This is Gavin Newsom - And, This is Ezra Klein

00:00:00.820 In Mississippi, Yazoo Clay keeps secrets.

00:00:04.800 7,000 bodies out there, or more.

00:00:08.580 A forgotten asylum cemetery.

00:00:10.580 It was my family's mystery.

00:00:13.040 Shame, guilt, propriety.

00:00:16.060 Something keeps it all buried deep.

00:00:18.780 Until it's not.

00:00:20.280 I'm Larison Campbell, and this is Under Yazoo Clay.

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00:00:30.000 What's up, I'm Laura, host of the podcast Courtside with Laura Carrenti,

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00:01:12.800 Hey, I'm Jay Shetty.

00:01:14.240 This episode, Lizzo opens up like never before about self-love, transformation,

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00:01:25.020 It's not me anymore.

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00:01:42.020 The number one hit podcast, The Girlfriends, is back with something new,

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00:02:20.300 Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you?

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00:02:52.740 Well, coming up next, I have Ezra Klein here in studio talking about his new book

00:02:58.340 that he co-authored with Derek Thompson called Abundance.

00:03:02.140 In this book, Ezra does not hold back on taking a very critical look at democratic governance

00:03:11.020 all across the United States of America, in particular in my home state of California.

00:03:16.220 This is Gavin Newsom.

00:03:28.000 And this is Ezra Klein.

00:03:31.960 Ezra, it is great to have you here in studio.

00:03:34.640 Thanks for having me here for this weird inversion.

00:03:36.500 Weird inversion.

00:03:37.460 And you've been, I mean, you've been all over the place.

00:03:39.340 You got a new book, Abundance, and we'll jump right into that.

00:03:41.660 But I want to just frame a little bit of the relationship that we have that goes back,

00:03:44.980 and you may not even remember this.

00:03:46.660 I was a new mayor in San Francisco and was asked by Bill Maher to go on a show.

00:03:52.400 I remember this.

00:03:53.060 And you were one of the panelists.

00:03:54.760 And I'll never forget just sparring with Bill, obviously, and then you.

00:03:59.580 And after the show was done and we were all finishing, you had left.

00:04:03.020 Maher goes up to me and he goes, who the hell was that?

00:04:05.860 And I'm like, I know.

00:04:07.500 Who the hell was that?

00:04:08.680 And it was you.

00:04:09.860 We were like, whoa.

00:04:10.900 So just for both of us didn't have a, you know, I was relatively new.

00:04:16.040 Bill's been seasoned pro.

00:04:16.980 You were lieutenant governor then.

00:04:18.100 I don't think you were there then.

00:04:18.460 Maybe I was lieutenant governor.

00:04:19.320 Wasn't he?

00:04:19.720 You know, was I still, was I lieutenant governor?

00:04:21.180 I'm pretty sure you were lieutenant governor.

00:04:22.460 So maybe I was lieutenant governor.

00:04:22.960 But I was like, anyway, I'd been on the show a bunch of times, but you were, you had a next

00:04:26.820 level capacity to analyze things and to deliver a point of view.

00:04:32.520 And so it's not surprising to me that so much of that, including that conversation we probably

00:04:38.220 had on that studio and set is reflected in what you've been focused on for decades and decades.

00:04:42.980 I think about your book from that era, Republic 2.0, it was called, right?

00:04:46.240 Yeah, it was Citizenville.

00:04:47.440 Citizenville?

00:04:47.900 Yeah, how to take the town square digital and reinvent government.

00:04:51.840 How about that?

00:04:52.580 Yeah, it's something we should thread into this conversation.

00:04:54.880 I think people have forgotten that era of Gavin Newsom.

00:04:56.860 Yeah, well, I think in so many aspects, I was reading this book and you're reflected

00:05:02.980 in this.

00:05:03.420 I mean, this has been my struggle as a former mayor.

00:05:05.860 You chronicle San Francisco, California disproportionately.

00:05:10.600 But this book is fundamentally about the future and you framing the future in abundant terms.

00:05:16.220 But it's also a real shot against liberalism in many respects, against the world we created

00:05:22.920 now competing against us in terms of process and courts and laws and rulemaking and all

00:05:30.460 of that that's created so much of this cost of living dynamic.

00:05:33.520 So tell us, what was the inspiration of the book?

00:05:35.520 Tell us a little bit about what abundance is about.

00:05:37.640 I mean, the reason the book is so rooted in California is that I am.

00:05:41.380 I mean, so this book is co-authored with Derek Thompson from The Atlantic.

00:05:44.060 And so we both have our own things we bring to it.

00:05:46.500 But I grew up in Irvine, as you know.

00:05:48.740 So I went to the U.C. system, then I went to D.C. for 12 or 13, 14 years.

00:05:54.540 And I spent a bunch of time in D.C. covering a political system where the problem was Republicans

00:05:59.800 were bad oftentimes.

00:06:01.740 The things that I wanted to see happen were not happening there because they were being

00:06:06.320 blocked by the Republican Party.

00:06:08.100 And then in 2018, I moved back here.

00:06:10.040 I moved back to Oakland and then to San Francisco.

00:06:13.060 And I looked around and it just wasn't doing well.

00:06:17.140 People weren't happy.

00:06:17.880 People were leaving.

00:06:19.280 I mean, I mean, you know this.

00:06:20.120 You're a retail politician.

00:06:21.020 Like you can sense people's anger when they find out you have anything to do with politics.

00:06:25.000 They tell you real quick.

00:06:26.860 And we could see the housing crisis had metastasized into something that was genuinely now a crisis,

00:06:31.780 not just homes are expensive.

00:06:33.400 Right.

00:06:33.940 California high-speed rail has always lit me on fire.

00:06:36.840 We'll get to that.

00:06:37.780 Yeah, we'll get to that.

00:06:38.460 And when I began to, and I was thinking about clean energy where your, I mean, the goals

00:06:43.200 that you have set for clean energy in this state are remarkable.

00:06:47.020 And in order to achieve them here or nationally, because the Inflation Reduction Act was passing

00:06:50.980 around this time too, that I was thinking about a lot of this, we have to build faster

00:06:55.100 than we have ever built.

00:06:56.160 And the laws don't really permit that.

00:06:59.280 And so the thing that I began thinking a lot about was that there is something liberalism

00:07:03.420 is good at and knows how to look for, which is where can we subsidize something that people

00:07:07.460 need?

00:07:08.420 But there's something liberalism is bad at because it doesn't know how to look for it,

00:07:12.500 which is how do we create more?

00:07:14.400 How do we make it possible to build more of things people need?

00:07:17.360 And not only are we not good at pursuing that, we don't even realize how often we are getting

00:07:22.420 in the way of it, how often we are the problem.

00:07:25.400 There is, I think, something bracing as a liberal about asking this question of why in the places

00:07:31.840 where people who agree with me govern, you and I, I don't think have that different politics,

00:07:35.620 aren't the outcomes what I want to see?

00:07:37.580 Why can't I go say to the Texans or the Floridians, no, no, no, no, we, you just have to do our policies

00:07:43.840 from California.

00:07:44.840 And that's the thing I'm grappling with here.

00:07:47.180 No, and I appreciate that.

00:07:48.360 And we'll get to that question because I think it's a fundamental question.

00:07:52.420 And it's interesting what you sort of define from that prism that's important because what

00:07:59.400 people are actually looking for isn't necessarily what you are identifying specifically, I would

00:08:06.700 challenge as the problem.

00:08:09.380 That said, what you identify as the problem, I completely agree with that.

00:08:13.480 I was going back to my speech.

00:08:15.100 My first speech as governor of the state of California, it might as well-

00:08:18.120 It's quoted in here.

00:08:18.840 Yeah, literally said, if you can build a sports stadium with these new rules and fast-tracked

00:08:25.460 judicial process and what we refer to, and we'll get to CEQA, are California rules that

00:08:29.540 go back to quite literally Ronald Reagan in 1970 as it relates to environmental review.

00:08:34.400 It should work for homelessness.

00:08:36.020 It should work for housing.

00:08:37.400 And I announced that day an effort to sue up to 47 cities.

00:08:42.500 We started with one, Huntington Beach, California.

00:08:44.860 Doesn't make you popular as governor to announce a lawsuit against your old city because they

00:08:48.900 weren't meeting their zoning requirements under our housing element.

00:08:52.480 So much of that, again, reflected in this friction and your own reflected frustration and lived

00:08:58.560 experience in the state of California.

00:09:01.460 But my point is this.

00:09:03.120 As a practitioner, it's a very different reality.

00:09:06.320 But what you identify, I completely embrace.

00:09:10.160 These labyrinths of rules, federal rules, state rules, absolutely.

00:09:15.620 Localism, though.

00:09:16.600 And I want to talk about that.

00:09:18.140 Localism is determinative.

00:09:20.280 And you pick on, understandably, San Francisco.

00:09:24.380 But you can look at almost any city, including a Republican-held city like Huntington Beach.

00:09:28.700 And these same rules and restrictions apply there in the same frustrations.

00:09:35.780 So from the prism of left versus right, you take the shot against liberals.

00:09:40.560 But can't we argue that there is sort of a quality of consideration, nimbyism, that persists

00:09:47.240 in rural and red parts of the country as well?

00:09:49.840 Let me flip this because to shadow box around the fact that you know more about California

00:09:55.000 governance than I ever will in a thousand years of doing this would be ridiculous.

00:09:58.700 Why is it easier to build homes in Texas and California?

00:10:01.420 Well, you establish that in the book.

00:10:03.320 In Houston, you make the point.

00:10:04.440 I think it was 70,000 permits in 2023, just 7,500 in a much smaller city, San Francisco,

00:10:10.360 but understandable contrast.

00:10:11.620 But a city with more demand.

00:10:12.660 More demand.

00:10:13.380 And it's simply because they have no zoning.

00:10:15.760 They have land use considerations.

00:10:17.180 But Austin has zoning.

00:10:18.580 Yeah, but not Houston in the context of that frame.

00:10:20.740 The thing I'm getting at here, which I really would like your...

00:10:23.740 The thing you just said, right, about localism, it's so important.

00:10:26.800 And this is so much the conversation I'd love for us to have here.

00:10:29.540 Because the texture that you have been grappling with of why do things that you want to have

00:10:34.340 happen not happen is, I think, a really interesting thing to add to it.

00:10:38.200 But when you're saying, well, you know, is this really a problem for liberals?

00:10:41.560 It's easier to build in Texas and Florida.

00:10:45.780 They're not just in California, but in California or New York.

00:10:48.520 Right.

00:10:48.900 Right.

00:10:49.120 The cost of living crisis is worse in blue states.

00:10:51.620 And a little bit of that is blue states are a place a lot of people want to live.

00:10:54.520 But you should be able to.

00:10:56.820 Yeah.

00:10:57.080 In places where you're governing for the working class, in theory.

00:10:59.860 And your point is a point, just to level set people listening, I completely agree.

00:11:04.340 This notion of the supply-demand imbalance.

00:11:06.280 I mean, you're making an econ 101 argument, and that supply-demand imbalance is next level

00:11:12.160 in the state of California.

00:11:13.340 We're simply not building enough housing.

00:11:15.180 And that goes to, I mean, and you correctly identify nimbyism and people, you know, incumbent

00:11:21.000 protection racket, so to speak, not just from a corporate perspective, but someone who's

00:11:25.340 very satisfied with their backyard and their views, their home and their community.

00:11:29.580 They don't want density.

00:11:30.540 They don't want other people moving in.

00:11:31.980 They don't want any infrastructure built around it as it relates to transportation.

00:11:35.460 They're very satisfied with what they have.

00:11:37.900 And I think, and they abuse, in some respects, a lot of these rules that have been around

00:11:42.020 decades and decades to advance that aim.

00:11:45.080 So you identified all this, I think, pretty well as a problem for the state and for you.

00:11:49.240 So when you gave a state of the state a couple years back, I'm genuinely forgetting the number.

00:11:53.660 What was the housing goal you set?

00:11:55.260 We said, well, we had an audacious goal that was a study of studies that identified what

00:12:01.740 the state would need in order to address the supply, demand, and balance.

00:12:06.940 But we made the point, we were going through a legally binding process, what we refer to

00:12:11.680 as our RENA goals.

00:12:13.140 And we've established that.

00:12:14.860 Here is the legally binding goal, 2.5 million units by 2030.

00:12:20.040 And that is the established state policy.

00:12:22.140 And that's the goal.

00:12:22.600 So you're not on track for that?

00:12:24.100 Not even close.

00:12:24.880 Why?

00:12:25.560 For, well, a number of reasons.

00:12:27.200 Macroeconomic.

00:12:27.900 I mean, I think you have to be fair as it relates to the realities of what just occurred

00:12:31.760 as it relates to the constraints around the markets.

00:12:35.100 You're saying that interest rates are high.

00:12:36.160 Interest rates are high.

00:12:37.320 Obviously, we came out of a very difficult period during COVID.

00:12:41.660 But fundamentally, because of the inability to get local government to get out of the way

00:12:49.960 and allow for more construction.

00:12:52.360 And that's why we created a housing accountability unit.

00:12:54.860 That's why we've taken 800 actions.

00:12:57.480 That's why we've unlocked 7,500 units.

00:13:00.220 And that's why we have advanced 42 CEQA reforms and some of the most significant housing reforms

00:13:06.400 in California history as it relates to ADUs, which you identify.

00:13:10.020 ADUs now you can build.

00:13:11.240 Kind of you can finally do in single family home zoning and duplexes.

00:13:15.840 But at the end of the day, state visions realized back to localism.

00:13:20.060 Why did the ADU effort work and the single family housing or multifamily housing didn't?

00:13:26.520 I mean, those were big bills and we, YIMBYs, greeted them with delight.

00:13:31.680 But I would say everybody would say that, what was it, SB9?

00:13:35.460 Yeah, SB9, SB6.

00:13:36.820 The cities have made it so those don't actually, it doesn't build as much housing as you think.

00:13:40.780 That's it.

