Best Of: Zadie Smith on Populists, Frauds and Flip Phones

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2025

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is one of my favorite conversations in recent memory — with the writer Zadie Smith. Smith is the author of novels, including “White Teeth,” “On Beauty” and “NW,” as well as many essays and short stories. Her ability to give language to the kinds of quiet battles that live inside of ourselves is part of why she’s been one of my favorite writers for years. “We absolutely need to gather in our identity groups sometimes for our freedoms, for our civil rights. There’s absolutely no doubt about that. But for that role to be the thing that is you existentially all the way down — that is something that I personally believe all human beings revolt from at some level,” she told me when we spoke last September, shortly before Trump’s re-election. It’s ideas like these that I found interesting to revisit now, in a starkly different political climate. In this conversation, we discuss Smith’s novel, “The Fraud,” which Smith wrote with Trump and populism front of mind; what populism is really channeling; why Smith refuses the “bait” of wokeness; how people have been “modified” by smartphones and social media; and more. This episode contains strong language. Mentioned: Feel Free by Zadie Smith “Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction” by Zadie Smith Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman “Generation Why?” by Zadie Smith Book Recommendations: The Director by Daniel Kehlmann The Rebel’s Clinic by Adam Shatz The Diaries of Virginia Woolf Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) 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. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I want to share today a favorite conversation from the recent past, even though it doesn't feel all that recent.
0:12.6	This is with the writer Zadie Smith. Her fiction is some of my favorite. She's an amazing writer of essays.
0:18.0	And we spoke in September 2024. So this is a conversation where a lot has changed since we recorded it.
0:25.4	It is pre-Trump re-election, pre-vib-shift.
0:29.1	But I think in some ways it's more interesting for that reason.
0:32.0	There's wisdom in what Smith says that I think is easier to forget now, or at least harder to hold on to.
0:38.4	I hope you enjoy it.
0:52.2	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show.
1:20.6	Sometimes you stumble across a line in a book, and you have this moment of, yeah, that's exactly how that feels.
1:26.8	At that moment reading the introduction to Zadie Smith's 2018 book of essays, Feel Free.
1:31.2	And she's talking about the political stakes of that period,
1:35.8	predicate of 2016, Brexit in the UK, Donald Trump in America,
1:39.3	and the way you could feel it changing people.
1:40.7	She writes, quote,
1:46.3	millions of more or less amorphous selves will now necessarily find themselves solidifying into protesters, activists, marchers, voters, firebrands, impeachers, lobbyists,
1:54.5	soldiers, champions, defenders, historians, experts, critics.
1:59.3	You can't fight fire with air. but equally you can't fight for freedom
2:04.1	you've forgotten how to identify. What Smith is describing there felt so familiar to me. I see it
2:11.5	so often in myself, in people around me. And you really actually hear it talked about,
2:21.1	that moment when politics seems to demand,
2:22.7	or world events seem to demand,
2:25.4	that we put aside our internal conflicts,
	...

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