On his most recent pod interview with Ross, Ross and Ezra had this to say about Christianity, Paganism, and a random Wiccan comment:

Ross: I think what’s more common is a desire among people who are connected to Christianity, who are Christian and so on, to say: Well, where can we find greater strength? Where can we find greater toughness? How can we be more effective political actors? How can we defeat our enemies instead of having them vanquish us?

You could call it a reaching for pagan energy that doesn’t go all the way to actually becoming pagan. And look, the truth is that if you go back and look ——
Ezra: But Stephen Miller is not a Wiccan. [Laughs.]

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard Ezra talk about paganism in the same breath and Christianity and I’m so confused. Paganism is an ancient pre-Christian spiritual path. And neo-paganism is a very large umbrella - not all of us are right wing Nazi-esque neo pagans trying to take over Norse mythology and make it white supremacist bullshit. Is this what he’s referring to?

Pagans are reconnecting with Spirit - the earth and the divine energy within us all. Pagans are nice people damnit lol. How is “vanquishing enemies” “pagan energy”? Ross even later points out that Christians have a long history of violence (Crusades).

Some pagans describe themselves as witches, and some as Wiccan. But why is a Wiccan comment connected to Stephen Miller and in the same breath as Christianity? Both Ross and Ezra laugh and I just don’t get it…

There seems to be a weird fascination with paganism - I’ve heard Ezra mention it several times in head scratching ways.

Can someone explain this to me?? Thank you!!!

Woke Two: Cancellation Boogaloo?!

What to make of the progressive rethink of Woke One.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have conceded to the excesses of what we must all now call Woke One. But the concession, and that characterization of it, raise some obvious questions.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

What was Woke One;

Which aspects of it do progressive leaders now concede were “crazy”;

Why did it happen in the first place?

Then, how relevant is any of this for near-term politics so long as Donald Trump is in power wrecking the economy? The country keeps losing jobs (or putting up extremely week monthly jobs numbers). Congress is about to give Trump more power to impose tariffs. And there’s no clear offramp to the war in Iran. Are Republicans simply fucked? If so, why hasn’t the war been a bigger political disaster for Trump? Could Democratic leaders forge a factional truce around a midterm-campaign promise to end the war next year? Or is it going to be 2007 all over again?

https://www.politix.fm/p/woke-two-cancellation-boogaloo

Further reading:

Matt on how the high cost of living is tearing Republicans apart.

Brian takes a stab at a Woke One origin story.

Why are Democrats voting to give Trump more tariff power?

The doctor advising Republicans on how to lose weight says his miracle diet gives him orgasmic, wipe-free poops.

A good chunk of the recent "exit interview" of Ross Douthat centered the early blogging experience, and I thought it was worthwhile to go look up what that actually looked like.

This one is a somewhat representative sample of Ross's output from that era, which paints a more stark view or what the "war blogger" era was like.

I don't want to like, jump too hard on something that is now twenty five years old and a position that has been at least in part abandoned by its author, but at the same time, it's also a reminder of what that "golden age" of blogging actually entailed, and the quality of thought that was elevated afterward.

Show notes :

My colleague Ross Douthat is leaving The Times after 17 years to become a correspondent on “60 Minutes.” Before he goes, I’m asking him a few questions.
Douthat has had a unique vantage point on the news media and politics over the last few decades. He’s typically held the role of explaining the right to more liberal audiences, starting as an undergrad, when he was a conservative columnist for The Harvard Crimson. Douthat has also lived through the seismic changes in the media from the both the inside and the outside: He’s made his career at legacy media institutions, but I first got to know him – and spar with him – as an early-2000s blogger (and I have the 20-year-old Bloggingheads.tv clips to prove it).
So what does Douthat make of the transformations he’s lived through? How did blogging change journalism? How did a Republican Party powered by evangelical Christians become a political party dominated by Catholics and pagans? What has he learned about persuasion from writing for liberal audiences? And with the resources of “60 Minutes” behind him, will he finally crack the U.F.O. story once and for all?
Mentioned:
Magnifica Humanitas by Pope Leo XIV
“Is It Time for a New Sexual Revolution?” with Louise Perry, Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
“Christopher Nolan’s Finest Trick” by Ezra Klein
Grand New Party by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam
Book Recommendations:
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
De Gaulle by Julian Jackson
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

