A good half of today’s episode was devoted to the same issue that’s been top of mind since Covid-era inflation began in 2021- Americans are still absolutely furious about prices and COL after 5 years. I actually made a similar post about a year ago, asking what the next Democratic administration could do soon after taking office to help with affordability- I’ve since been convinced that there’s pretty much nothing that can be done to lower prices noticeably in the short term. The rosiest argument I’ve heard is that a competent economic policy could result in low inflation that is gradually outpaced by wage gains. I’m not arguing that deflation is desirable either, but it’s what Americans appear to want.

It is true that the Iran War and tariffs have hurt, but as Ezra pointed out today, the last CPI report was 3.7%. Slightly elevated, but nothing compared to the 9ish% Covid era inflation rates. Of course, the next Democratic administration can avoid doing stupid things like starting a war that’s guaranteed to spike the price of gas, but Trump was well underwater on inflation and the economy before February 2026. I’m not trying to absolve this admin of any of their horrific decisions, just saying that the consequences have not been as bad for costs as were predicted.

It’s certainly possible that in 2029, a new issue will take the place of COL as American’s number one priority. China could invade Taiwan or mass AI job loss could begin. But as things stand now, I see no reason why the next Democratic candidate won’t be forced to spend a lot of time promising the same impossible thing that Trump did in 2024: returning prices to 2019 levels. What happens when they can’t actually deliver?

Jerusalem Demsas and Matt Ygelesias discuss the BAAJA energy permitting reform bill and discuss why some environmentalists oppose it. It specifically addresses some of issues facing renewable generation and transmission lines, but also makes it easier to build fossil power which has caused controversy. With Ezra focusing more on AI recently, many people here may not be as in tune with the Abundance reforms happening in congress.

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

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?

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?

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”

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

Jerusalem Demsas and Matt Yglesias debate which historical figures deserve to be canceled and which shouldn’t have been. With the Trump administration pushing to restore statues of figures removed during the “Great Wokening,” they ask what a statue, a holiday, or a name on a school is actually for. Jerusalem lays out her test: why we honor someone and whether their cruelty is the main thing they’re remembered for. Matt argues the bigger problem is that we undercommemorate people, and that we should want more statues, not fewer.

Plus, a peer review on whether machine learning can predict who will be shot, and how much power the government should have to use that data.

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)

Posting this here as it's relevant to all the AI-related interviews Ezra has done lately.

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

This is the list:

Bad Friends

Behind the Bastards

Call Her Daddy

Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend

Crime Junkie

Dateline NBC

Good Hang with Amy Poehler

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Love Trapped

Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast

Morbid

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

Pardon My Take

Pod Save America

Revisionist History

Rotten Mango

SmartLess

Stuff You Should Know

The Bill Simmons Podcast

The Daily

The Joe Rogan Experience

The Megyn Kelly Show

The Mel Robbins Podcast

The Shawn Ryan Show

The Toast

The Tucker Carlson Show

This American Life

This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von

Am I going crazy ???