00:13:41.160 And that's why we created this housing accountability unit, to drive more responsibility at the local

00:13:46.420 level and providing technical assistance.

00:13:49.480 It's not just a stick.

00:13:50.800 It's also a carrot.

00:13:52.320 But no, look, there's, but that's the construct, right?

00:13:55.080 I mean, that's a classic example.

00:13:56.560 People like their neighborhoods.

00:13:58.420 That's the foundation of NIMBYism.

00:14:00.080 And I, look, this NIMBYism frame, which is yes in my backyard, for those wondering the

00:14:04.640 hell we're even talking about, I embrace it.

00:14:08.280 I celebrate.

00:14:08.820 I don't think there's been a more NIMBY governor in California's history.

00:14:11.760 I mean, it's why we've signed so many of these bills and supported many of these bills.

00:14:15.560 But you're right, that application, a lot of these are new reforms.

00:14:19.080 They're just in the last few years in this high interest rate environment.

00:14:21.900 So we'll see how quickly things unlock as interest rates drop down.

00:14:25.800 But fundamentally, it's the NIMBYism that drags it.

00:14:28.360 Let me ask you something about the housing reforms as I flip the whole table of this

00:14:32.040 podcast.

00:14:33.560 It's a problem with having a podcast host on.

00:14:36.640 So during the election, when Kamala Harris and then Barack Obama at the DNC, actually

00:14:42.960 the other way around Barack Obama, then Kamala Harris, were up there talking about the need

00:14:46.540 to build 3 million new homes, right?

00:14:48.360 And really saddened like NIMBYs from the stage.

00:14:50.300 It's great.

00:14:50.880 I was thinking, man, that is a huge intellectual victory for a movement that didn't exist.

00:14:55.360 Like 25 minutes ago.

00:14:56.560 100%.

00:14:56.820 Then I started thinking and started running back to the data.

00:15:00.220 I'm like, okay, how's it working out?

00:15:01.880 And you look in San Francisco and housing starts aren't up.

00:15:04.840 And you look in LA and they're not up.

00:15:06.340 You look in California.

00:15:07.940 Not talking here about ADUs, but housing starts in January 2025 were lower than in 2015.

00:15:12.420 I began thinking to myself, oh shit, we actually have won an intellectual argument without winning

00:15:19.340 the policy.

00:15:20.240 So I began doing some reporting because I knew how many, I mean, not literally how many, but

00:15:23.560 I knew there's been a pretty torrid pace with you and, you know, Scott Wiener and Buffy

00:15:27.980 Wicks and a bunch of other housing champions here.

00:15:29.360 Yeah, these are local elected officials in the last century.

00:15:32.000 Yeah, passing big bills.

00:15:32.560 Yeah.

00:15:32.740 And so I began calling developers in San Francisco and saying, well, what's going on here?

00:15:38.000 Why don't I see a movement in how much you're building?

00:15:41.100 And what they all told me was, I didn't end up writing this piece.

00:15:44.020 I just didn't have time, but I meant to for some time was all these fast track bills required

00:15:49.980 me to take on a bunch of new standards and requirements, prevailing wages and environmental

00:15:57.300 standards and this and that, that made it more expensive for me to take the fast track than

00:16:01.780 just do what I'm doing.

00:16:02.800 It wouldn't pencil out for me to do it.

00:16:04.780 Right.

00:16:04.980 Now, look, I don't know if that's 100% true.

00:16:07.660 I can see you.

00:16:08.580 Yeah.

00:16:09.140 But if that's not it, why do you think all those bills didn't lead to?

00:16:14.580 Well, a lot of them have.

00:16:15.640 I mean, we can talk about it.

00:16:17.180 You know, I don't want to get into really parochial politics, but we can talk about a

00:16:20.660 500 unit project on Stevenson Street in San Francisco was never going to get done until

00:16:24.700 the state intervened and compelled the hand of the city to actually move forward again.

00:16:29.940 I mean, you and you've got an ideological war that's going on in progressive cities that

00:16:34.280 don't they don't believe in the supply demand framework.

00:16:36.480 They don't believe in this notion of abundance.

00:16:38.880 Fundamentally, they have a degrowth mindset, which you talk a lot about, or at least write

00:16:42.800 about in the book.

00:16:44.100 And so you're struggling with that ideological spectrum.

00:16:47.420 But San Francisco, I mean, it's just infamously just loves its neighborhoods and doesn't want

00:16:51.700 to see it up zone.

00:16:52.620 Don't want to see the density.

00:16:53.860 So they're constantly pushing back against this.

00:16:56.440 And we are, as a state, finally intervening in ways the state has never intervened in the

00:17:00.580 past.

00:17:00.800 So I think it's a little too early to sort of assert the sort of fatalist or have a fatalist

00:17:07.080 notion of what hasn't yet occurred when, in fact, we're starting now to flex our muscles

00:17:13.220 and the application of these laws are now starting to fully go into effect.

00:17:18.020 And ultimately, we want to see them materialize and manifest.

00:17:21.740 But I think that's the friction.

00:17:23.480 But look, let me just stipulate again.

00:17:25.260 We're not arguing here.

00:17:26.460 You're 100% right.

00:17:27.300 I'm just asking.

00:17:28.020 I'm curious.

00:17:28.680 No, but also you're not, you know, you talk about as a bagel liberalism.

00:17:32.680 What was your frame?

00:17:33.280 Everything bagel liberalism.

00:17:34.060 Yeah, I get it.

00:17:34.800 Everything bagel liberalism.

00:17:35.360 We stack everything together.

00:17:36.480 You even were a little critical of the Biden administration and the Chips and Science

00:17:39.800 Acts and the Infrastructure Bill.

00:17:40.940 But this stuff happens there.

00:17:41.560 Because they did the same thing.

00:17:42.780 Look, you go to the rural broadband effort, right?

00:17:45.060 2021, they passed a bipartisan infrastructure bill.

00:17:47.380 Say it's the biggest infrastructure bill in decades, which is not wrong.

00:17:50.200 Yeah, 1.2 trillion, but 500, 550 of new.

00:17:53.840 Yeah.

00:17:54.040 And one of the big headline pieces of it is $42 billion for rural broadband.

00:17:59.100 Yep.

00:17:59.580 2021, that passes.

00:18:01.140 By the end of 2024, functionally, nobody's hooked up to rural broadband.

00:18:04.560 And me and Derek look into it.

00:18:06.120 And there is a 14-stage process.

00:18:08.800 I mean, I'm sure California was going through it.

00:18:10.640 A 14-stage process of they're creating a map, and then the map can be challenged.

00:18:15.340 And there's these letters of intent, and so on and so forth.

00:18:17.840 By the end of their administration, of the 56 states and jurisdictions that were trying

00:18:22.820 to apply for the money, three had made it through.

00:18:25.440 Which, putting aside the fact that that meant all these people didn't get broadband, it also

00:18:28.680 meant that they couldn't run on that.

00:18:30.300 Right.

00:18:30.640 Right?

00:18:30.860 So much of the political theory of the Biden administration was that if you can show liberal

00:18:35.560 democracy can deliver, you will pull people out of wanting these strong men who say they're

00:18:42.020 going to burn the whole thing down and give you something out of the ashes.

00:18:45.340 Yeah.

00:18:45.480 And if you can't really, if the things don't move fast enough, if they don't get to the

00:18:50.220 people fast enough, it's much harder for liberal democracy to make the case that it delivers.

00:18:54.720 I want it to deliver.

00:18:55.740 I like these policies.

00:18:57.260 Yeah.

00:18:57.440 But the speed thing is a real problem.

00:19:00.160 And I'll say one more thing, because I was talking, I did an event the other night with

00:19:03.060 Jon Favreau, and we were talking about high-speed rail, but I was saying that the stimulus bill

00:19:08.520 under Obama, that had three big headline projects for reinvestment.

00:19:13.280 It had high-speed rail, it had smart grid, and it had a nationwide system of interoperable

00:19:20.140 health records.

00:19:21.700 I remember those days.

00:19:22.760 Yeah.

00:19:23.100 Oh, for three.

00:19:23.920 Yeah.

00:19:24.180 At some point, we've got to be upset about this, you know?

00:19:31.180 There's a type of soil in Mississippi called yazoo clay.

00:19:35.320 It's thick, burnt orange, and it's got a reputation.

00:19:39.380 It's terrible, terrible dirt.

00:19:40.800 Yazoo clay eats everything, so things that get buried there tend to stay buried.

00:19:46.620 Until they're not.

00:19:48.200 In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery.

00:19:54.620 7,000 bodies out there, or more.

00:19:58.340 All former patients of the old state asylum, and nobody knew they were there.

00:20:03.460 It was my family's mystery.

00:20:05.740 But in this corner of the South, it's not just the soil that keeps secrets.

00:20:10.200 Nobody talks about it.

00:20:11.880 Nobody has any information.

00:20:13.180 When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's yazoo clay, nothing's ever as simple as you

00:20:18.420 think.

00:20:19.020 The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that.

00:20:24.380 I'm Larison Campbell.

00:20:26.200 Listen to Under Yazoo Clay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

00:20:32.400 podcasts.

00:20:33.940 Hi, friends.

00:20:35.340 Sophia Bush here, host of Work in Progress.

00:20:38.080 This week, we had such a special guest on the podcast.

00:20:42.580 My forever flotus, a mentor, a friend, a wife, a mother, an author, attorney, advocate,

00:20:49.160 television producer, and now she adds podcast host to the list herself.

00:20:54.920 Friends, Michelle Obama is here.

00:20:57.220 Sophia, I'm beyond thrilled to be able to sit down and chat with you.

00:21:01.240 We talk about it all.

00:21:02.580 Life, love, motherhood, martinis.

00:21:05.640 Vodka martini, dry, straight up, olives.

00:21:08.420 Ooh, olives.

00:21:09.540 Very cold.

00:21:10.980 My girl.

00:21:11.920 Barely any vermouth.

00:21:13.320 What's next?

00:21:14.520 What she's watching on TV.

00:21:16.540 I am a white lotuser.

00:21:17.560 I am a real housewives person.

00:21:20.900 I love the dating shows.

00:21:22.620 And tennis.

00:21:23.600 I just find that to be a bit meditative.

00:21:26.700 You do not want to miss this.

00:21:28.080 Listen to Work in Progress on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

00:21:32.920 podcasts.

00:21:34.240 Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, and if you've ever felt the weight of letting go, of people, past versions

00:21:40.220 of yourself, or the expectations placed on you, this episode is for you.

00:21:45.840 Lizzo opens up like never before about self-love, transformation, and finding real peace in a

00:21:53.360 world that constantly tries to define you.

00:21:56.100 It's not me anymore.

00:21:57.300 Whoever Lizzo is to the world is not really even me.

00:22:00.040 And that disconnect is depressing.

00:22:01.740 I think it's also hard when the things that you stand for are the same things that you're

00:22:13.020 being scrutinized for.

00:22:13.840 The weight that is no longer on me is not just fat or physical.

00:22:18.560 I released so much to get to this point.

00:22:22.880 And to be honest with you, I don't feel like I've expressed myself fully in the last two

00:22:26.980 years.

00:22:27.560 Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

00:22:32.780 you get your podcasts.

00:22:33.820 The number one hit true crime podcast, The Girlfriends, is back with something new, The

00:22:42.840 Girlfriends Spotlight.

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00:22:55.280 We're keeping this mission alive with The Girlfriends Spotlight.

00:22:58.460 Each week, a different woman sits down with me, Anna Sinfield, to share their incredible

00:23:04.120 story of triumph over adversity.

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00:23:12.120 I might as well have said, we're going to walk on the moon.

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00:24:12.300 So you have five core chapters in this book.

00:24:18.080 You talk about growth, you talk about governance, you talk about deploying, inventing, you know,

00:24:23.580 a lot of language very familiar here in the state of California.

00:24:26.700 Again, abundance is fundamentally, foundationally who we are, at least believe we are in the state

00:24:31.040 of California.

00:24:31.560 And so in that respect, I agree.

00:24:34.660 This sort of, this, you know, perception, performance is one thing.

00:24:39.000 And I would argue a little bit more favorably to Biden.

00:24:41.840 I mean, 775,000 manufacturing jobs, just the job growth generally.

00:24:45.960 And I'm not just talking about job recovery from the pandemic, but the six plus million

00:24:49.900 jobs that you have to stack on that after we were back to full recovery.

00:24:54.140 The fact that the Chips and Science Act is producing real results as it relates to private

00:24:58.020 sector investment.

00:24:58.840 And the fact that we finally have an industrial policy that is worker-centric.

00:25:03.320 And I think it's that worker-centricity that you can argue against because that was in you

00:25:07.860 call it out in here when you talked to Gina about issues related to child care and other

00:25:12.860 aspirational frameworks as it relates to small businesses and reaching diversity goals and

00:25:18.140 the like.

00:25:18.520 But there is the fundamental disconnect, and you're absolutely right, as it relates to these

00:25:23.280 large-scale, audacious projects.

00:25:26.360 And I will give you your due on high-speed rail.

00:25:29.840 I have been as critical or more than you have about this.

00:25:34.080 In fact, I appreciate you reference my pivot after I took this job as governor, where we

00:25:40.780 called out the status quo, and now we're trying to level set and get this back on track.

00:25:47.200 But at least there's a vision.

00:25:48.760 At least Obama had a vision.

00:25:51.180 He wanted to be big in big things.

00:25:52.700 He wanted to do big things.

00:25:53.800 And at least progressive states still have a vision.

00:25:57.260 And they have a design.

00:25:58.120 I mean, and I think that's part of an abundance frame.

00:26:01.840 And while it's difficult to manifest that vision, I don't think it's an indictment necessarily.

00:26:08.360 It's an indictment in terms of our ability to deliver on time and under budget.

00:26:12.280 But the vision, I think, is foundational and important.

00:26:15.980 And I give credit to the Obama administration in that respect for all three, even if they were

00:26:20.260 0 for 3.

00:26:20.640 Look, I'm all for vision.

00:26:23.520 My upset, the point of this book, is that I want the things to happen.

