Best We Re Not Scared Podcasts (2025)

1
Trump Is Building the Blue Scare 1:26:49

Play Pause

22h ago1:26:49

1:26:49

This is McCarthyism 2.0. Since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the Trump administration has been speed-running an attack on the “radical left.” And the tactics it has been using are darkly reminiscent of the Red Scare of the 1940s and ’50s. So what can that period teach us about the current moment and what the Trump administration might do next? How …

1
Spencer Cox Wants to Pull Our Politics Back From the Brink 54:46

6d ago54:46

54:46

The Utah governor is trying to model a different kind of leadership in a very dangerous political moment. The Trump administration seems intent on using the assassination of Charlie Kirk to crack down on what it calls “the radical left.” But Spencer Cox doesn’t believe that suppression will make Americans safer. For years now, Cox has been thinking…

1
We Are Going to Have to Live Here With Each Other 1:55:36

9d ago1:55:36

1:55:36

This is an episode in two parts. First, my thoughts on Charlie Kirk’s murder, now that I’ve had a few days to process it, and to see the unfolding reactions and responses on both sides. Then a conversation with Ben Shapiro — one that was recorded shortly before Kirk’s assassination, but that has a different significance after it. This episode conta…

1
If Democrats Have a Better Plan, I’d Like to Hear It 22:13

18d ago22:13

22:13

In a few weeks the government’s funding will run out. If Democrats vote for a new spending bill, they will be funding Trump’s autocratic takeover. What should they do? Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book rec…

1
The Supreme Court Is Backing Trump's Power Grab 56:32

23d ago56:32

56:32

Trump was losing in the courts. He’s not anymore. In the early months of the administration, the courts were proving a powerful check on President Trump, blocking many of his boldest actions. But those were the lower courts. In the past few months, the Supreme Court has weighed in, and it has handed Trump win after win after win. So what do these d…

1
Trump Is Building His Own Paramilitary Force 1:08:15

29d ago1:08:15

1:08:15

ICE now has the biggest budget of any law enforcement agency in America. “ICE and Customs and Border Protection have long been the most rogue, kind of renegade and certainly pro-Trump police agencies in the federal government,” explained Radley Balko, a journalist who’s covered policing for decades. “What I think we are seeing right now is Trump is…

1
MAHA Is a Bad Answer to a Good Question 1:22:26

1M ago1:22:26

1:22:26

“Make America Healthy Again” is a great idea — somebody should try it. A lot of the concerns animating the MAHA movement — chronic disease, the unhealthiness of the American diet, how profits warp our health care system — are serious issues. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hasn’t taken major actions to address them. Instead he’s gutted funding for scient…

1
Your Questions (and Criticisms) of Our Recent Shows 59:47

1M ago59:47

59:47

I do my best to respond to your critiques of some of our recent episodes. We got an overwhelming response to my interviews with the Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, the national conservativism theorist Yoram Hazony and the human rights lawyer Philippe Sands on whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. So in this subscriber-only Ask Me Anyt…

1
Trump vs. the U.S. Economy 1:23:40

1M ago1:23:40

1:23:40

What is going on with the economy right now? There are a lot of mixed signals. President Trump slashed taxes, but he’s also bringing in a lot of money through tariffs. Inflation is creeping up, but the stock market keeps rising. Eye-wateringly large investments are flowing to A.I., which could lead to an explosion of productivity but also mass job …

1
When Is It Genocide? 1:42:44

1M ago1:42:44

1:42:44

In December 2023, when South Africa accused Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice, I thought it was wrong to do so. Israel had been attacked. Its defense was legitimate. The blood was on Hamas’s hands. But over the last year, I have watched a slew of organizations and scholars arrive at the view that whatever Israel’s war on …

1
Mahmoud Khalil Tells His Story 1:22:28

2M ago1:22:28

1:22:28

Mahmoud Khalil was a leader in Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protests. In March, he was arrested by ICE agents and held for more than 100 days in a Louisiana detention facility. The Trump administration claims Khalil is deportable — even though he has a green card, married to a U.S. citizen — because he poses a threat to U.S. foreign policy…

1
Behind Trump and Vance Is This Man’s Movement 1:18:51

2M ago1:18:51

1:18:51

Vice President JD Vance gave a speech recently that deserved more attention than it got. Accepting an award at a right-wing think tank, he argued that there’s a fundamental brokenness in how we define who is an American. He explained that this is the root of many of our country’s problems: a national identity that has become too broad. That was als…

1
Best Of: Barbara Kingsolver on ‘Urban-Rural Antipathy’ 1:01:17

2M ago1:01:17

1:01:17

“It’s so insidious, people don’t realize it,” Barbara Kingsolver told me, describing the prejudice against “country people.” Kingsolver is one of those “country people,” as well as a literary legend in her own time, who set out to write the “great Appalachian novel.” And I think she did. “Demon Copperhead” won the Pulitzer Prize in 2023, and we tap…

