $80B loss they took in the first half of the fiscal year, it was also reported that they do in fact suffer from huge customer concentration risk.

Anthropic’s revenue growth is closely tied to a few big customers. The firm said around one-fifth of its $16.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2026 came from just two customers.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-revenue-growth-ipo-accaf0f1

I was already pretty firmly on Kedrosky's side of this debate, and the disclosures we're about to see as Anthropic and OpenAI approach their IPOs are offering staggering evidence of just how obscene this bubble is.

I just ran across a Yglesias piece from last year that argues that Abundance has been tilted towards addressing issues that progressives in safe blue areas value- the ability to build dense housing and transit, inequality, and climate/clean energy. It's paywalled, but the main thrust revolves around a passage from a Ruben Gallego interview shortly after the 2024 election that went semi-viral:

"It was a joke, but I said a lot when I was talking to Latino men: “I’m going to make sure you get out of your mom’s house, get your troquita.” For English speakers, that means your truck. Every Latino man wants a big-ass truck, which, nothing wrong with that. “And you’re gonna go start your own job, and you’re gonna become rich, right?” These are the conversations that we should be having. We’re afraid of saying, like, “Hey, let’s help you get a job so you can become rich.” We use terms like “bring more economic stability.” These guys don’t want that. They don’t want “economic stability.” They want to really live the American dream."

As Yglesias puts it, this is a vision of Abundance that is about "raising absolute living standards" as voters that Democrats don't reliably win conceive of them - or to use another direct quote: "Des Moines doesn’t need a better subway".

Personally, I'm not Latino but I have spent most of my life living in rural and suburban areas, and working around the types of people Gallego was talking about. I could probably count on one hand the amount of times I heard any of those folks say they wish they could take a train somewhere or buy a condo in a multiunit building downtown. But buying that new F150 with a big RV to pull behind it, or moving out of their apartment into a SFH in the suburbs are extremely common aspirations for a huge swath of Americans. What's the answer for Abundance proponents? Should we cater to what people already want to win support, or try to persuade them that they should reframe what they consider an improvement in their standard of living/the American Dream?

Hello everyone,

The mod team is in the process of preparing this year’s subreddit census that will run from Nov 1st to the end of the year.

We have some of the feedback from last year that are plan on implementing.

We wanted to ask the community if they had any questions they wanted to include this year.

Some ideas we had were some specific issue based questions like data center approvals, or a way too early 2028 presidential primary candidate support.

So please let us know.

Here is a link to last years results:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ezraklein/s/Sis3gOVQSf

So I recently listened to Ezra's conversation with Sherry Turkle about AI relationships and companionship. One thing that struck me was how surprisingly closed-minded Turkle seemed about the potential benefits of AI therapy and companionship. Even when Ezra brought up some interesting counterarguments (e.g. potential benefits for lonely or socially isolated older adults), I got the impression that she wasn't particularly willing to seriously entertain them. And this got me thinking about something broader.

Judging from real-life conversations as well as what I read on Reddit, it seems like many socially liberal people, who generally pride themselves on being open-minded and progressive, seem surprisingly closed-minded when it comes to AI and specifically with regards to AI in social issues (for this discussion, let's set aside economic and environmental concerns).

Whether it's AI in education, therapy, companionship, or alleviating loneliness, I often see these possibilities dismissed almost instinctively without much serious consideration.

My suspicion is that, for many people, this opposition starts with a gut feeling that something about all of this is unnatural or wrong, and the intellectual justifications come afterward. And ironically, this reminds me of the similar kind of intuition-driven reasoning that liberals often criticize conservatives for when it comes to challenging traditional social norms.

I consider myself somewhat liberal, and I'm not even trying to argue that all these AI applications in various social settings are necessarily good ideas. Some might work, others might not. But shouldn't being open-minded mean being willing to explore these possibilities rather than dismissing them outright simply because they challenge our existing notions of how things should work? Or am I just strawmanning a position that relatively few socially liberal people actually hold?

