Welcome back to Vox Conversations. I'm Sean Ramosferam host of Vox's Daily News podcast today,

explaining I've been coming to you, telling you about all the people who are continuing

the legacy of Ezra Klein with some fresh conversations. But you know what? Who doesn't love a

throwback? Who doesn't love a greatest hit? So today, none other than your boy,

Ezra Klein. He's going to be in conversation with Evan Osnos. You might know him,

staff writer at The New Yorker, an author of Joe Biden, The Life, the Run, and What Matters

Now? They're going to discuss Joe Biden's political legacy and what we can

expect from him in the next four years. It's another great conversation. I'm sure none of you

will object to hearing. Here's Ezra and Evan.

Evan Osnos, welcome back to the show.

Thanks, Ezra.

So congratulations on writing a Joe Biden biography right under the wire here.

Well, it could have been a terrible idea.

For the moment, it seems to have been a decent idea, but we'll have to wait and see in retrospect.

He's a hard guy in a way to write about, which I think is something that comes through well in your book because he's really different over time.

And so let me begin with this question.

How would you describe who Joe Biden was politically in 1980? And how is that

different from who he is politically in 2020? This is a really interesting one for me because

that sense of him not being static is one of the kind of real surprises for me and part of the

driving mission behind this project. I mean,

in 1980, Joe Biden was in the proportions of politicians kind of 80% ambition and 20% substance.

And I mean, he got to the Senate after all in 1973.

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