1
Is Decarbonization Dead? 1:17:01

2M ago1:17:01

1:17:01

Biden passed the most ambitious climate legislation in American history. Trump just shredded it. What does that mean for the future of renewable energy in America? Where does the climate movement go from here? And is it too late for us to avert climate catastrophe? To answer these questions, I invited onto the show two climate experts: Jesse Jenkin…

1
Why American Jews No Longer Understand One Another 23:52

2M ago23:52

23:52

The consensus that held American Jewry together for generations is breaking down. That consensus, roughly, was this: What is good for Israel is good for the Jews; anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism; and there will someday soon be a two-state solution that reconciles Zionism and liberalism — or, at the very least, Israel is seeking such a soluti…

1
Why Trump Can’t Shake Jeffrey Epstein 1:09:36

2M ago1:09:36

1:09:36

MAGA has been infighting over the Jeffrey Epstein files. And that’s because the conspiracy theories around Epstein hit at the very core of MAGA’s whole worldview. Today’s episode looks closer at that worldview. Will Sommer has been tracking conspiracies for years now. He was a reporter at The Washington Post and is now at The Bulwark, and he’s the …

1
Why Does My Mind Keep Thinking That? 1:07:38

3M ago1:07:38

1:07:38

I have had a meditation practice for about 15 years now. I started hoping it would calm me down, and it has. But it’s also made me more aware of the strangeness of my mind. Certain thoughts emerge seemingly out of nowhere. Many of them return again and again. Why? And what relationship should you have to your thoughts when you realize you’re not th…

1
How the Attention Economy Is Devouring Gen Z — and the Rest of Us 1:05:50

3M ago1:05:50

1:05:50

Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani are both proof of how the ability to capture attention is power. And the attention economy isn’t reshaping just politics; it’s also reshaping the actual economy: the crypto market, A.I. venture capital, and how people, especially Gen Z, are making career decisions. Kyla Scanlon has emerged as a leading theorist on th…

1
The Disaster That Just Passed the Senate 1:11:22

3M ago1:11:22

1:11:22

President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is a bad piece of legislation. It includes trillions of dollars in tax cuts that are very much tilted toward the rich, along with savage cuts to Medicaid, nutrition assistance and green energy. And on Tuesday, July 1, the Senate passed it in a 51-50 vote, with Vice President JD Vance as the tiebreaker. But ba…

1
Mamdani, Trump and the End of the Old Politics 1:24:15

3M ago1:24:15

1:24:15

Zohran Mamdani created a new anti-establishment playbook — in his use of social video, his focus on affordability and his position on Israel. His assumed victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, trouncing the former governor Andrew Cuomo, was one of the biggest political upsets in years. And while the electorate in this case is pretty…

1
A New Middle East? 48:47

3M ago48:47

48:47

For decades, Israel has wanted American support to bomb Iranian nuclear sites. But U.S. presidents, both Republican and Democrat, have resisted — until President Trump. So, what changed? And what are the likely consequences of that decision? Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a longtime diplo…

1
Is This America’s Golden Age? A Debate. 1:42:29

3M ago1:42:29

1:42:29

Kevin Roberts, Kellyanne Conway, Ben Rhodes and I battled it out a few weeks ago on a stage in Toronto. This was for a Munk Debate on the motion: “Be it resolved, this is America’s Golden Age.” It might not surprise you that I was arguing the negative, alongside Rhodes, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama and the co-host of “Pod Save the World.…

1
Sarah McBride on Why the Left Lost on Trans Rights 1:35:22

3M ago1:35:22

1:35:22

President Trump’s actions against transgender Americans have been stunningly wide-ranging. They’ve also been popular. Trump has sought new restrictions on trans people in sports, schools, the military, prisons and medical care, and in government documentation. And a recent poll found that a majority of Americans approve of how Mr. Trump is handling…

1
Ehud Olmert on Israel's Catastrophic War in Gaza 1:13:53

4M ago1:13:53

1:13:53

It is impossible to overstate how hellish life in Gaza has been for the past 20 months. The death count is above 50,000 people — more than 15,000 of whom are children — and at least 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.1 million people have been displaced over and over again. Starvation is rampant. Hospitals are either damaged or closed; there are only 2,000 re…

1
Best Of: Salman Rushdie Is Not Who You Think He Is 1:00:24

4M ago1:00:24

1:00:24

This is one of my favorite episodes of the show in recent memory. It’s a conversation with the author Salman Rushdie about the experience of losing control of your identity in the world. This happened to Rushdie in the most extreme way. But many of us know some milder version of this — and increasingly so in the age of social media. Rushdie’s story…

