Fareed Zakaria Thinks Steve Bannon Got One Thing Right

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

News, Government, Society & Culture

4.3 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2025

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On Monday night, in front of a live audience, I talked to Fareed Zakaria about the different political age he believes we’ve entered. Zakaria is the host of “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on CNN and the author of the 2024 book “Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash From 1600 to the Present.” To mark the release of the book in paperback, Zakaria invited me to have this conversation at Symphony Space in New York City. We discuss the “revolution” we may be living through, the forces driving it, and how the Democratic Party can adapt. Mentioned: The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism by Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson "The Time Tax" by Annie Lowrey "Behind Trump and Vance Is This Man’s Movement" by Ezra Klein "The end of progress against extreme poverty?" by Max Roser "What Does the ‘Post-Liberal Right’ Actually Want?" by The Ezra Klein Show Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm Book Recommendations: A Preface to Morals by Walter Lippmann The Coming Of Post-Industrial Society by Daniel Bell The Lost City by Alan Ehrenhalt Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. 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 Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Dan Powell and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The On Monday, I joined Fried Zakaria at Symphony Space in New York City for a conversation from a live audience about his
0:38.6	24 book Age of Revolutions, which just came out in paperback. Age of Revolutions examines the
0:45.6	historical roots for the ongoing rise of far-right populism, but it does so by looking back at
0:51.4	other periods in which politics began to topple and fall into upheaval,
0:56.6	when the things people thought were possible, the things he knew were true,
1:00.5	stopped being true, and new forms of politics became possible.
1:05.1	Book, obviously, with a lot of relevance to this era,
1:08.4	and we even had some audience questions at the end, so I thought I would share it on the feed.
1:12.1	Without further ado, here's our conversation.
1:17.2	All right.
1:21.9	Hello, everybody.
1:22.6	Thank you for being here tonight.
1:23.7	Welcome to Symphony Space.
1:32.5	I'm Mr. Klein, a calmness and podcast host at the New York Times, and this tonight is going to be a podcast. So I've been reminded to remind you to please silence
1:38.0	your phones because it's really hard to edit out. And I'm so thrilled to be here with Freed Zakaria
1:43.3	tonight, the host of Freed Zakaria GPS on CNN,
1:48.3	and author of the great book Age of Revolutions, Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present,
1:54.9	which came out in paperback on November 4th. Congratulations.
2:00.5	Thank you so much, Ezra.
2:02.0	It's a huge pleasure to be here.
2:03.4	This is book number what for you?
	...

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