I could not recommend this 36-minute interview any more highly. If you want an explanation for what's going on that transcends right vs. left and Republicans vs. Democrats, here's a highly plausible one:

Fresh Air : NPR

At first he alluded to not pushing back hard enough was due to time constraints and then when claire called out it was over 2 hours he completely pivot to the typical “this isn’t a podcast where I tell ppl how to think”.

Nobody was asking to be told how to think, but a bit of honesty and challenging your guests especially if they have been a massive propagandist that help accelerate this past decade of far right fascist tendencies.

Look, Ezra is super successful and has a massive following and he clearly knows what he is doing to get attention and stay relevant.

Weather he wants to admit it consciously or not, but having guests like Rufo on is a sure fire way to garner attention and make that podcast episode talked about by a large swath of the population, case in point.

To have more episodes like that is to not make the guest super uncomfortable or ppl like rufo to not want to come in the future.

It’s disingenuous to say it was because of some higher, philosophical/academic free speech virtue of why he just let ruffo spread propaganda with very mild push back.

Slowboring article about how Republicans are hurting their electoral chances by being so beholden to Trump

What’s big and ugly and has united Republicans and Democrats? A.I. data centers.

An overwhelming majority of Americans say they’d oppose a data center being built near where they live. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul just imposed a one-year moratorium on data center construction, and there are over 100 other local or statewide moratorium proposals across the country. A.I.’s explosive momentum over the last few years seems to have finally run into a force that could slow it down: the messy politics of getting things done in the real world.
So, is that a good thing, or a bad thing? And how much is the data center backlash about the actual construction of these buildings, and how much is it about A.I. itself?

Jasmine Sun has an excellent newsletter covering both the culture inside the A.I. companies and the anger that’s been building against them. And she just finished a reporting trip in the Midwest, where she interviewed people on all sides of the data center fight. So I wanted to talk to her about what she saw and what she thinks A.I. companies can learn from the growing movement against them.

Mentioned:

@jasmine’s Substack

Silicon Valley Is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass by Jasmine Sun

Sam Bankman-Fried on Arbitrage and Altruism (Ep. 145)

Is Your Social Life Missing Something? This Conversation Is for You. With Priya Parker, The Ezra Klein Show

Book Recommendations:

The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut

The Technology Trap by Carl Benedikt Frey

The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

The first year of President Trump’s second term was a whirlwind of action: on immigration, on trade, on political retribution. But things seem to me to be slowing down quite a bit. Trump is incredibly unpopular, and he’s now bogged down in a war with Iran that he doesn’t seem capable of ending. He often appears more concerned with his many White House renovations than with whether the Republican Party can hold the House and the Senate in November. So what’s going on in this administration? Where is this all going?
It’s hard to think of a journalist more qualified to answer those questions than Maggie Haberman. As a White House correspondent for The New York Times, she’s published some of the hardest-hitting reporting about Trump’s second act as president and the group of loyalists that now surrounds him.
Haberman, alongside her New York Times colleague Jonathan Swan, just published an extraordinary chronicle of this extraordinary political moment, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.” In this conversation, we discuss how decisions get made in this White House, what Trump has achieved so far and what’s really motivating him as we head toward the midterms.
This episode contains strong language.

Mentioned:
“Maggie Haberman on What an Unleashed Trump Might Do” by The Ezra Klein Show

“Trump Says He Decides What ‘America First’ Means” by Michael Scherer

Book Recommendations:
Takeover by Charlie Savage

Strangers by Belle Burden

I Regret Almost Everything by Keith McNally

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at
[ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com](mailto:ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com).
You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html

Discussion about housing on the argument podcast

Slowboring post about free markets. Yglesias is the relevance but it also discusses some of the market dynamics Klein has discussed