I find it strange that some people who are otherwise so willing to challenge traditional social norms seem to draw such a firm line when AI enters the picture.

Thoughts?

https://x.com/random_walker/status/2110010174890967374

I recall the reaction here to the "AI as Normal Technology" episode was mixed, so I think Narayanan's summary of the points he was making is helpful. He also notes that the producers told him multiple times to use less technical language, which is interesting because I recall many posters here saying he sounded like he was out of his depth, but that was a choice by the producers rather than a reflection on his technical knowledge.

Talking about a specialized topic on a podcast that has a big and broad audience is a balancing act. The producers stopped me many times during the interview to tell me I was being too technical (understandable!). I tried to be nuanced but this conversation is necessarily a distilled version of the arguments [Sayesh Kapoor] and I have made in our essays... which are themselves written for a somewhat broad audience and hence distilled in complexity from our notes and 1-1 discussions with peers.

(Full tweet below in a reply)

This is a good faith question, because I'm a big fan of Ezra Klein and his wife. I think they do great work. I just want to get some clarity on whether people think I'm crazy or not.

It seems like liberal activists, or people of a left persuasion in general, tend to live in wealthier enclaves, which is fine. You make good money. But they often send their kids to private schools. And in the rare case they send their kids to public school, the kids are usually in the honors or gifted and talented program.

I say this as a very progressive person. My wife is a public school teacher, and I've always been a big fan of public schools. My daughter had perfect grades and volunteered, but she didn't get into the honors track. So now she's in classes with more disruptive kids and higher rates of violence. Her school is the 21st most violent middle school in all of New Jersey.
So my opinion has shifted a bit. But I can't afford private school, so I'm kind of in a pickle.

I see the same thing at the political level. I live in NJ-11, and I met my congresswoman, Analilia Mejia (http://mejia.house.gov/), this week. She was very nice. She has a labor background and was Bernie Sanders' political director, and she talks a lot about equity. But I couldn't help noticing that the town she lives in has some of the highest property taxes in New Jersey. It's the kind of town people move to for the schools, because the public schools there are basically private schools.

I'm wondering what Ezra and his wife think about public versus private school, and where they send their kids. Would they send them to a school like the one my daughter goes to? Again, this is in good faith. I'm not trolling. I'm genuinely curious whether anyone else has noticed this trend, and whether anyone else is in the same pickle.

Again, I’m not being a troll. I just noticed this behavior.

Americans spend more time alone than ever, as parties, nights out with friends, and dinner gatherings become less common. Cellphones, social media, TV, and the internet have made it easier than ever to fill our free time without other people.

Research suggests friendship is less about instant chemistry than repeated time together. It takes roughly 50 hours to turn an acquaintance into a casual friend and more than 200 to build a close one. School makes those hours easy to accumulate but adult life doesn’t.

Today, Derek talks with psychologist Adam Grant, author of Vibe: The Secrets of Strong Connections in a Lonely World, about what we misunderstand about chemistry and closeness and how we might get people to start hosting a damn dinner party again.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Adam Grant

AI apocalypse, recession fears, sky-high mortgage rates, and now, the plague? Last week, a researcher at a plague institute in Siberia died after developing severe pneumonia, sparking rumors of biowarfare and fears of a new epidemic. How much of the story is fact vs. fiction, and what does it tell us about the growing threat of biological weapons?

Today, Derek is joined by physician and former White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha to make sense of the story. They discuss what’s really happening in Russia, the current state of bioweapons research around the world, how AI could make biological weapons more accessible, and what families, governments, and societies can do to prepare.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Ashish Jha

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

Hope you all enjoy! Here are some highlights:

• We spoke a lot about where Annie diverges from conservative opinions about individual responsibility. A conservative might feel that working-class Americans have a responsibility to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, or that poverty is primarily a product of individual choices. Annie largely rejects that view, and you can see that in how stringently she opposed things like work requirements in welfare policies. It was fun to hear her unpack why.
• How much of the time tax comes from the fear of fraud? There's a piece I referenced called "The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero" by Patrick McKenzie, which posits that private sector firms tolerate some degree of fraud to avoid over-burdening the experience for all other consumers. I wonder if the public sector should follow its lead.
• Towards the end, we had a pretty interesting discussion about the nature of DEI initiatives and whether or not they contribute to the time tax. I referenced a section of the Abundance book out loud to her, and she gave a really interesting response. Hope you enjoy that section!
• It turns out that Annie is the one who told Ezra to grow out his beard, lol 😅

Nate Silver joins DT to analyze the state of the midterm races, and why it’s looking like Dems may have the edge in several tough races. The most interesting point I heard was DT bringing up the idea that Democrats perceived “lack of a party identity” that hurt them in 2024 is actually an advantage in off year elections. Without a kingmaker like Trump, the party has been able to run different types of candidates in different states without having to conform to what any one person wants.

Personally, I think the only reason Democrats have a chance of retaking the Senate right now is because the GOP ran a bunch of absolutely atrocious MAGA candidates like Walker and Lake in winnable races over the last few years. In contrast, I think all the Democratic Senate candidates in swing states this year range from excellent (Talarico, Cooper, Ossoff), to decent (Jackson). There’s nobody who seems likely to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in a very favorable environment. I also think there’s something to the theory that the Democratic base shifting to higher education voters correlates with the type of people who turn out at higher rates in off year elections.

How can Europe's liberals stop the far-right? Matt Yglesias and Jerusalem Demsas debate the far right's rise in Germany, France, and beyond, and whether Europe's mainstream parties mishandled immigration and opened the door for the AfD and Marine Le Pen. They get into what Sweden and Denmark got right on integration, why deportations and asylum deterrence are so hard, whether liberals should ever govern with the far right, and why Europe's strange aversion to air conditioning is a gift to populists.
Plus a peer review on whether having more kids pushes mothers into remote work.

Relevance: Ezra often discusses how impordent houssing is. This article is about a particular form of high density houssing that may also help ameliorate Americans' social atomization.

Ezra's Sept. 20 column argued that "pacing the frontier isn't enough" and that labs should be stopped from having AI build the next generation of AI. Whatever you think of that, the politics around it don't sort neatly into left and right. Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon both back pausing new AI data centers but want opposite things on China, and some of the sharpest AI skeptics want the companies reined in as hard as the people most worried about extinction do.

So I made a quiz that tries to map it. It scores you on how big a deal AI is, how hard to rein in the companies, and whether to race China or make a deal (plus a few other scales), gives you one of eight types, and shows which of 22 public figures you're closest to.

Ezra is on the map. I placed him near the corner the quiz calls "Hit the Brakes" and right next to "Global Rulebook," since he frames loss of control as something the US and China should be able to agree to prevent. I'm curious whether people here think that's the right read, and where you land relative to him.

The public figure placements are best guesses from what people have said publicly, so corrections are welcome. Hope this is fun/helpful for folks!

The Argument podcast joins in on the AI discourse. Relevant to EK due to it being a big topic of his

Ok, so there is a thing I am genuinely confused about. I read the book a while ago and have been following the broader “Yimby” discourse for a long time. And I thought it was thing but it seems like there are actually sort of two different ideas here that may support a lot of the same reforms on paper but are actually kind of diametrically opposed.  

So the whole thing as it was pitched to me, as I understood it, was that Abundance was not just a sort of growth for growth sakes pursuit. That it was a pursuit of some specific higher ideal. That it was a return to the sort of utopian ambition of the mid century modernism of the past. On a practical level the idea was that the modern sort of controlled artificially constrained zoning regime was a problem. On the other side was something like a beautiful garden of density and mixed use urban life.  

But it seems like there is also this other thing that is also antagonistic to the current regulation regime. But it doesn’t like hate the mcmansion strip mall ideal, it venerates it . It wants to supercharge it, spreading vast suburban sprawl as far as the eye can see. In this model the liberated organic built world isn't a garden but rather a jungle. They seem to view the other ideal as sentimental and even an impediment to the project. 

So which is it?