00:26:28.180 I mean, we can talk about high-speed rail.

00:26:30.520 We must talk about high-speed rail.

00:26:32.500 But before we get there for a second, I mean, I do get the question around this book, because

00:26:36.400 it is very critical of how liberals have governed.

00:26:39.080 Well, then why aren't you just a Republican, right?

00:26:40.760 If Texas is so good at housing.

00:26:42.380 And the thing that I keep telling people is you've really confused means and ends here.

00:26:47.180 Another thing that keeps coming up is like, you want deregulation.

00:26:49.240 Isn't that a Republican thing?

00:26:50.740 Well, not if I'm deregulating the government itself so it can deliver on the things you

00:26:54.940 want.

00:26:55.600 What's supposed to matter in politics is not the means.

00:26:59.680 It's the ends.

00:27:01.400 And what I sort of want, what I'm trying to push here is for liberals to get a little bit

00:27:06.620 more means agnostic and more like ends obsessed.

00:27:10.500 There you go.

00:27:10.800 So the thing that I, the place where I probably differ a little bit in what you just said a

00:27:15.600 second ago is that I don't want to give anybody credit for a vision that didn't happen.

00:27:19.900 High-speed rail has, you have a great quote to me on this.

00:27:21.860 I use it in the book.

00:27:22.920 High-speed rail has undermined the public's faith in what can get done.

00:27:26.080 It undermines the next high-speed rail, right?

00:27:28.080 And the thing that I want to see happen is a kind of reckoning inside the governing, I

00:27:33.740 would call it a culture.

00:27:34.780 It's not just laws.

00:27:36.520 It's not just regulations, although it is all those things, but it is a culture of what

00:27:40.820 happens when the Democrats who are setting this stuff up get in the room together and

00:27:45.580 people start raising their hands and saying, what about this?

00:27:47.560 And what about that?

00:27:48.260 And how about the other thing?

00:27:49.640 And instead of hear a no, everybody gets kind of a little bit.

00:27:54.340 And it's not the only thing going on.

00:27:56.040 But there is something wrong in a culture that so often fails to deliver what it promises.

00:28:00.680 I mean, not just high-speed rail, the big dig, the second avenue subway, right?

00:28:04.280 These, you know, parts of them got done in the second avenue piece or the big dig eventually

00:28:07.980 got done, but too much, too expensive.

00:28:10.280 You can't do enough if you're doing that.

00:28:12.740 And it's not inevitable.

00:28:15.600 Europe builds trains better than we do.

00:28:17.860 They just do.

00:28:18.720 And they have governments, I checked, and they have unions more than we do.

00:28:22.700 Right.

00:28:23.060 So it's not just that.

00:28:23.520 They have less lawyers than you point that out in the book.

00:28:25.680 Well, that's an issue.

00:28:26.340 I'd be very curious to hear.

00:28:27.700 So this is a thing I think people don't know that I would love to hear your thoughts on,

00:28:31.280 that we do government different in this country than they do in Europe.

00:28:36.340 There's a qualitative difference between it, which is they run government through bureaucracies

00:28:41.460 and we restrain government through courts.

00:28:43.280 Yeah.

00:28:43.560 Which at the moment with Trump seems good in a bunch of ways.

00:28:46.560 And there are ways in which it's good.

00:28:47.940 And there are also ways in which it makes it hellacious.

00:28:52.040 You got it.

00:28:52.720 To deliver.

00:28:53.480 Yeah.

00:28:53.900 And I would say that's the central theory of at least the argument that I would make

00:28:58.060 against the high-speed rail is, I mean, look, this thing started, and you make the point

00:29:02.700 it started, there was sort of talk about the vision.

00:29:04.660 The original vision was not Obama.

00:29:06.940 It wasn't even necessarily Jerry Brown, but you point to 1982 when Brown at least says,

00:29:11.440 former Governor Jerry Brown, we should look at this high-speed rail thing.

00:29:14.280 And then eventually Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, puts a bond on the ballot in 2008

00:29:20.300 and the voters approve it.

00:29:21.620 And you're right.

00:29:22.380 There was a lot of promotion and promise, $33.6 billion, two hours and 20 minutes downtown.

00:29:28.340 By 2020.

00:29:29.220 By 2020 and the whole thing.

00:29:31.340 And then reality.

00:29:33.280 Now, I get here decade later, decade plus later, and reconcile the fact that we have to dig

00:29:38.540 our way out of this.

00:29:39.320 There's a new reality.

00:29:40.400 There's scarcity of resources.

00:29:42.260 There's an abundance of delay.

00:29:44.360 There's an abundance of cost overruns.

00:29:46.800 And we have to level set that we need to build something or we're left with literally nothing.

00:29:52.900 We're left with pieces that go nowhere, that have no utility and actually have a long-term

00:29:58.060 cost.

00:29:59.260 But let's do it by telling people what it is and what it's not.

00:30:03.060 And so this focus on the Central Valley, which is you stipulate, recognize, was stipulated as

00:30:07.520 a requirement under the Obama grant, the $3 billion, in one of the fastest growing parts

00:30:12.820 of the state, an important part of the state, a state that has deep desire to connect to

00:30:17.980 the rest of the state, and a state of mind that's not just about a transportation project,

00:30:22.640 but about up-zoning, about economic development, which a lot of that has occurred in and around

00:30:26.860 these new stations that have been built.

00:30:28.260 50 large-scale projects the size of three Golden Gate Bridges.

00:30:31.840 The entire environmental clearance is now 100% done, LA to San Francisco.

00:30:36.240 There were 2,000-

00:30:36.820 It took 2012 to 2024, though.

00:30:38.700 I can't make up for that.

00:30:40.460 I can only deal with the component part.

00:30:42.480 But it's just-

00:30:42.860 But it's crazy.

00:30:43.340 It's crazy.

00:30:43.960 But the point is, we're at the point where we just announced we're doing railhead.

00:30:47.500 We're finally laying the tracks.

00:30:49.320 I mean, we can lament about it.

00:30:51.660 We absolutely learned from it.

00:30:53.380 And we've stress-tested a lot of it.

00:30:54.880 You talk about the consulting class versus a bureaucratic class.

00:30:58.020 You're absolutely right.

00:30:58.880 And we started to ship that just a few years ago.

00:31:01.700 But the litigation on the 2,270 parcels that we had to purchase was next level.

00:31:11.860 And that delay, I think, is the core of this.

00:31:15.480 There's plenty of other bureaucratic malaise and other issues we can identify.

00:31:18.760 But back to this notion, I think you're right.

00:31:21.620 This idea of, I think, liberal litigation.

00:31:24.680 I don't know what phrase you use in the book.

00:31:26.280 But you were mindful of that and critical of that.

00:31:29.820 And you mark that as a big part of the sort of 1970s construct in America.

00:31:35.420 And tell us a little bit more about your thinking there.

00:31:38.140 We can put a pin in high-speed rail.

00:31:42.440 There are two major liberal movements that happened in the 20th century.

00:31:47.700 The one we think about a lot is New Deal liberalism.

00:31:51.240 That's the one where we build aggressively.

00:31:54.600 It's a growth-oriented liberalism.

00:31:56.700 It's a liberalism of material goods.

00:31:58.640 And it's the liberalism that defines the left-right divide in our national narrative.

00:32:04.080 Liberals believe in big, strong government.

00:32:06.060 Conservatives believe in small, limited government.

00:32:09.020 In the 60s, 70s, 80s, you have real problems that have emerged from this New Deal order.

00:32:15.320 However, we have built heedlessly, recklessly, intensely.

00:32:19.980 We are cutting highways all across the country.

00:32:22.540 Many of them, but not all of them, through marginalized communities.

00:32:25.260 But, man, the rich communities don't like it when a highway goes through either, right?

00:32:28.720 And they have a lot of the power that leads to this.

00:32:31.500 There is a genuine despoiling of the environment.

00:32:36.660 My colleague, Derek, likes to talk about the moment in Los Angeles, I think it's in the 40s or 50s, where people wake up and think there's been a chemical attack from the Japanese.

00:32:44.780 But it turned out that the city had launched its own chemical attack on itself.

00:32:47.620 By the way, people forget, in California, a lazy pundit could suggest the modern environmental movement started in 1967 in reaction to that.

00:32:56.760 And the business community is saying enough.

00:32:58.660 And Governor Ronald Reagan established the California Air Resources Board, of which that rights and responsibility were afforded under the 1970 Clean Air Act,

00:33:07.940 which you also highlight in the book, Richard Nixon, affording California a waiver so that we can address the unique air quality concerns that you identify in the books in the 50s, 60s.

00:33:18.460 And then, of course, everybody forgets it's Reagan who signs the California Environmental Quality Act into law.

00:33:24.260 Yeah, this CEQA issue that you and others and myself love to hate at times.

00:33:29.740 It's worth taking, I think, a minute on CEQA.

00:33:32.260 So Reagan signs a bill into law from Jake Ambinder's research.

00:33:37.300 It doesn't even merit a full article in the LA Times.

00:33:40.820 That's interesting.

00:33:41.400 Nobody quite knows what they've done because initially CEQA, it just says, look, when the government does stuff, it's got to produce a report on, you know, what the likely consequences are.

00:33:50.300 No big deal.

00:33:51.560 And then there is a proposed development in Mammoth, which, you know, the great ski and snowboard town, which I've been to many, many times.

00:34:00.580 Oh, you Southern Californians.

00:34:02.040 Yeah, Mammoth.

00:34:03.000 But there is a mixed-use development that's proposed there, you know, sort of condos and some shopping at the bottom of them.

00:34:10.080 And a bunch of rich Mammothians, I don't know what they call themselves, file a lawsuit.

00:34:16.640 And they have a novel argument, which is that this development can't go forward because it violates CEQA.

00:34:21.400 And this gets rejected in the courts because this is not—

00:34:23.180 What year, roughly, would this be?

00:34:24.860 I'd want to double-check this.

00:34:26.420 But early 70s, I would think.

00:34:27.660 But I could be wrong on that.

00:34:29.820 So what happens here is that the courts reject this a bunch of times because CEQA is about public development.

00:34:40.180 And then the Supreme Court rules, no, no, no, no.

00:34:43.300 Public development is anything that requires a permit by the state of California.

00:34:47.300 There's a Sierra Club lobbyist who we quote in the book who says,

00:34:51.440 after that, CEQA applies to anything where you are rubbing two sticks together in the state.

00:34:55.840 And so now having been, as Ann Bender puts it in his dissertation on this stuff,

00:35:01.460 informed by the courts of what the law they passed actually does,

00:35:05.080 the legislature puts a pause on it because now everything's in huge legal limbo.

00:35:08.660 But the key thing here is that CEQA, I mean, and I'm sure you know all this much better than I do,

00:35:12.420 but CEQA's power is amplified a lot by courts that interpreted it in a way that was very different than anybody initially interpreted it.

00:35:22.500 And this is part of a period in liberalism where you have this rise of an environmental movement

00:35:28.440 that has legal dimensions and political dimensions and statutory dimensions and cultural dimensions.

00:35:33.140 It's Rachel Carson.

00:35:34.420 It's Ralph Nader.

00:35:35.380 And the key thing about this period of liberalism, the new left period of liberalism,

00:35:39.960 is that it is fundamentally skeptical of government action.

00:35:43.020 The New Deal is this alliance between the government, the unions, and the corporations

00:35:47.140 to build, to put people to work, to industrialize America, and make it into this kind of advanced,

00:35:53.800 you know, globe-spanning superpower.

00:35:55.620 And the new left comes in and says, we are destroying this place.

00:36:01.060 We are turning this country conformist.

00:36:03.620 The term ticky-tacky comes from a song about Daily City and how gross all those homes are, right?

00:36:09.120 Like, there's a whole thing about the aesthetic destruction of it.

00:36:11.620 I have great quotes from Lyndon Johnson's speeches about, we used to worry about the ugly American,

00:36:16.940 now we have to worry about the ugly America, right?

00:36:19.420 There's a whole change that begins to happen.

00:36:22.180 And the way that this moment in liberalism tries to square the circle,

00:36:27.140 because the new left is part of this era that's very individualistic, right?

00:36:31.220 We think about this for Reagan and individualism, but it's happening on the left too.

00:36:34.180 And it wants a highly participatory democracy.

00:36:36.800 And the way it tries to square it is create a million different ways

00:36:39.320 that individuals or individuals represented by nonprofit groups typically

00:36:44.100 can sue the government to stop it or force it to think about things

00:36:48.340 that it wasn't thinking about before.

00:36:50.480 Sorry, I've got a mosquito there.

00:36:53.600 And it creates ways to sue the government

00:36:55.880 and force it to think about things that it wasn't thinking about or hadn't earlier.

00:37:01.320 Get that damn thing.

00:37:02.500 If I got it, I'd be like a mom in that old interview, remember?

00:37:07.020 The time when he truly seemed super powerful.

00:37:09.920 So the way they do that is they create this raft of legislation.

00:37:13.040 Some of it is environmental, but not all of it.

00:37:15.960 And what it allows is for individuals or individuals represented by groups

00:37:19.440 and a huge world of nonprofits emerges to take the best talent out of the law schools

00:37:25.080 and set them to suing government to sort of enforce this.

00:37:29.480 Ralph Nader, when he runs for president in 2000, is asked,

00:37:31.820 what qualifies you to be president?

00:37:34.020 He says, nobody has sued more government agencies than I have.

00:37:37.780 And so this is very potent in blue states that had a strong new left.

00:37:44.620 And we don't think about it really.

00:37:46.060 It's not part of our national narrative of the left and the right.

00:37:48.520 Our national narrative is like the guys who like government

00:37:51.420 and the party that likes government and the party that doesn't.

00:37:54.320 It's not that way.

00:37:55.140 The right loves a big police state.

00:37:56.520 And the left has a very divided soul on government.

00:38:00.460 It likes some kinds of government, but it hobbles government.

00:38:05.160 And that sort of made sense for its time.

00:38:08.740 But now we're in a different time where the problems are problems of not building enough.