1
The Emergent Trump Doctrine 1:04:18

4M ago1:04:18

1:04:18

Trump has been making some foreign policy moves I didn’t entirely expect. He seems determined to get a nuclear deal with Iran. He’s been public about his disagreements with Benjamin Netanyahu. He called Vladimir Putin “crazy.” And he keeps talking about wanting his legacy to be that of a peacemaker. So what, at this point, can we say about Trump’s …

1
Our Lives Are an Endless Series of 'And' 1:06:22

4M ago1:06:22

1:06:22

This is a bit of a strange episode. It’s an attempt to explore the difficulty of everything we’re supposed to feel in a day. We’re in a time when to open the news is to expose yourself to horrors — ones that are a world away, others that are growing ever closer, or perhaps have already made landfall in our lives. And then many of us look up from ou…

1
The Growing Scandal of $TRUMP 1:03:17

4M ago1:03:17

1:03:17

Steve Bannon famously talked about using “muzzle velocity” as a strategy: doing so much so quickly that you overwhelm the ability of the media to cover it. I think what the Trump family is doing with crypto is muzzle velocity for corruption. What they’re doing isn’t necessarily illegal. It would be if these were official campaign donations; the sum…

1
Trump’s Big Budget Bomb 1:05:27

4M ago1:05:27

1:05:27

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is the cruelest and most irresponsible piece of domestic legislation to be seriously proposed in my lifetime. When you think about this bill, you should think about risk. It would increase our risk of a fiscal crisis by adding a hefty sum to our nation’s debt, at a time when we’re alienating the countries that typicall…

1
How Groupthink Protected Biden and Re-elected Trump 1:20:16

4M ago1:20:16

1:20:16

This episode is about a seemingly simple question: Was there a Joe Biden cover-up? Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book argues there was. “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” details how Biden’s top advisers closed the circle around him and tried to conceal the extent of his decline. Bu…

1
Is Trump Losing? A Debate 1:13:54

4M ago1:13:54

1:13:54

Is Donald Trump eroding American democracy and consolidating power for himself? Or is he trying to do that and failing? Is this what sliding toward authoritarianism looks like? Or is this what a functioning democracy looks like? And how can you tell the difference? Two articles came out recently that offer very different perspectives on these quest…

1
‘We Have to Really Rethink the Purpose of Education’ 1:08:25

4M ago1:08:25

1:08:25

I honestly don’t know how I should be educating my kids. A.I. has raised a lot of questions for schools. Teachers have had to adapt to the most ingenious cheating technology ever devised. But for me, the deeper question is: What should schools be teaching at all? A.I. is going to make the future look very different. How do you prepare kids for a wo…

1
Best Of: Margaret Atwood on American Myths and Authoritarianism 1:07:16

5M ago1:07:16

1:07:16

A good rule of thumb is that whatever Margaret Atwood is worried about now, the rest of us will likely be worried about a decade from now. The rise of authoritarianism. A backlash against women’s social progress. Climate change leading to social unrest. Advertising permeating more and more of our lives. We originally released this episode back in M…

1
How a Red-District Democrat Is Navigating Trump 57:06

5M ago57:06

57:06

Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is one of just 13 Democrats to represent a district that Donald Trump won. Her distinctive economic message, and a willingness to buck her own party, helped her win re-election. But now the reality of the Trump era is coming home. Gluesenkamp Perez faced raucous crowds at town halls in Washington State recentl…

1
Trump vs. the Dollar 1:02:39

5M ago1:02:39

1:02:39

The U.S. dollar is the lingua franca of the global financial system. The fact that so much of the world relies on our currency has long been understood as our exorbitant privilege — the reason we have so much leverage in the global economy and are able to borrow at lower interest rates. But the Trump administration has a much more complicated relat…

1
Abundance and the Left 1:14:51

5M ago1:14:51

1:14:51

“Abundance,” the book I co-wrote with Derek Thompson, hit bookstore shelves a little over a month ago, and the response has been beyond anything I could have imagined. And it’s generated a lot of interesting critiques, too, especially from the left. So I wanted to dedicate an episode to talking through some of them. My guests today are both on the …

1
Ross Douthat on Trump, Mysticism and Psychedelics 1:35:29

5M ago1:35:29

1:35:29

I have no earthly idea how to describe this conversation. It’s about religion and belief – at this moment in our politics, and in our lives more generally. My guest and I come from very different perspectives. Ross Douthat is a Catholic conservative, who wrote a book called “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.” I’m a … Californian. But I thi…

1
The Very American Roots of Trumpism 1:13:46

5M ago1:13:46

1:13:46

After last week’s episode, “The Emergency Is Here,” we got a lot of emails. And the most common reply was: You really think we’ll have midterm elections in 2026? Isn’t that naïve? I think we will have midterms. But one reason I think so many people are skeptical of that is they’re working with comparisons to other places: Mussolini’s Italy, Putin’s…

