Berkeley Talks

Today we are revisiting an October 2023 Berkeley Talks episode in which Ezra Klein, a New York Times columnist and host of the podcast The Ezra Klein Show, discusses the difficulties liberal governments encounter when working to build real things in the real world. He joins in a conversation with Amy Lerman, a UC Berkeley political scientist and director of the Possibility Lab.“To have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of the things that we need,” begins Klein, who has since published the 2025 book Abundance with co-author Derek Thompson. “It’s so stupidly simple, so obvious, that it seems weird there could be any need to write articles or podcasts or truly, God forbid, a book about it.” “And yet,” he continues, “the story of America in the 21st century — more than that, the story of liberalism, and particularly California liberalism — is a story of chosen scarcity.” Klein argues that while liberal governments are ambitious in their aims, like addressing climate change, building a