00:38:12.680 And environmentally, particularly, all of a sudden we've gone from a period

00:38:16.160 where it really was environmentally important to stop much of the things that were happening.

00:38:20.480 And now we're in one where the environmental movement has to build, build, build, build.

00:38:24.400 The IRA is a building approach to climate change.

00:38:27.540 And our laws are not set up for that.

00:38:30.780 And this is where I'd like to get your perspective.

00:38:34.060 The thing that's also true is like the Democratic coalition

00:38:36.640 is not set up to revisit those laws.

00:38:40.160 You all have been doing little carve outs of CEQA.

00:38:42.640 But you've not ripped it out and rebuilt it.

00:38:45.220 And nor have we done that at the national level.

00:38:46.980 And as much as Democrats know this, the environmental groups don't want to do that.

00:38:51.440 There's a lot of power and incumbents around the legislative architecture we have now.

00:38:57.080 And you don't get a huge, I mean, you've told me if this is wrong,

00:38:59.380 but I feel like you don't get a huge parade for rebuilding legislative process, right?

00:39:04.220 Zero.

00:39:04.960 I mean, no, it's quite the contrary.

00:39:07.160 It's years and years of friction, trial and error.

00:39:10.120 It takes a couple of years.

00:39:12.000 You introduce, you socialize, it gets nowhere.

00:39:14.200 It finally gets through, new coalition, new personalities.

00:39:17.500 You finally get it done.

00:39:18.700 Then two years later, you're actually able to exercise it.

00:39:21.120 I'll give you two specific examples.

00:39:23.040 I have a 270-day judicial review process that we pushed.

00:39:27.040 We worked it for its first use case was the first above-ground storage facility

00:39:32.360 in California, last half-century sites.

00:39:35.360 It's an off-stream dam in California.

00:39:38.520 The second, quite literally a week ago, for 300-megawatt solar, large-scale solar facility,

00:39:45.120 which we are testing it.

00:39:47.320 Hardly perfect, but that was three years in the making just to have this established rule

00:39:54.260 where I can finally fast-track large-scale projects to start addressing your point.

00:39:59.120 And you're right.

00:39:59.620 There was no fundamental coalition for any of that.

00:40:02.200 It was a very lonely process until after years and years of trial and error, we finally

00:40:07.160 broke through the morass.

00:40:08.100 Do you think you benefit from the other side of it, from being able to get these projects

00:40:12.060 built?

00:40:12.380 If you could get them built, do you think it's an intermediate period of pain and then better

00:40:17.040 politics for you?

00:40:17.920 It will be better politics, but I won't be around to enjoy the fruits of that.

00:40:21.340 And I think that's the great struggle, to your point.

00:40:23.100 I mean, you made that point about Biden earlier.

00:40:24.680 I mean, that's just, come on, it's 48 months.

00:40:26.960 You're in the middle of trying to address the pandemic.

00:40:29.040 You've got all kinds of global issues.

00:40:30.520 You've got supply chain constraints.

00:40:32.460 You've got war in Ukraine.

00:40:34.300 You've got all of these issues.

00:40:35.560 And yet he passes.

00:40:36.740 I refer to it as a master class.

00:40:40.980 There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo clay.

00:40:44.780 It's thick, burnt orange, and it's got a reputation.

00:40:49.180 It's terrible, terrible dirt.

00:40:50.820 Yazoo clay eats everything.

00:40:53.220 So things that get buried there tend to stay buried.

00:40:56.400 Until they're not.

00:40:57.980 In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery.

00:41:04.400 7,000 bodies out there or more.

00:41:08.140 All former patients of the old state asylum.

00:41:11.360 And nobody knew they were there.

00:41:13.260 It was my family's mystery.

00:41:15.540 But in this corner of the South, it's not just the soil that keeps secrets.

00:41:19.980 Nobody talks about it.

00:41:21.660 Nobody has any information.

00:41:22.960 When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think.

00:41:28.880 The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that.

00:41:34.580 I'm Larison Campbell.

00:41:35.980 Listen to Under Yazoo Clay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:41:42.760 Hi, friends.

00:41:45.120 Sophia Bush here, host of Work in Progress.

00:41:48.020 This week, we had such a special guest on the podcast.

00:41:52.360 My forever flotus.

00:41:54.240 A mentor, a friend, a wife, a mother, an author, attorney, advocate, television producer.

00:42:00.060 And now she adds podcast host to the list herself.

00:42:04.760 Friends, Michelle Obama is here.

00:42:07.040 Sophia, I'm beyond thrilled to be able to sit down and chat with you.

00:42:10.560 We talk about it all.

00:42:12.480 Life, love, motherhood, martinis.

00:42:15.420 Vodka martini, dry, straight up, olives.

00:42:18.220 Ooh, olives.

00:42:19.340 Very cold.

00:42:20.720 My girl.

00:42:21.680 Barely any vermouth.

00:42:23.100 What's next?

00:42:24.300 What she's watching on TV.

00:42:26.320 I am a white lotuser.

00:42:27.840 I am a real housewives person.

00:42:30.620 I love the dating shows.

00:42:32.420 And tennis.

00:42:33.380 I just find that to be a bit meditative.

00:42:36.480 You do not want to miss this.

00:42:37.620 Listen to Work in Progress on the iHeartRadio app.

00:42:40.560 Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:42:46.720 The number one hit true crime podcast, The Girlfriends, is back with something new.

00:42:52.380 The Girlfriends Spotlight.

00:42:54.720 Our first two series introduced you to an incredible gang of women who teamed up to fight injustice,

00:43:01.540 showing just how powerful sisterly solidarity can be.

00:43:04.640 We're keeping this mission alive with The Girlfriends Spotlight.

00:43:08.960 Each week, a different woman sits down with me, Anna Sinfield, to share their incredible story of triumph over adversity.

00:43:16.320 Like June, who founded an all-female rock band in the 1960s.

00:43:21.800 I might as well have said, we're going to walk on the moon.

00:43:25.160 But she sure showed them who's boss and toured the world.

00:43:28.900 They would just be gobsmacked.

00:43:31.020 And they would rush up after the set and say, not bad for chicks.

00:43:34.920 So come and join our girl gang.

00:43:38.680 Listen to The Girlfriends Spotlight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:43:45.340 Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, and if you've ever felt the weight of letting go, of people, past versions of yourself,

00:43:59.080 or the expectations placed on you, this episode is for you.

00:44:04.460 Lizzo opens up like never before about self-love, transformation, and finding real peace in a world that constantly tries to define you.

00:44:13.860 It's not me anymore.

00:44:15.120 Whoever Lizzo is to the world is not really even me.

00:44:18.020 And that disconnect is depressing.

00:44:21.260 The Grammy goes to Lizzo!

00:44:26.160 I think it's also hard when the things that you stand for are the same things that you're being scrutinized for.

00:44:31.800 The weight that is no longer on me is not just fat or physical.

00:44:36.880 I released so much to get to this point.

00:44:40.600 And to be honest with you, I don't feel like I've expressed myself fully in the last two years.

00:44:45.560 Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:44:51.760 Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you?

00:44:54.660 Why is my cat not here?

00:44:55.960 And I go in and she's eating my lunch.

00:44:57.700 Or if hypnotism is real?

00:44:59.380 You will use a suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control.

00:45:02.920 Or what's inside a black hole?

00:45:04.400 Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe.

00:45:07.960 Well, we have answers for you in the new iHeart Original Podcast, Science Stuff.

00:45:12.200 Join me, Jorge Cham, as we tackle questions you've always wanted to know the answer to about animals, space, our brains, and our bodies.

00:45:19.480 Questions like, can you survive being cryogenically frozen?

00:45:22.920 This is experimental.

00:45:24.160 This may never work for you.

00:45:25.760 What's a quantum computer?

00:45:27.180 It's not just a faster computer.

00:45:28.780 It performs in a fundamentally different way.

00:45:30.480 Do you really have to wait 30 minutes after eating before you can go swimming?

00:45:33.840 It's not really a safety issue.

00:45:35.940 It's more of a comfort issue.

00:45:37.360 We'll talk to experts, break it down, and give you easy-to-understand explanations to fascinating scientific questions.

00:45:43.360 So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to Science Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:45:53.820 You are more defensive of Biden's record than of your own.

00:45:56.460 No, I'm more proud of the work they did breaking through, actually addressing the issues that Democrats claim they wanted to address, including marginally.

00:46:06.160 And I agree with you, again, there's zero daylight in this book, which is remarkable, including its own critique, my own self-critique, of my own state, and my own performance.

00:46:14.660 So it's interesting.

00:46:16.080 But he had, as I said, an industrial policy that was worker-centric.

00:46:19.480 And there was reforms at the same time, the deal with Manchin, which you acknowledge in the book, marginal.

00:46:25.420 Well, the progressives killed those.

00:46:26.640 Projects killed.

00:46:27.320 But you're talking about the permitting reforms.

00:46:28.940 The permitting reforms, but that sort of manifested in finally on the Chips and Science Act to be a version of that with Kelly and Cruz as it relates to.

00:46:36.560 So there was some component parts.

00:46:38.480 And they learned on this.

00:46:39.380 I mean, Brian Deese, who is Biden's former NEC director, has an awesome piece in foreign affairs about why we need to build faster, right?

00:46:45.060 There's real learning here.

00:46:46.540 But I want to push.

00:46:47.200 But if we, but I'm, let me stipulate.

00:46:49.120 Let me make this quick.

00:46:49.860 If we can figure that out, if we can, I don't, this is, this is the most, one of the most important books Democrats can read.

00:46:56.700 Wake up.

00:46:57.660 I sent this to the two leaders of my California Assembly and said it.

00:47:01.120 You love to hear it.

00:47:01.860 I just, no, but no, I'm serious.

00:47:03.140 I said, guys, wake, this is it.

00:47:05.600 I mean, we're being judged here at a different level.

00:47:08.680 We've done some good things together.

00:47:10.400 We got to get serious.

00:47:12.040 Ezra's spot on, on a lot of this stuff.

00:47:14.240 There's some, you know, we had population growth the last two years, by the way.

00:47:18.260 In December, they updated all the census numbers.

00:47:20.340 It grew in California the last two years.

00:47:22.320 You had red states that have population decline in the last few years, with the exception of Vermont.

00:47:27.220 There's some, yeah, I can quibble in some of that respect.

00:47:29.900 But fundamentally, these larger trend lines you identify in this friction struggle to build more and build better and address.

00:47:36.920 I'm with you on the high-speed rail.

00:47:38.540 It furiates me as a taxpayer.

00:47:40.380 You're 100%.

00:47:41.120 It's an indictment of our ability to deliver.

00:47:42.760 That said, we are finally doing railheads.

00:47:45.120 We're buying train sets.

00:47:46.380 We got partnerships with Brightline and High Desert Corridor.

00:47:49.180 We did full electrification of Caltran, $714 million, 51 miles.

00:47:54.480 We got all the environmental work done.

00:47:55.840 All the hard work's now behind us.

00:47:58.200 Now we're laying track, and we're finally getting that first 119 miles done.

00:48:02.160 We'll get to 171.

00:48:03.380 It's a $6.5 billion gap.

00:48:05.220 We have a strategy to address that.

00:48:07.260 I don't even want to go to litigators.

00:48:08.620 I want to hold high-speed rail for a second.

00:48:10.340 I want to do one thing on Biden before we go to high-speed rail.

00:48:12.060 But the issue with Biden is, I don't know what the hell more he could have done in a short period of time to deliver on a bold vision and lay the tracks for benefits that we'll enjoy.

00:48:23.820 Yes, not all in 48 months.

00:48:26.200 But over the course of the next four or eight years, it'll be significant.

00:48:27.900 This is a problem.

00:48:29.040 It'll be significant.

00:48:29.700 Like, I'm not saying it's all his fault.

00:48:31.940 That's not my point here, right?

00:48:33.500 He is inheriting a government.

00:48:35.160 Although you see in a very dark way with Musk and Doge that a lot that was taken as a binding constraint actually isn't.

00:48:42.900 So I want to hold that because I think there are things as grotesque as what that crew is doing to the government.

00:48:47.940 There's also things that need to be learned from what they're doing to the government.

00:48:50.400 But it didn't – I really think it's important to hold this in mind for all of us because this is something I really did not understand.

00:48:58.980 It did not used to take this long to deliver.

00:49:01.380 Medicare.

00:49:02.400 Medicare delivered Medicare cards a year after they passed that bill.

00:49:07.140 It took the Affordable Care Act four years to begin delivering actual insurance to anybody.

00:49:11.220 Yeah, we can talk about it.

00:49:12.040 It took on the Inflation Reduction Act, which is doing a much smaller job of just beginning to negotiate prices on some drugs, three years to get that started.

00:49:20.400 I mean, we built – I mean, these are the classic examples, but we built the Empire State Building in a year.

00:49:25.600 The average environmental review takes four and a half years.

00:49:28.160 And just a few years ago to get bridge.

00:49:29.840 I agree.

00:49:30.200 You know all this.

00:49:31.700 The thing that I want to say about this, which is not Joe Biden's fault, but it is the fault of now, I think, a long period of Democrats beginning to get accustomed to this slowness.

00:49:42.440 Yeah.

00:49:44.180 This is not going to work politically.

00:49:46.340 I agree with that.

00:49:46.780 You are not going to hold the people you need to hold if your answer in every term is you can't feel what I did because the government takes too long.

00:49:54.360 If it had to take too long, fine.

00:49:56.120 But it doesn't actually, right?

00:49:57.920 These are man-made –

00:49:58.540 But it's also – and it's not just government.

00:49:59.920 It's also private sector.

00:50:01.260 I mean, there is another component of this.

00:50:03.100 The markets actually play a really significant outsized influence in timing on a lot of these things, on investments, et cetera.

00:50:10.580 Yeah, but they would build fast in a lot of cases if we let them build fast.

00:50:14.260 I mean, they're not why we didn't get rural broadband done.

00:50:16.540 That was not them.

00:50:17.360 No, but that's just – you know, I agree.

