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The Ezra Klein Show

Our Lives Are an Endless Series of 'And'

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.611K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2025

⏱️ 66 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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 our screens into a normal spring day. What do you do with that? But that’s not new or exceptional. It’s the human condition. It exists for all of us, and it always has: life intermingling with death, grief coexisting with joy. Kathryn Schulz’s memoir, “Lost & Found,” is all about this experience — the core of her book isn’t losing a parent or finding a life partner. It’s the “and” that connects them both. How do we hold all that we have to hold, all at once? How do we not feel overwhelmed, or emotionally numbed? I found this to be a beautiful conversation. But it’s also a conversation — particularly at the beginning — about loss and grief. That was the part that felt truest to me, and so I hope noting it doesn’t warn you off. But I wanted to note it. Book Recommendations: A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel Spent by Alison Bechdel Who Is Government? Edited by Michael Lewis 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 recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to the Talbot County Free Library.

Transcript

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0:00.0

The

0:07.0

The I don't know how to hold all the feelings, even all the thoughts I should have in a day right now.

0:34.7

The emergency is here and the kids need help with their homework. I have

0:38.8

friends who have fallen terribly ill and others who have just seen their test results come back clear.

0:44.5

I spend days covering efforts to drip health care from people and torch the global economy.

0:50.3

And then I'm supposed to go to a birthday party. I looked down at my phone at smoldering ruins in Ukraine and Gaza and Sudan.

0:57.9

And then I look up into a spring day.

1:00.7

I know on some level this is always true that we are just more or less alive to it at different times.

1:08.0

But I guess I'm feeling more alive to it right now, more overwhelmed by it right

1:12.0

now, more curious about how to keep myself open to it right now. And then I ran into this

1:18.0

unusually beautiful book that's all about this experience. It's called Lost and Found. It's by

1:23.3

Catherine Schultz, a writer at The New Yorker, and it's structured around a loss, that of her father,

1:29.7

around a finding, that of finding and falling in love with her partner. And then it's this

1:35.2

really moving meditation on the way it's all connected. The way that we, quote, live with both

1:41.4

at once, with many things at once, everything connected to its opposite,

1:47.0

everything connected to everything. It seemed worth of conversation.

2:00.0

Catherine Schultz, welcome to the show.

2:02.1

I'm delighted to be here. Thanks so much.

2:03.9

I want to start by having you tell me a bit about your father.

2:07.3

Where did he come from?

2:09.5

What a wonderful question to begin with, because it has these kind of two valences,

2:13.7

the practical matter of where he came from,

...

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