1
The Emergency Is Here 1:12:20

5M ago1:12:20

1:12:20

The president of the United States is disappearing people to a Salvadoran prison for terrorists: a prison built for disappearance, a prison where there is no education or remediation or recreation, a prison where the only way out, according to El Salvador’s justice minister, is in a coffin. The president says he wants to send “homegrown” Americans …

1
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong 1:08:12

5M ago1:08:12

1:08:12

My colleague Tom Friedman thinks we’re screwed. That’s the first thing he told me when recounting his recent trip to China. It’s not just because of the trade war that President Trump is escalating right now. Friedman believes the whole Washington consensus on China — that the country is a hostile adversary — is dangerous and based on an outdated u…

1
Trump’s Tariffs, Market Panic and What Comes Next 1:00:14

6M ago1:00:14

1:00:14

After a week of market chaos, President Trump pulled back from the brink. But he didn’t pull that far back. He left a 10 percent tariff on most of the world and launched a trade war with China. It’s unclear what he will do after this 90-day pause or what countries need to do to satisfy him. But one thing that is very clear now is that our economy i…

1
Paul Krugman on the ‘Biggest Trade Shock in History’ 50:45

6M ago50:45

50:45

The tariffs President Trump unveiled this week were both bigger than most people expected and a lot more confusing. These aren’t the flat tariffs he proposed during the campaign. And they aren’t reciprocal tariffs, as he claimed in his Rose Garden speech. So what is Trump actually doing here? I knew my former colleague Paul Krugman would have some …

1
‘Our Kids Are the Least Flourishing Generation We Know Of’ 1:11:32

6M ago1:11:32

1:11:32

There’s something of a policy revolution afoot: As of March, more than a dozen states — including California, Florida and Ohio — have passed bills or adopted policies that aim to limit cellphone usage at school. More are expected to follow. Jonathan Haidt is the leader of this particular insurgency. “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring o…

1
The Last 2 Months — and Next 2 Years — of U.S. Politics 37:21

6M ago37:21

37:21

It’s our first subscriber-only “Ask Me Anything” of the year. The show’s executive producer, Claire Gordon, joins me to discuss your questions about the risk of a constitutional crisis and how Democrats, businesses and universities are responding to President Trump. Thank you to everyone who sent in questions. And if you aren’t a New York Times sub…

1
What Is DOGE’s Real Goal? 1:11:09

6M ago1:11:09

1:11:09

The so-called Department of Government Efficiency is great branding. Who could be against a more efficient government? But “efficiency” obfuscates what’s really happening here. Efficiency to what end? Elon Musk, President Trump and DOGE’s boosters have offered various objectives — cutting the deficit, eliminating fraud and abuse, creating a leaner …

1
The Origins of Abundance 1:12:54

6M ago1:12:54

1:12:54

To mark the release of our new book “Abundance,” my co-author Derek Thompson had me on his podcast, “Plain English,” to talk about it. We’re on book tour right now, so we’re doing a lot of talking about this book. But this conversation is different. It’s just Derek and me, and we get into the story of how the book came together, and all the people …

1
Democrats Need to Face Why Trump Won 1:18:04

6M ago1:18:04

1:18:04

After the last election, there were all kinds of theories about where Democrats went wrong. But now, four months later, we have a lot more data – and it tells a few clear stories. David Shor is the head of data science at Blue Rose Research, a Democratic polling firm, which does an enormous amount of surveying of the electorate. A few weeks ago, Sh…

1
Is Trump ‘Detoxing’ the Economy or Poisoning It? 1:01:20

6M ago1:01:20

1:01:20

It’s hard to understand the economic logic of President Trump’s tariffs. In our last episode, we tried, but with limited success. And that might be because the logic here isn’t entirely economic at all. So we wanted to spend an episode looking at Trump’s economic policies through a wider lens. Gillian Tett is a columnist at The Financial Times and …

1
Why Trump’s Tariffs Won’t Work 1:01:16

7M ago1:01:16

1:01:16

Wall Street thought Donald Trump was bluffing about his tariff plans. The stock market rallied after his election. But the reality has started setting in. Trump is doubling down on tariffs, even as he warned Americans that the economy may experience a “period of transition,” insisting this is just short-term pain. So what exactly is Trump’s theory …

1
There Is a Liberal Answer to Elon Musk 17:00

7M ago17:00

17:00

Right-wing populism thrives on scarcity. The answer is abundance. But a politics of abundance will work only if Democrats confront where their approach has failed. This audio essay is adapted from my forthcoming book, “Abundance,” which I wrote with Derek Thompson. You can preorder it here. And learn more about our book tour here. Unlock full acces…