00:50:19.540 That's 50 state solutions and thousands and thousands of municipalities.

00:50:23.080 The thing I'm pushing on a little bit here with using the example of Biden, not you, but I do think this is – I think that those of us who want to defend liberal democracy from an actual challenge to it, right?

00:50:33.060 One of the things Trump is getting the most mileage out of, and he says it himself all the time.

00:50:38.020 I think it's why he likes what Elon Musk is doing for all of the risk of it, is the sense of constant action.

00:50:44.440 Yeah.

00:50:44.620 All of a sudden, government, which normally you don't feel moving, you feel it moving.

00:50:48.220 Maybe badly.

00:50:48.760 Maybe what you feel is the heat from it burning to the ground, but you feel movement.

00:50:53.420 No, I agree with that.

00:50:53.960 Right?

00:50:54.240 And populists have that – they have a politics of energy almost all of the time, right?

00:50:58.620 This is something you see across countries.

00:51:00.420 Right, right.

00:51:00.640 And I think that Democrats need to begin to think about speed as a thing we are actually tracking and pursuing government.

00:51:08.320 Love it.

00:51:08.480 We have other things we need to pursue and track.

00:51:10.580 Love it.

00:51:10.780 Equity, right, justice, right?

00:51:12.080 There are a lot of things we need to think about, and you need to make tradeoffs between them.

00:51:15.100 Yep.

00:51:15.640 But speed is one we have just let slip.

00:51:18.420 And it's not just, like, bad because it's kind of sad that we let it slip.

00:51:23.320 Jake Sullivan said about Biden, he said, elections are measured in four years, and his presidency will be measured in decades.

00:51:30.640 It won't, or his policy agenda will be judged in decades.

00:51:33.380 So much of it is going to get undone, including a lot of the transatlantic alliance that he worked so hard to rebuild that it won't.

00:51:40.900 One reason that this book is politically important to me, and I'm just a kind of, you know, my background is as a policy reporter, and the stuff I like is, like, the details of the policy.

00:51:49.740 But one reason it's politically important to me is that Democrats have, I think, gotten a little bit of learned helplessness around not every little bit of how government moves slowly.

00:52:01.120 People think about procurement reforms.

00:52:02.620 You've done a lot on that.

00:52:03.860 But in general, the sense that it just – we just can't do what we once did.

00:52:08.480 Like, the way the government used to work – I was reading a great piece by Harold Meyerson, who's at the American Prospect, and he's a great California reporter, too.

00:52:15.120 And he wrote this piece.

00:52:16.780 It was back during the stimulus debate under Obama.

00:52:19.220 He sent it to me the other day.

00:52:21.240 And he talks about the way the Works Progress Administration started up under FDR and the unfathomable speed at which they just cut through everything to put millions of people – the equivalent today of putting 10 million people to work in a matter of months, right?

00:52:40.240 And he was saying, you can't do it today, Harold was, because you just wouldn't have the laws.

00:52:46.640 But I just think it's really important to say laws are man-made.

00:52:50.300 There are laws of physics.

00:52:52.280 There are technical things we don't yet know how to do.

00:52:55.720 But the difference between places that construct apartment buildings quickly and that don't is that's us.

00:53:03.320 100%.

00:53:03.840 And look, and you highlight some of those successes.

00:53:06.680 I mean, you talk about what happened during the Trump administration and COVID.

00:53:10.480 By the way, a lot of innovation happened during COVID, including on land use.

00:53:13.960 We did something called home key, room key.

00:53:15.860 We changed land use in CEQA.

00:53:17.240 We did it through an emergency frame.

00:53:19.340 You referenced the I-95.

00:53:20.820 Because the risk tolerance went up.

00:53:22.280 Risk tolerance went up.

00:53:23.200 The I-95, an emergency frame, is the most expensive.

00:53:25.980 We had the I-10, which we got done in eight days.

00:53:28.660 That was even more impactful.

00:53:29.260 Screw the I-95.

00:53:30.120 Yeah, you should have added that in.

00:53:31.440 What a nice thing you could have said about our state.

00:53:34.320 So there was a state of mind, though.

00:53:35.780 I mean, we're doing it right now in terms of the emergency work we're doing on the rebuild of the fires in Los Angeles.

00:53:41.160 But if these emergency declarations-

00:53:41.780 And people are celebrating it in the context.

00:53:43.280 If these emergency structures work better, then why is it not making the normal structure closer to them?

00:53:48.900 No, look, this is why I wanted to do this podcast.

00:53:53.240 This is why I love Don't Like Your Book.

00:53:55.260 This is why I think it's essential reading for Democrats, this notion of speed, appearing to take action.

00:53:59.920 But not doing things to people, but with people and finding that right balance.

00:54:04.080 It's not – I think there's the stress, and it goes to your opening point about some of the questions you're getting, sort of this notion of a binary, that it's one or the other.

00:54:12.160 Why aren't you a Republican?

00:54:13.200 As opposed to, you know, risk-taking without recklessness.

00:54:16.400 You know, what's that right balance?

00:54:17.720 You know, is the right balance of Doge is the example of the $140 billion that Clinton and Gore saved on a $1.4 trillion government, and they reduced the size of the workforce by $400,000.

00:54:28.380 But they did that, again, in partnership and did real reform versus the recklessness of Doge.

00:54:34.960 Is it the RFI-2 process?

00:54:37.020 I thank you for recognizing our procurement reforms.

00:54:39.340 You highlight we brought in Jen Polka from Code for America to bring in a private sector version.

00:54:44.300 We did the original Doge.

00:54:45.760 We call it ODI, which is the Office of Digital Innovation, which is now Office of Data Innovation.

00:54:50.060 We're trying to change the entire procurement framework.

00:54:52.580 We inherited these old cobalt systems that you highlight from 1959 and these IBM mainframes from the 1980s.

00:54:59.080 All of that creates a stress on the system, and so it's not easy overnight to fix it.

00:55:05.440 But the emergency mindset, and I think the break-the-glass point you're making, is for Democrats right now, and it's the soul-searching we have.

00:55:13.800 We got to deliver.

00:55:17.360 There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo clay.

00:55:21.840 It's thick, burnt orange, and it's got a reputation.

00:55:25.860 It's terrible, terrible dirt.

00:55:27.500 Yazoo clay eats everything, so things that get buried there tend to stay buried.

00:55:33.080 Until they're not.

00:55:34.640 In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery.

00:55:41.060 7,000 bodies out there, or more.

00:55:44.800 All former patients of the old state asylum, and nobody knew they were there.

00:55:49.920 It was my family's mystery.

00:55:52.200 But in this corner of the South, it's not just the soil that keeps secrets.

00:55:56.660 Nobody talks about it.

00:55:58.340 Nobody has any information.

00:55:59.640 When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think.

00:56:05.540 The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that.

00:56:11.240 I'm Larison Campbell.

00:56:12.660 Listen to Under Yazoo Clay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:56:19.420 Hi, friends.

00:56:21.800 Sophia Bush here, host of Work in Progress.

00:56:24.680 This week, we had such a special guest on the podcast.

00:56:29.060 My forever flotus, a mentor, a friend, a wife, a mother, an author, attorney, advocate, television producer,

00:56:36.740 and now she adds podcast host to the list herself.

00:56:41.420 Friends, Michelle Obama is here.

00:56:43.720 Sophia, I'm beyond thrilled to be able to sit down and chat with you.

00:56:47.700 We talk about it all.

00:56:48.700 Life, love, motherhood, martinis.

00:56:52.100 Vodka martini, dry, straight up, olives.

00:56:54.880 Ooh, olives.

00:56:55.980 Very cold.

00:56:57.400 My girl.

00:56:58.380 Barely any vermouth.

00:56:59.780 What's next?

00:57:00.980 What she's watching on TV.

00:57:02.980 I am a white lotuser.

00:57:04.500 I am a real housewives person.

00:57:07.280 I love the dating shows.

00:57:09.080 And tennis.

00:57:10.060 I just find that to be a bit meditative.

00:57:13.140 You do not want to miss this.

00:57:14.280 Listen to Work in Progress on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:57:19.940 The number one hit true crime podcast, The Girlfriends, is back with something new, The Girlfriends Spotlight.

00:57:30.340 Our first two series introduce you to an incredible gang of women who teamed up to fight injustice,

00:57:38.260 showing just how powerful sisterly solidarity can be.

00:57:41.760 We're keeping this mission alive with The Girlfriends Spotlight.

00:57:44.860 Each week, a different woman sits down with me, Anna Sinfield, to share their incredible story of triumph over adversity.

00:57:53.620 Like Luanne, who was raised in a secretive religious community.

00:57:57.380 Do I want my freedom?

00:57:58.800 Or do I want my family?

00:58:00.440 And found a way to escape.

00:58:02.040 When she said, you know you can leave, right?

00:58:04.800 It was a light bulb.

00:58:06.180 And now helps other women get out too.

00:58:08.680 I loved my girls.

00:58:10.040 I still love my girls.

00:58:11.260 So come and join our girl gang.

00:58:14.860 Listen to The Girlfriends Spotlight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:58:26.540 Hey, I'm Jay Shetty.

00:58:30.420 And if you've ever felt the weight of letting go of people, past versions of yourself,

00:58:35.820 or the expectations placed on you, this episode is for you.

00:58:40.560 Lizzo opens up like never before about self-love, transformation, and finding real peace in a world that constantly tries to define you.

00:58:50.800 It's not me anymore.

00:58:52.000 Whoever Lizzo is to the world is not really even me.

00:58:54.740 And that disconnect is depressing.

00:58:58.160 The Grammy goes to Lizzo!

00:59:00.500 I think it's also hard when the things that you stand for are the same things that you're being scrutinized for.

00:59:08.560 The weight that is no longer on me is not just fat or physical.

00:59:13.640 I released so much to get to this point.

00:59:17.580 And to be honest with you, I don't feel like I've expressed myself fully in the last two years.

00:59:22.280 Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:59:28.500 Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you?

00:59:31.400 Why is my cat not here?

00:59:32.720 And I go in and she's eating my lunch.

00:59:34.460 Or if hypnotism is real?

00:59:36.120 You will use the suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control.

00:59:39.680 Or what's inside a black hole?

00:59:41.360 Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe.

00:59:44.680 Well, we have answers for you in the new iHeart original podcast, Science Stuff.

00:59:48.920 Join me, Jorge Cham, as we tackle questions you've always wanted to know the answer to about animals, space, our brains, and our bodies.

00:59:56.020 Questions like, can you survive being cryogenically frozen?

00:59:59.700 This is experimental.

01:00:00.920 This may never work for you.

01:00:02.500 What's a quantum computer?

01:00:03.940 It's not just a faster computer.

01:00:05.520 It performs in a fundamentally different way.

01:00:07.420 Do you really have to wait 30 minutes after eating before you can go swimming?

01:00:10.540 It's not really a safety issue.

01:00:12.660 It's more of a comfort issue.

01:00:14.080 We'll talk to experts, break it down, and give you easy-to-understand explanations to fascinating scientific questions.

01:00:19.840 So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to Science Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:00:27.260 Does your legislature want to fix it?

01:00:33.220 They all intellectually do, but then you have every constituency and every group, and they're showing up 24-7.

01:00:39.760 That nimbyism is well-established.

01:00:41.260 You've established it from the mindset.

01:00:42.700 It's not just, by the way, Reagan in CEQA.

01:00:45.300 It's the NEPA.

01:00:46.080 It's the Endangered Species Act.

01:00:47.440 It's the Clean Water Act, all the stuff Nixon did.

01:00:50.440 But in any reform, people panic.

01:00:53.400 Oh, you don't care about—you've just turned in conservative.

01:00:56.180 You can't even—I mean, we've had a podcast here.

01:00:58.080 You talk to Republicans.

01:00:59.200 You're like, geez, what the hell is going on?

01:01:01.120 Guy's selling now.

01:01:02.480 Sold his soul.

01:01:03.220 So you have reforms around process.

01:01:05.640 In CEQA, people panic.

01:01:06.980 Say, what, you just want to destroy the environment.

01:01:09.040 So there's a political price you pay for that reform, but you're right.

01:01:12.480 There's a political price for not reforming, which is where the Democratic Party is today.

01:01:16.820 So speed, decision-making, the sense of action and purpose.

01:01:20.500 By the way, a lot of what this president is celebrating is what the last president did.

01:01:27.960 And a lot of the investments, I mean, the AI investments that Sam and others were making—

01:01:33.080 Yeah, it would be—

01:01:33.780 —were making because of the Obama administration.

01:01:36.000 You want to get the credit.

01:01:37.260 That's one of the reasons I think this speed thing is actually so important.

01:01:39.900 You want to shorten—look, the policy feedback loops are broken because people don't know who did the policy.

01:01:46.080 When you said a second, a couple minutes ago, that these projects that can only exist because of your fast-tracking will not exist while you are in office, right?

01:01:55.380 That is a breakdown of the way the voters can maintain accountability, right?

01:02:00.540 When they don't know who did what, it's actually a big problem.

01:02:04.440 One thing that I think about with what you were just saying on the politics of it is that—and I see it very clearly in California.

01:02:09.360 I'm sure it's true in other places.

01:02:11.820 You can—you should tell me if this is facile.

01:02:14.760 You can avoid short-term pain in a way that ultimately creates almost unsolvable long-term pain.

01:02:21.580 And so, you know, you obviously used to be mayor of San Francisco.

01:02:24.320 London Breed said a lot of the right things on Yimbyism and all the rest of it.

01:02:28.920 Former mayor of San Francisco.

01:02:30.140 But couldn't get it done.

01:02:31.160 Yeah.

01:02:31.840 And lost re-election.

01:02:33.340 Not the only reason, but a big reason.

01:02:34.980 People are furious about the homelessness problem there, and that's in large part a housing problem.

01:02:40.540 It's not the only reason.

01:02:41.600 But in large part, you make that point and you're spot on about that.

01:02:44.440 In Oakland, they were called the mayor.

01:02:46.960 Yep.

