The Ezra Klein Show

The international legal system was created to prevent the atrocities of World War II from happening again. The United Nations partitioned historic Palestine to create the states of Israel and Palestine, but also left Palestinians with decades of false promises. The war in Gaza — and countless other conflicts, including those in Syria, Yemen and Ethiopia — shows how little power the U.N. and international law have to protect civilians in wartime. So what is international law actually for? Aslı Ü. Bâli is a professor at Yale Law School who specializes in international and comparative law. “The fact that people break the law and sometimes get away with it doesn’t mean the law doesn’t exist and doesn’t have force,” she argues. In this conversation, Bâli traces the gap between how international law is written on paper and the realpolitik of how countries decide to follow it, the U.N.’s unique role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from its very beginning, how the laws of war have failed Gazans but may be starting to change the conflict’s course, and more. Mentioned: “With Schools in Ruins, Education in Gaza Will Be Hobbled for Years [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/06/world/middleeast/gaza-schools-damaged-destroyed.html]” by Liam Stack and Bilal Shbair Book Recommendations: Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/imperialism-sovereignty-and-the-making-of-international-law/8AFA91E6F502B2C4996BB14E1A548E7A] by Antony Anghie Justice for Some [https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=26507] by Noura Erakat Worldmaking After Empire [https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179155/worldmaking-after-empire] by Adom Getachew The Constitutional Bind [https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo208177761.html] by Aziz Rana The United Nations and the Question of Palestine [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/united-nations-and-the-question-of-palestine/E8241B33B6C07028765E5E6785AF5CDE] by Ardi Imseis 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 [https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast]. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs [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 and Isaac Jones. 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. Special thanks to Carole Sabouraud.

Drug policy feels very unsettled right now. The war on drugs was a failure. But so far, the war on the war on drugs hasn’t entirely been a success, either. Take Oregon. In 2020, it became the first state in the nation to decriminalize hard drugs. It was a paradigm shift — treating drug-users as patients rather than criminals — and advocates hoped it would be a model for the nation. But then there was a surge in overdoses and public backlash over open-air drug use. And last month, Oregon’s governor signed a law restoring criminal penalties for drug possession, ending that short-lived experiment. Other states and cities have also tipped toward backlash. And there are a lot of concerns about how cannabis legalization and commercialization is working out around the country. So what did the supporters of these measures fail to foresee? And where do we go from here? Keith Humphreys is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University who specializes in addiction and its treatment. He also served as a senior policy adviser in the Obama administration. I asked him to walk me through why Oregon’s policy didn’t work out; what policymakers sometimes misunderstand about addiction; the gap between “elite” drug cultures and how drugs are actually consumed by most people; and what better drug policies might look like. Mentioned: Oregon Health Authority data [https://app.powerbigov.us/view?r=eyJrIjoiODU1NDNlNzUtMDBkNy00NTM1LWE4NzgtNGEyNzQxYWY0NTU2IiwidCI6IjY1OGU2M2U4LThkMzktNDk5Yy04ZjQ4LTEzYWRjOTQ1MmY0YyJ9&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery] “Why are there so many illegal weed stores in New York City? (Part 1) [https://open.spotify.com/episode/0HCNiQZIQuvshOUbQVT8p2?si=645e1db0526c4878]” by Search Engine “Why are there so many illegal weed stores in New York City? (Part 2) [https://open.spotify.com/episode/7M4jt2Ui2AVfMwKMCUseih?si=55607abc12694f7a]” by Search Engine Book Recommendations: Drugs and Drug Policy [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/drugs-and-drug-policy-9780199764501?cc=us&lang=en&] by Mark A.R. Kleiman, Jonathan P. Caulkins and Angela Hawken Dopamine Nation [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/624957/dopamine-nation-by-anna-lembke-md/] by Anna Lembke Confessions of an English Opium Eater [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2040/2040-h/2040-h.htm] by Thomas De Quincey 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. 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 and Mary Marge Locker. 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 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. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Ultimately, the Gaza war protests sweeping campuses are about influencing Israeli politics. The protesters want to use economic divestment, American pressure and policy, and a broad sense of international outrage to change the decisions being made by Israeli leaders. So I wanted to know what it’s like to watch these protests from Israel. What are Israelis seeing? What do they make of them? Ari Shavit is an Israeli journalist and the author of “My Promised Land [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/165169/my-promised-land-by-ari-shavit/],” the best book I’ve read about Israeli identity and history. “Israelis are seeing a different war than the one that Americans see,” he tells me. “You see one war film, horror film, and we see at home another war film.” This is a conversation about trying to push divergent perspectives into relationship with each other: On the protests, on Israel, on Gaza, on Benjamin Netanyahu, on what it means to take societal trauma and fear seriously, on Jewish values, and more. Mentioned: “Building the Palestinian State with Salam Fayyad [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-salam-fayyad.html]” by The Ezra Klein Show “To Save the Jewish Homeland [https://www.commentary.org/articles/mortbarrgmailcom/to-save-the-jewish-homelandthere-is-still-time/]” by Hannah Arendt Book Recommendations: Truman [https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Truman/David-McCullough/9780671456542] by David McCullough Parting the Waters [https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Parting-the-Waters/Taylor-Branch/9780671687427] by Taylor Branch Rosalind Franklin [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/rosalind-franklin-brenda-maddox?variant=32154074939426] by Brenda Maddox 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 [https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast]. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs [https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html]. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon and Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Kristin Lin. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Michelle Harris. 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. Special thanks to Lydia Polgreen, Dalit Shalom and Sonia Herrero.