01:02:47.380 In Los Angeles, I mean, there's a lot of reasons for what's going on there, but Caruso ran a much stronger campaign than people have expected at the beginning.

01:02:54.580 Former Republican became Democrat, outperformed a lot of his press.

01:02:57.620 Yeah, and so you have this sort of thing happening where there's almost, I think, I don't want to say a ceiling.

01:03:02.520 We'll see what you do in a couple of years.

01:03:03.900 I don't want to say a ceiling on where California politicians can go.

01:03:07.760 But it is very hard to be successful when people are angry of our problems that maybe you didn't cause.

01:03:14.640 Right.

01:03:14.840 But you're also not willing to take the pain now to solve it.

01:03:17.300 Well, I am taking the pain, and I'm taking the political.

01:03:19.680 I mean, I can give you proof points of the work we've done and the political capital we've used to get a lot of these reforms advanced.

01:03:25.900 And that's, I think, that's where I struggle a little bit with the book, just again, the book that I celebrate and I'm handing out to folks, is it's not a lot of that is acknowledged, the actual policy reforms that we are advancing, that we are marching and moving towards, and how we're actually starting to see some progress in that respect.

01:03:47.240 But with that in mind, I get the speed and the scale.

01:03:51.780 But I also want to make a case.

01:03:53.340 Look, this is a state where we're gaining population again.

01:03:56.960 We're running budget surpluses.

01:03:58.380 We dominate in every innovative category.

01:04:02.760 You talk about the future of abundance in the context of invention and deployment.

01:04:08.120 That's California.

01:04:09.360 18% of the world's R&D is in this state.

01:04:13.220 No other state comes close.

01:04:14.260 It's only two countries have more R&D, and that's Germany and China.

01:04:19.160 This is a state with 41% more manufacturing output than the state that tends to get a lot of credit in Texas.

01:04:27.700 Texas, by the way, takes $71.1 billion of federal money from the taxpayers.

01:04:33.280 We give $83.1 billion.

01:04:35.680 We have more scientists, engineers, more Nobel laureates, more venture capital.

01:04:39.520 Half of the unicorn companies in the country are in California.

01:04:42.660 There's a lot going right.

01:04:43.700 They just get a survey of the top 10 happiest cities.

01:04:47.080 With respect, Houston went on that list.

01:04:49.960 But San Jose was-

01:04:50.600 I was very happy when I lived in San Francisco.

01:04:51.920 San Jose was.

01:04:52.780 Irvine was on that list.

01:04:54.000 Oh, yeah?

01:04:54.640 Fremont, interestingly, number one, San Diego.

01:04:58.060 So, you know, I don't know.

01:04:59.440 We dominate in AI.

01:05:01.180 The world, again, we're inventing the future.

01:05:04.500 It happens here.

01:05:05.000 By the way, you saw in homelessness, the numbers through the roof across the rest of the country,

01:05:08.980 stabilized here in California.

01:05:10.520 The housing crisis, not unique to blue states any larger, longer.

01:05:15.300 Lower taxes in this state than in many, many states.

01:05:20.740 People talk about the high taxes in California.

01:05:22.700 It's just BS.

01:05:23.840 16 states, 16 states tax their poorest residents more than we tax our top 1%.

01:05:30.960 40% of our residents pay lower taxes than in Florida and Texas.

01:05:35.300 80% of our residents pay slightly above average taxes.

01:05:39.380 So this notion of even being a high-tax state is BS.

01:05:42.960 This notion that everyone's leaving is complete BS.

01:05:45.900 We dominate in so many of these categories because, I think, of our values.

01:05:50.820 But we're not building enough damn housing.

01:05:53.120 And that's led to this homeless crisis, not exclusively, as you said, but it's contributed.

01:05:57.380 And, yes, we had a vision decades ago.

01:06:00.400 The taxpayers advanced it on high-speed rail.

01:06:03.000 And we watched China clean our clock.

01:06:04.960 You highlight that in miles and numerics that are depressing.

01:06:08.400 I don't even want you to repeat them.

01:06:09.500 I can for everybody, but I'm not going to.

01:06:12.060 But we're going to get the damn thing done.

01:06:13.660 They complained about the Erie Canal.

01:06:15.120 They complained about the Panama Canal.

01:06:16.620 They complained about the Transcontinental Railroad right before it finally started to see real progress.

01:06:24.560 And I feel like we're at that tipping point with this damn high-speed rail.

01:06:27.660 But, nonetheless, you're right to put a sense of it.

01:06:28.760 Well, let's talk about high-speed rail for a second.

01:06:30.600 You can't help yourself.

01:06:31.880 Of course, I keep bringing it back defensively.

01:06:34.060 I will say first, look, I love California.

01:06:37.820 I have Redwoods tattooed on my shoulder.

01:06:40.740 Like, no joke.

01:06:41.420 And leaving the state to go live in New York City was, like, the right thing for a bunch of reasons.

01:06:47.760 But, you know, a difficult personal choice for me.

01:06:50.940 Because this is my soil.

01:06:52.500 Yeah.

01:06:53.040 So, every, you know.

01:06:54.520 You lived through a tough time, though, in San Francisco when you were writing this book.

01:06:57.180 You know what?

01:06:57.700 I would still.

01:06:58.300 I mean, that was, I admit.

01:06:59.860 That was a tough time in SF.

01:07:01.200 It was a pandemic.

01:07:02.000 And, by the way, that city's coming around.

01:07:03.620 It's turning around in significant ways.

01:07:05.820 Objectively.

01:07:06.280 I love SF, too.

01:07:07.340 Yeah.

01:07:07.900 Objectively.

01:07:08.260 You know, as I say, what is it?

01:07:10.160 Criticism is an act of love.

01:07:11.600 Yes.

01:07:11.900 God bless you.

01:07:12.780 There's a lot of love in this book.

01:07:13.860 A lot of love in this book, man.

01:07:14.900 A lot of love in this book.

01:07:16.900 But, and then this is, I think, always the great paradox of California.

01:07:24.520 California is the frontier of the future.

01:07:26.920 It always has been.

01:07:28.780 And technologically, as you said, but also culture, right?

01:07:31.820 You go to Northern California, we're inventing everybody's technology.

01:07:34.400 You go to Southern, we're given the whole world its culture, right?

01:07:37.960 It's a wild place.

01:07:40.060 Right.

01:07:40.120 And the, to me, the reason the housing thing matters here, the reason I structure the housing

01:07:46.060 chapter the way that I do with Derek is that you need to make it possible for people to

01:07:54.020 be and prosper from that prosperity.

01:07:59.140 Yeah.

01:07:59.320 It is good for people to be near the AI boom.

01:08:04.380 I have friends.

01:08:06.060 I mean, they fought fires in the city of San Francisco and couldn't afford to live there.

01:08:09.700 Right?

01:08:09.880 The point of California's riches is that they should be shared, not shared necessarily just

01:08:16.180 through taxation and redistribution, but through the ability of people to go live in these super

01:08:20.400 high productivity places, where, as happened with like a young Steve Jobs and Wozniak, you sort of fall

01:08:26.220 into this world where maybe if you have a genius for something, you have the connections to make it

01:08:31.040 matter.

01:08:31.620 Right.

01:08:32.020 And, you know, I have this sort of line in the book that in making these cities so expensive,

01:08:36.400 we did the real gating.

01:08:37.760 We really closed the frontier because the true frontier isn't land, it's ideas.

01:08:42.160 Yeah.

01:08:42.300 You frame it with Horace Greeley, go west, young man, go west.

01:08:45.460 Yeah.

01:08:45.820 And then you create that new construct.

01:08:47.340 Yeah.

01:08:47.500 So I want to pull that it's actually everything you say about California, and you know this,

01:08:52.440 I'm not telling, but I'm saying it for the audience, that makes it so important that like

01:08:57.140 the working class families can be here and are not driven out.

01:09:00.300 But on iSpeedRL, let me, because-

01:09:02.300 And by the way, just back to the housing crisis in this state explains more things in more ways

01:09:07.820 on more days.

01:09:09.000 That affordability issue is the core of 90% of California's real and structural problems.

01:09:16.060 This is foundational.

01:09:17.020 Again, you could not be more right.

01:09:20.160 It is at the core of the issues that define the challenges, not just to this state, increasingly

01:09:25.900 all over the United States.

01:09:27.940 We talk about the future happening here first, where America's coming attraction.

01:09:31.860 That's all those wonderful things that you and I were just discussing, but obviously

01:09:36.300 all of these perilous issues that you have been discussing and the reason you wrote this book.

01:09:41.980 So High Speed Rail.

01:09:42.720 So when I went out and did the reporting on that, and I went up and down the track with

01:09:46.200 the people building it and the people from the rail authority.

01:09:48.900 And they told me a couple of things that have stuck in my head that I don't try to resolve

01:09:52.080 in the book, but I'd be curious for your thoughts.

01:09:54.000 So one was that the Merced Bakersfield leg, which is the leg that is currently being tried.

01:09:59.100 I think they said they had something like line of sight, either had spent or had line of

01:10:04.000 sight on something like, it was in the range of $11 to $15 billion.

01:10:07.260 We have $13.4 billion, which 10.8 from the state and 2.6 from the feds.

01:10:13.980 And that the estimate on finishing Merced to Bakersfield was $36 billion.

01:10:18.380 Yeah.

01:10:18.620 Well, there's currently our estimates and this plus or minus, and this is a moving target,

01:10:24.540 about $6.5 billion that we, based upon what we have, the current commitments, we had additional

01:10:31.260 $3 billion from the federal government.

01:10:33.400 Obviously, the Biden Trump administration is trying to analyze that as they did in the last

01:10:37.140 time, and then cap and trade proceeds that will continue to accrue.

01:10:41.920 If we extend cap and trade, can you bond against that?

01:10:44.760 There's a lot of variations.

01:10:46.400 So you're saying you think you have line of sight on the money with a delta of $6.5 billion?

01:10:50.800 Roughly.

01:10:51.340 Yeah.

01:10:51.480 Okay.

01:10:52.160 And what a bunch of people working on it said is like, look, in the end, for this to really

01:10:55.360 work, it needs to be LA to San Francisco, and that would cost $110 billion.

01:10:58.820 Yeah.

01:10:59.020 Well, we're looking at, and I don't, you know, look, here I am.

01:11:03.260 We extended high-speed rail.

01:11:05.240 Now, the idea is to get it in these density and population corridors, which is the point

01:11:09.000 you make in the critique, and get to Fresno, for example, to Gilroy, where Caltran is, and

01:11:15.480 we can then connect to San Jose and into San Francisco.

01:11:19.160 You have the existing infrastructure in place.

01:11:21.360 That's about an hour.

01:11:22.280 You get into Palmdale.

01:11:23.480 Now you're connecting with the new Bright Line that's going all the way to Vegas, and

01:11:28.540 one of the fastest-growing parts of the state in Palmdale, where middle-class families

01:11:31.720 can still afford a home.

01:11:32.820 And so those are component parts, and that's where I think that $36 billion number came

01:11:39.580 from.

01:11:40.100 Those three component parts roughly add up to that.

01:11:43.440 Now, the Tehachapi Mountains, getting them over, all of those larger issues, those are

01:11:48.680 issues that obviously are component parts of this larger effort.

01:11:51.480 And that'll be over the course of many, many years, right?

01:11:54.580 But I think the big question people have about it, and you hear people asking this all the

01:11:59.220 time, is that-

01:11:59.960 And I just remember, I inherited this.

01:12:01.540 Yes, you inherited this.

01:12:02.520 It's not your fault.

01:12:03.120 This was not my baby from 2008 or 1982.

01:12:05.800 I'm not blaming Governor Newsom on this one.

01:12:07.540 God bless.

01:12:08.060 I'm just trying to get it back on track.

01:12:09.440 The big question is, there is not a line of sight on that $36 to $110 billion, right?

01:12:14.780 That doesn't exist.

01:12:15.960 And that's a very hard thing.

01:12:17.000 Well, you're trying to get revenue generation.

01:12:18.680 Once you start getting the large population corridors, if you could connect Silicon Valley

01:12:21.920 to Central Valley, which is the foundational argument, and you can start sharing.

01:12:26.060 We're looking at train sets that have interoperability, not just with Brightline, but a high desert

01:12:31.260 corridor.

01:12:31.820 So you have two private sector partners.

01:12:33.240 And we're actually procuring train sets very, very shortly.

01:12:37.440 As I say, we did the railhead.

01:12:38.960 We're starting to lay track.

01:12:40.180 This thing's starting to get very, very real.

01:12:42.440 Some of the projects you did see are projects that will have profound impacts economically

01:12:47.140 in terms of the upzoning, particularly in the Fresno corridor.

01:12:50.540 And Fresno is a very important part of this thing.

01:12:52.620 The big worry I heard from transportation types is that the ridership in those quarters,

01:12:57.500 as fast-growing as they may be, is not enough to throw off money.

01:13:00.720 It's not even enough to handle that operating budget, very likely.

01:13:03.520 And it's definitely not going to throw off money that's going to complete $110 billion

01:13:06.120 train, and that we're finishing something that, in the end, is going to be a monument

01:13:10.720 to not being able to build the thing we wanted.

01:13:13.440 Yeah, we're not going to be able to build a new airport.

01:13:16.180 We're not, you know, I mean, at the end of the day, we've got these constraints that

01:13:19.260 are well-established already, these pre-existing constraints.

01:13:21.920 There's not a high-speed railing system that's not enjoying some popularity and success.

01:13:25.960 Most, at least, are wildly popular.

01:13:28.860 It's an experience no one's had in the United States of America.

01:13:31.740 At least we're out there daring, and we're trying to advance a new paradigm.

01:13:36.820 Are there reforms that could be made that would make the next pieces just easier?

01:13:40.300 I mean, I was always interested that, like, it wasn't exempted from CEQA in the first place.

01:13:44.000 It's a pro-environmental project.

01:13:45.720 I know.

01:13:46.140 You know, are there things like that that could be done?

01:13:48.420 I mean, I wish you wrote this damn book in 2007.

01:13:51.320 I don't even know.

01:13:52.280 Where the hell were you?

01:13:53.340 It's a good question.

01:13:54.440 By the way, where were you in 2007?

01:13:56.580 I was in Washington, man.

01:13:57.820 Were you in Washington?

01:13:58.640 I was in Washington.

01:13:59.440 No, I mean, but you're right.

01:14:00.300 No, look, and I don't disagree.

01:14:02.440 It's the art of the possible.

01:14:03.920 And I know that, back to that, it's a practitioner framework.

01:14:06.100 I mean, I love to intellectualize all these things.

01:14:07.880 What could have, should have, would have.

01:14:09.060 But there's certain foundational facts.

01:14:10.900 And interestingly, you made the point in the book that I have to over and over make to

01:14:15.240 people, why did we start in the Central Valley?

01:14:17.620 It was a requirement, federal requirement for federal dollars.

01:14:22.120 Now, it's not the worst idea.

01:14:23.880 I mean, the Intercontinental Railroad.

01:14:24.700 Just to say it, it was a requirement because the federal program wasn't just for high-speed

01:14:28.900 rail.

01:14:29.220 It was to start where you had air pollution for marginalized communities.

01:14:33.400 Yeah.

01:14:33.720 Which is both like, I just want to say this because it's part of why I'm saying this in

01:14:37.840 the book is that that all sounds great.

01:14:40.680 And there's, you can come up with reasons to start in Central Valley, but it's the part

01:14:45.040 of the state that will generate the least political capital to keep going because it has the least

01:14:49.880 dense ridership.

01:14:50.920 Right.

01:14:51.760 But it's also part of the state that does have, I mean, you know, you talk about ignorance,

01:14:56.100 poverty, and disease.

01:14:56.760 You talk about the issues of air quality and life expectancy.

01:14:59.620 You talk about the economic opportunities.

01:15:02.380 Yeah, but what addresses air quality is the whole track.

01:15:04.740 Well, ultimately a fully electrified track.

01:15:07.080 I mean, that ultimately will.

01:15:08.620 That's the benefit.

01:15:09.140 This is just, to me, it's an example.

01:15:10.520 This one wasn't California's fault.

01:15:11.680 This was the Obama administration, but it's an example of, they should have given, I want

01:15:17.040 to say what I think should have happened here.

01:15:19.020 They should have given you whatever three some billion dollars, right?

01:15:22.920 That's what that grant was.

01:15:24.340 And just said, use it for high-speed rail, right?

01:15:26.940 It shouldn't have been a stacked series of ideas, right?

01:15:29.340 It doesn't all need to be a triple axel, right?

01:15:31.660 High-speed rail is hard enough, as you know better than I do.

01:15:34.700 It's, you know, representative democracy is a tough thing.

01:15:37.480 Dictatorships are a little easy.

01:15:38.700 But that wasn't representative democracy.

01:15:40.460 Nobody knew that.

01:15:41.420 No, a lot of folks in the Central Valley, a lot of the elected officials, a lot of the

01:15:45.040 blue dog Democrats, a lot of the Democratic voters.

01:15:46.420 But the Obama administration, when they created those programs, right?

01:15:49.660 Yeah.

01:15:49.880 That's a lot happening.

01:15:50.840 I really, this is an important point to me.

01:15:52.480 But there were a lot of representatives, Democratic representatives that stipulated their support

01:15:57.520 for that bill and those dollars that it go to the Central Valley.

01:16:01.000 There is a lot of politics in that.

01:16:02.340 I don't want to take that away.

01:16:03.680 But I do want to say, because this comes up a lot when I'm talking about this book, it's

01:16:06.860 like, oh, do you hate democracy?

01:16:08.780 People have no fucking idea what is happening in these regulatory processes.

01:16:13.020 100%.

01:16:13.380 Like, I cover this professionally.

01:16:16.480 And when I dig into what is happening after these bills pass, I'm like, oh, my God.

01:16:20.160 Really?

01:16:21.180 That is not democracy.

01:16:22.980 That is, we've created things that we're supposed to allow for participation, and they

01:16:26.100 are often very captured.

01:16:27.620 Maybe they're captured by interests you like.

01:16:29.120 That's fine.

01:16:30.340 But that is not the thing that, you know, the massive Californians who voted for Prop

01:16:35.100 1A knew they were getting.

01:16:36.140 And even those of us covering the stimulus bill, we're not looking at the precise requirements

01:16:41.800 in the notice of funding opportunity in the grant program.

01:16:45.120 So there is this thing, I think, where a lot of this highly technocratic governance, which

01:16:50.000 is very much a negotiation between different interests, is in this, like, King's Cup way

01:16:56.020 being justified as democracy.

01:16:57.840 That's not what democracy looks like.

01:16:59.400 I'll use that chant here, right?

01:17:01.140 Democracy is not shit that nobody knows about.

01:17:03.400 Look, I mean, you're very adjacent to the arguments that Elon Musk is making with Doge.

01:17:09.020 Yeah.

01:17:09.300 This clay layer of bureaucracy.

01:17:10.760 This is not representative.

01:17:12.240 Who the hell are these people to make these rules?

01:17:14.480 Who are these people making these decisions?

01:17:16.620 And the opacity of these decisions, they're not made in sunshine and daylight.

01:17:20.800 And a lot of these three lever agencies-

01:17:21.980 I was talking about, of course, Nicholas Bagley, the more liberal law professor making these

01:17:25.900 rules.

01:17:26.440 But I'll take the hit.

01:17:28.420 No, well, it's not even a hit.

01:17:29.620 But I mean, I think it goes to the sentiment.

01:17:32.420 It goes to, I think it goes to the thematics of your book.

01:17:35.180 It goes to what you're trying to stress test and what you're trying to stress upon us as

01:17:38.960 Democrats that we need to be more accountable.

01:17:40.980 Here's something-

01:17:42.420 But let me make this point.

01:17:43.460 I say this all the time to my legislative friends.

01:17:45.180 Right when I signed a bill, I said, this happens so often, it's not an indictment of any individual

01:17:49.160 legislature.

01:17:49.800 It's sort of institutionalized.

01:17:51.520 They think the process is done.

01:17:53.100 The process has just begun.

01:17:54.100 It's just beginning.

01:17:54.780 Program passing is not problem solving.

01:17:56.700 And then that implementation application goes through exactly what you're saying.

01:18:00.580 You mentioned no foes in the book.

01:18:04.420 We have no fuzz, which are notice of funny availability, not opportunity.

01:18:08.860 And then you stack all those things up with all these rules and requirements along the

01:18:12.920 lines you suggest.

01:18:13.760 That was never part of anyone's understanding or vision is what you just said.

01:18:17.400 And I think there's absolute legitimacy.

01:18:19.520 I have this joke that everybody knows a schoolhouse rock song of how a bill becomes a law.

01:18:24.300 But what they don't know is how a law becomes or does not become a reality.

01:18:29.120 The things that happen after are actually much more complicated.

01:18:31.300 But I want to say one thing about Elon Musk and Doge.

01:18:33.420 And at this point, I just referenced Nick Bagley, who is a great administrative law professor

01:18:37.840 at U of Michigan.

01:18:38.980 He was Gretchen Whitmer's, your gubernatorial colleagues, chief counsel.

01:18:43.000 He wrote this piece that's very influential these days and very influential for me called

01:18:46.580 The Procedural Fetish.

01:18:47.500 And one of the things he says in that that I think is really wise is that the Democratic

01:18:53.760 Party is very legalistic.

01:18:54.880 It's got a lot of lawyers in it.

01:18:56.500 Between Tim Walls was the first person on a Democratic ticket since Mondale to not go

01:19:02.720 to law school.

01:19:03.460 We're very legalistic.

01:19:06.040 And lawyers and constitutional lawyers and administrative procedure lawyers, they grapple

01:19:10.620 a lot with a very hard question, which is what makes government action legitimate?

01:19:13.480 And the answer they often come to is procedure, right?

01:19:16.660 It is following the procedure set out in the laws and the rules and the court orders, etc.

01:19:20.400 It's not that there's nothing to that, but the point Bagley makes, which I think is the

01:19:23.760 right counter or the way to think about the point Elon Musk is making, is that to most

01:19:27.640 people, what makes government legitimate in a democracy is that they are getting what

01:19:32.680 they think they voted for.

01:19:33.920 When they vote for you and you say you're going to do X, Y, and Z, they got X, Y, and Z.

01:19:37.660 And if they don't feel like they got that, they vote you out, right?

01:19:40.780 They see you as illegitimate, a failure.

01:19:42.160 And the problem with Musk and Doge, in addition to its lawless nature, is that its ends are

01:19:49.140 terrible.

01:19:50.560 And the people did not vote for, you know, not to be able to reach anybody at the Social

01:19:56.100 Security Administration or the IRS ever again on the phone, right?

01:19:59.200 That wasn't part of the pitch.

01:20:01.220 But it's, I think, really important that liberals have a little bit more of the sense, not that

01:20:06.880 procedure is meaningless because it isn't.

01:20:08.440 You need procedure.

01:20:09.020 But what really connects government to people is outcomes, a lived experience of government

01:20:15.700 acting in their life.

01:20:16.820 You got it.

01:20:17.480 And if you are letting endless levels of not just process, but process you have created.

01:20:22.280 I mean, when we're talking about no foes and no faas, and I mean, that is the work of men

01:20:26.540 and women.

01:20:27.100 God bless you.

01:20:27.400 You know, we are writing that shit down on the computer.

01:20:29.800 Yeah.

01:20:29.900 I mean, we lost everyone.

01:20:31.480 We opened up with CEQA.

01:20:32.540 I know.

01:20:32.920 Yeah.

01:20:33.060 This is going to be a very high audience podcast.

01:20:36.160 But when you do that, I think that that actually is a cultural change.

01:20:41.420 The thing I respect about Elon Musk, there's a lot these days I don't like about the guy,

01:20:46.480 but there is a relentlessness to the way he pursues his objectives.

01:20:50.280 A real sense that in between here and the end he is seeking might be a lot of pain, might

01:20:55.820 be a lot of disappointment, might be a lot of angry people.

01:20:57.820 But if this is worth it, which on Tesla and SpaceX it was, and on destroying the federal

01:21:02.840 government, in my view, it isn't, then this is worth it.

01:21:06.860 And that, I think, has not been the culture of liberal governance.

01:21:09.940 The culture of liberal governance has actually been to try to generate political support

01:21:14.300 by giving things to interest groups in the middle of the process.

01:21:17.780 Well said.

01:21:18.200 Right?

01:21:18.420 You pass the bill.

01:21:19.400 Then there's a regulatory thing.

01:21:20.720 Nobody's really paying attention to that.

01:21:22.260 And you do a bunch of payoffs there.

01:21:23.960 And then the thing doesn't work as well, or it's slower, or it's more expensive.

01:21:27.280 And then people think, you don't do a great job.

01:21:29.980 And that's actually undermining the legitimacy of government.

01:21:34.780 Couldn't agree more.

01:21:37.800 There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo clay.

01:21:42.100 It's thick, burnt orange, and it's got a reputation.

01:21:46.180 It's terrible, terrible dirt.

01:21:47.820 Yazoo clay eats everything.

01:21:50.220 So things that get buried there tend to stay buried.

01:21:53.400 Until they're not.

01:21:54.960 In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery.

01:22:01.380 7,000 bodies out there, or more.

01:22:05.140 All former patients of the old state asylum.

01:22:08.360 And nobody knew they were there.

01:22:10.240 It was my family's mystery.

01:22:12.540 But in this corner of the South, it's not just the soil that keeps secrets.

01:22:16.980 Nobody talks about it.

01:22:18.660 Nobody has any information.

01:22:19.960 When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think.

01:22:25.880 The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that.

01:22:31.560 I'm Larison Campbell.

01:22:32.980 Listen to Under Yazoo Clay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:22:39.760 Hi, friends.

01:22:42.120 Sophia Bush here, host of Work in Progress.

01:22:45.020 This week, we had such a special guest on the podcast.

01:22:49.360 My forever flotus.

01:22:51.240 A mentor, a friend, a wife, a mother, an author, attorney, advocate, television producer.

01:22:57.060 And now, she adds podcast host to the list herself.

01:23:01.740 Friends, Michelle Obama is here.

01:23:04.040 Sophia, I'm beyond thrilled to be able to sit down and chat with you.

01:23:07.560 We talk about it all.

01:23:09.480 Life, love, motherhood, martinis.

01:23:12.420 Vodka martini.

01:23:13.720 Dry, straight up.

01:23:14.900 Olives.

01:23:15.220 Ooh, olives.

01:23:16.360 Very cold.

01:23:17.700 My girl.

01:23:18.680 Barely any vermouth.

01:23:20.100 What's next?

01:23:21.300 What she's watching on TV.

01:23:23.320 I am a white lotuser.

01:23:24.840 I am a real housewives person.

01:23:27.620 I love the dating shows.

01:23:29.420 And tennis.

01:23:30.380 I just find that to be a bit meditative.

01:23:33.480 You do not want to miss this.

01:23:34.620 Listen to Work in Progress on the iHeartRadio app.

01:23:37.560 Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:23:41.020 Hey, I'm Jay Shetty.

01:23:42.480 And if you've ever felt the weight of letting go of people, past versions of yourself, or

01:23:48.320 the expectations placed on you, this episode is for you.

01:23:53.320 Lizzo opens up like never before about self-love, transformation, and finding real peace in a

01:24:00.140 world that constantly tries to define you.

01:24:02.680 It's not me anymore.

01:24:04.080 Whoever Lizzo is to the world is not really even me.

01:24:06.820 And that disconnect is depressing.

01:24:10.240 The Grammy goes to Lizzo!

01:24:12.560 I think it's also hard when the things that you stand for are the same things that you're

01:24:19.820 being scrutinized for.

01:24:20.620 The weight that is no longer on me is not just fat or physical.

01:24:25.700 I released so much to get to this point.

01:24:29.640 And to be honest with you, I don't feel like I've expressed myself fully in the last two years.