A decade ago, I was feeling pretty pessimistic about climate change. The politics of mitigating global warming just seemed impossible: asking people to make sacrifices, or countries to slow their development, and delay dreams of better, more prosperous lives. But the world today looks different. The costs of solar and wind power have plummeted. Same for electric batteries. And a new politics is starting to take hold: that maybe we can invest and invent and build our way out of this crisis. But some very hard problems remain. Chief among them? Cows. Hannah Ritchie is the deputy editor and lead researcher at Our World in Data and the author of “Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet [https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/hannah-ritchie/not-the-end-of-the-world/9780316536752/].” She’s pored over the data on this question and has come away more optimistic than many. “It’s just not true that we’ve had these solutions just sitting there ready to build for decades and decades, and we just haven’t done anything,” she told me. “We’re in a fundamentally different position going forward.” In this conversation, we discuss whether sustainability without sacrifice is truly possible. How much progress have we made so far? What gives her the most hope? And what are the biggest obstacles? Mentioned: “What was the death toll from Chernobyl and Fukushima? [https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima]” by Hannah Ritchie “Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216]” by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek “Future demand for electricity generation materials under different climate mitigation scenarios [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435123000016]” by Seaver Wang, Zeke Hausfather et al. Book Recommendations: Factfulness [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250107817/factfulness] by Hans Rosling Possible [https://profilebooks.com/work/possible/] by Chris Goodall Range [https://davidepstein.com/range/] by David Epstein 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 [https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast]. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs [https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html]. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin and Aman Sahota. 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. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Salman Rushdie’s 1988 novel, “The Satanic Verses [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/323746/the-satanic-verses-by-salman-rushdie/],” made him the target of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who denounced the book as blasphemous and issued a fatwa calling for his assassination. Rushdie spent years trying to escape the shadow the fatwa cast on him, and for some time, he thought he succeeded. But in 2022, an assailant attacked him onstage at a speaking engagement in western New York and nearly killed him. “I think now I’ll never be able to escape it. No matter what I’ve already written or may now write, I’ll always be the guy who got knifed,” he writes in his new memoir, “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738826/knife-by-salman-rushdie/].” In this conversation, I asked Rushdie to reflect on his desire to escape the fatwa; the gap between the reputation of his novels and their actual merits; how his “shadow selves” became more real to millions than he was; how many of us in the internet age also have to contend with our many shadow selves; what Rushdie lives for now; and more. Mentioned: Midnight’s Children [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/158932/midnights-children-by-salman-rushdie/] by Salman Rushdie Book Recommendations: Don Quixote [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/don-quixote-miguel-de-cervantesedith-grossman?variant=32122538426402] by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Edith Grossman One Hundred Years of Solitude [https://www.google.com/books/edition/One_Hundred_Years_of_Solitude/AfB8EAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover] by Gabriel García Márquez The Trial [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7849] by Franz Kafka The Castle [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/89248/the-castle-by-franz-kafka/] by Franz Kafka 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 [https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast]. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs [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 Isaac Jones. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Aman Sahota. 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. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Mrinalini Chakravorty.