01:24:34.120 Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:24:40.840 The number one hit true crime podcast, The Girlfriends, is back with something new, The Girlfriends Spotlight.

01:24:51.860 Our first two series introduce you to an incredible gang of women who teamed up to fight injustice,

01:24:58.640 showing just how powerful sisterly solidarity can be.

01:25:02.060 We're keeping this mission alive with The Girlfriends Spotlight.

01:25:05.220 Each week, a different woman sits down with me, Anna Sinfield, to share their incredible story of triumph over adversity.

01:25:14.020 Like June, who founded an all-female rock band in the 1960s.

01:25:18.900 I might as well have said, we're going to walk on the moon.

01:25:22.280 But she sure showed them who's boss, and toured the world.

01:25:26.020 They would just be gobsmacked, and they would rush up after the set and say, not bad for chicks.

01:25:32.380 So come and join our girl gang.

01:25:35.220 Listen to The Girlfriends Spotlight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:26:05.220 We have answers for you in the new iHeart original podcast, Science Stuff.

01:26:09.180 Join me, Jorge Cham, as we tackle questions you've always wanted to know the answer to about animals, space, our brains, and our bodies.

01:26:16.480 Questions like, can you survive being cryogenically frozen?

01:26:19.940 This is experimental. This may never work for you.

01:26:22.760 What's a quantum computer?

01:26:24.180 It's not just a faster computer. It performs in a fundamentally different way.

01:26:27.620 Do you really have to wait 30 minutes after eating before you can go swimming?

01:26:30.640 It's not really a safety issue. It's more of a comfort issue.

01:26:34.340 We'll talk to experts, break it down, and give you easy-to-understand explanations to fascinating scientific questions.

01:26:40.360 So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to Science Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:26:47.500 By the way, sort of going back to that book, Citizen Bill, literally talks about this in the context of it's not inputs, it's outcomes, there's pyramids inverting, more choice, more voice.

01:27:01.460 I talk about government being a vending machine, where you put in your taxes, you get police, fire, healthcare, education.

01:27:08.020 If you don't like what you get, you kick the machine, you shake the machine.

01:27:11.300 And shifting that paradigm, and not just government efficiency, but how government works, moving away from you vote, I decide, more of a participatory framework in between elections.

01:27:21.840 We're finally starting to see the fruits of that vision, and near the end of my term, in the context of these new models, we've created Engaged California, our new procurement platforms, the work that Jen Polka helped seed, and the reforms we're doing as it relates to large-scale IT reforms.

01:27:38.920 But look, this notion of being accountable, society becomes how we behave.

01:27:45.280 We are our behaviors.

01:27:46.300 All this, to your point, happened on our watch.

01:27:48.500 We own it.

01:27:49.360 Democrats, we own it.

01:27:50.260 You can't point fingers.

01:27:52.040 You've got to look in the mirror.

01:27:52.760 You've got to take responsibility.

01:27:53.980 I think, foundationally, that's at the center of this book, and I think it's very helpful, and it's humbling as well.

01:28:00.720 But it's critically important this time, not only that we focus on situational politics, but how we're governing and how we're delivering real results.

01:28:10.620 Because, I mean, if I have another press conference about how much money we're spending on homelessness, they're going to take my head off.

01:28:15.760 They want to see encampments off the damn street.

01:28:18.500 That's what they're measuring by.

01:28:19.560 They want more housing so that the cost of that housing goes down because there's more supply.

01:28:25.320 They don't give a damn about the process.

01:28:27.060 They don't know what a NOFA is or a NOFO.

01:28:29.160 They don't care about any of that stuff.

01:28:31.100 You're 100% right.

01:28:32.160 It does matter.

01:28:33.500 I think there's a balance that we have to find.

01:28:36.300 We're trying to find that balance.

01:28:37.660 We're iterating.

01:28:38.280 But this notion of relentlessness is very resonant, what you just said, to be seen doings, what you said about Trump a minute ago.

01:28:46.760 We've got to be seen, not defending the status quo, defending the high-speed rail.

01:28:53.080 This went really well for me.

01:28:54.320 But defending the dynamic expectations that taxpayers rightfully have placed on us.

01:29:04.760 But let me just end with that because you end this book making that case from an abundance frame back to this nomenclature around abundance.

01:29:14.880 But you talk about DARPA, you talk about CRISPR, you talk about ARPANET going back to 1969, the origins of the internet.

01:29:24.240 You talk about the NIH, the NSF.

01:29:27.260 You talk about all of these things that few people that are listening even know but that are important.

01:29:33.340 And it relates to innovation.

01:29:34.680 It's not an act that occurs.

01:29:35.820 It's a process contradicting a little bit of what we just said that unfolds over time.

01:29:40.840 Tell me a little bit about that.

01:29:41.300 Well, everything's a process, so we don't want to say all processes are bad, just like all regulations are not good or bad.

01:29:47.680 Yeah, this is the other piece of the book that we haven't talked that much about.

01:29:50.840 But abundance is not just like me banging my fist on the table about how high-speed rail didn't get finished.

01:29:57.200 It's also motivated in part by a belief that Democrats have developed a dysfunctional relationship with technology and in a way the future.

01:30:06.240 And I sort of date this back in my own reading of it to around 2016 when I think the harms of social media became really salient to people.

01:30:15.840 I think it got overblamed for the 2016 election.

01:30:18.300 I've never been a believer that misinformation was like the driver there.

01:30:21.540 But it is rotting our brains, and it's not making us better people, and it's fucking up our kids, right?

01:30:26.660 And it's represented by like a small crew of tech billionaires who, you know, in the years since have turned, you know, more and more both right and weird.

01:30:35.700 And I think the left got to become very skeptical of it.

01:30:40.500 And one of the things that we are trying to say is that a huge amount of social progress, a huge amount of what makes it possible to live a life better than the one we live now,

01:30:48.160 is not just new social insurance programs, though those are very important, and I would like to see some of them, or redistribution, it's technology.

01:30:56.880 And it is also being thoughtful about the government's ability to organize resources and rules and manpower to pull technology from the future into the present, right?

01:31:07.760 The canonical example here is a Manhattan Project, but you can think of the internet, which as we talked about, you know, comes from the ARPANET.

01:31:15.040 You can think about Operation Warp Speed, like the one truly great success of Donald Trump's first term, which is now disowned very much by him.

01:31:22.040 And us.

01:31:22.780 And to some degree by the Democrats too, right?

01:31:24.940 Which could lay some credit too, a little bit.

01:31:27.100 We should.

01:31:27.400 And so there are a lot of problems.

01:31:31.100 Like, the only reason we have any shot on preventing a world of three or four degrees of warming Celsius is because we have created miracles through government policy in solar, wind, battery, EVs.

01:31:47.360 Tesla would not exist had it not been for the regulatory environment of California and federal subsidies.

01:31:53.680 One of the great shames of what Elon Musk has become is that guy is a walking advertisement for the power of public-private partnerships.

01:32:00.780 Thank you.

01:32:01.140 He is just like every major company he has done is built on government subsidies, government loan guarantees.

01:32:07.320 Over $3 billion in California.

01:32:08.680 And induced government demand.

01:32:09.360 Yes.

01:32:09.480 In the original, which you outlined, $465 from Obama.

01:32:11.760 Now this guy is just pulling the ladder up after him.

01:32:14.020 It drives me fucking crazy.

01:32:15.520 Well said.

01:32:16.040 But it's an aside, but also it's a principle that you lay out as it relates to DARPA and which gave us GPS, gave us the self-driving car he's now promoting that gave us so much of this innovation.

01:32:29.880 Yeah, and certainly it seeded it.

01:32:31.520 Seed it.

01:32:31.760 And, you know, look, like I'm a big believer in universal health care.

01:32:35.520 A lot of my career has been, you know, about trying to expand health insurance, but where health insurance ends up.

01:32:40.120 You're in the only state that does that regardless of ability to pay in the pre-existing conditions and immigration.

01:32:45.680 But there's a reality to this that for the people who have health insurance, which is most people, what really matters is when you get sick, is there a cure?

01:32:55.440 My wife is kept alive by shots of insulin.

01:32:57.780 She just is, right?

01:32:58.940 At another age, she wouldn't be.

01:33:01.880 There is so much that we do not yet know how to cure, right?

01:33:05.920 There is so much, I mean, what Medicare or Medicaid can offer or private health insurance, because they don't yet cover it for most people, with GLP-1s is just more valuable than what it could offer before GLP-1s.

01:33:16.980 These are going to be transformational medications for people.

01:33:20.000 They already are.

01:33:20.660 And so getting really serious about what we want the government to do technologically and having a vision of the future that is an abundant one, right?

01:33:31.920 A vision of the future that is not just about like how cheap consumer goods are, that's fine, but is about the things we need to build a better life, right?

01:33:40.220 Cheap energy, cheap health care, right?

01:33:42.920 Abundant housing, education, right?

01:33:45.260 There's a lot of things we only touch on in the book that are really important here.

01:33:48.340 I think that one of the shames of politics in the last couple of years is it got to be a really bitter argument over our past, right?

01:33:58.040 This notion of American reverse pre-1960s mindset or what?

01:34:02.200 Well, the right was gripped by a deep nostalgia for an America I think that never really was.

01:34:07.940 And the left was really focused on the injustices of our history, which I think are very real.

01:34:14.420 So I'm not trying to undermine that as a thing worth confronting.

01:34:18.340 But I think visions of the future, for different reasons on both sides, became really degraded.

01:34:23.360 And one thing that did change with Trump between his first term and his second is Elon Musk, Mark Andreessen, in a way, RFK Jr., they changed his meaning.

01:34:32.160 Trump was the defender of the past America in 2016.

01:34:35.160 Make America great again.

01:34:36.580 All these futurist influencers and, you know, rocket makers and so on, they sort of made him into something that represented a kind of future.

01:34:43.540 I think it's a quite dark one, but it is – but there is around him J.D. Vance, right?

01:34:48.100 It changed what he meant.

01:34:49.900 And I think to compete with that, and given that they're going to destroy the present, I don't think it's going to end up being a very attractive vision to people.

01:34:57.840 But to compete with that, I think Democrats need to figure out how to represent a future again.

01:35:01.860 I think Obama represented the future.

01:35:04.040 I think Bill Clinton represented the future.

01:35:06.380 And, like, both that sort of ability to grab reform, which is part of what abundance is about, reform of government, and that ability to grab the high ground of the future, which is the other part of what it's about.

01:35:17.500 This ability to integrate a theory of technology and an optimism about it and an ability to sort of wrap it in policy.

01:35:25.200 Those things are really important.

01:35:27.020 We haven't talked about AI.

01:35:27.880 There's a lot coming here that's going to be very important, and the party –

01:35:31.480 Particularly in that medical frame.

01:35:32.680 And the party and the thinkers in it are going to have to be alert to this side of it, too, because they're – like, it is a mistake to think of politics as a separate sphere from technology.

01:35:42.780 You know, if we could do more modular housing, it would change what is possible in housing policy, right?

01:35:46.900 These things are bidirectional.

01:35:48.480 They're intertwined.

01:35:49.360 And, like, I would like to see a liberalism that isn't just angry about a bunch of things the government has failed to do, as I am, but is also optimistic about what is possible.

01:35:57.960 And that's where that vision between red and blue states really diverges.

01:36:00.880 I mean, Trump and them, they're trying to destroy wind and solar.

01:36:03.240 They don't want this vision.

01:36:04.240 They don't want more trade.

01:36:05.680 They don't want more people, right?

01:36:06.920 It's all scarcity.

01:36:08.020 And that leaves a pretty big opening for the Democratic Party to capture both reform and abundance from them.

01:36:13.220 I love that.

01:36:13.840 And it's a great way to end because it's a framework of optimism.

01:36:17.040 Of course, you know, and I appreciate just thinking about Clinton, don't stop thinking about tomorrow.

01:36:20.900 I mean, obviously, there was language around that and, you know, talking about your tomorrows, not his yesterdays.

01:36:26.820 Yeah.

01:36:27.200 Obviously, the journey that we were on in the 1960s with the vision that was JFK.

01:36:32.280 But I will say about our state, and it's a point of pride in principle for me as governor to say it, or as the future ex-governor, as a fifth generation California, future happens here first.

01:36:41.300 And I talked about this being America's coming attraction.

01:36:44.140 But that's the game that separates, I think, our game from the game played everywhere else.

01:36:49.480 It's the reason we went from the seventh largest economy to the sixth largest economy in the world.

01:36:53.660 And we dominate in so many spheres, even today.

01:36:56.620 But you're absolutely right.

01:36:57.940 We now have to dominate on that reform agenda.

01:36:59.900 And we have to deal with the original sin.

01:37:01.680 And that's housing.

01:37:03.220 And again, being accountable to these larger visions as well and deliver and level set with folks.

01:37:08.640 And so it's in that spirit of an abundant mindset that, Ezra, I'm glad you took the time to be here.

01:37:16.040 I'm really, moreover, pleased you took time to write this book, which is an essential reading for everybody listening.

01:37:21.880 Thanks for being with us.

01:37:22.780 Thank you so much for having me.

01:37:24.020 Thank you.

01:37:24.380 In Mississippi, Yazoo Clay keeps secrets.

01:37:34.840 7,000 bodies out there or more.

01:37:38.600 A forgotten asylum cemetery.

01:37:40.600 It was my family's mystery.

01:37:43.040 Shame.

01:37:43.960 Guilt.

01:37:44.820 Propriety.

01:37:46.040 Something keeps it all buried deep.

01:37:48.520 Until it's not.

01:37:49.600 I'm Larison Campbell, and this is Under Yazoo Clay.

01:37:54.280 Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:37:59.980 What's up?

01:38:00.580 I'm Laura, host of the podcast Courtside with Laura Carrente, a masterclass case study of the business of women's sports.

01:38:06.760 I'll be chatting with leaders like tennis icon Alana Klaus.

01:38:10.020 I don't do what I do only for women.

01:38:12.100 I do it for everyone.

01:38:13.200 And I want the whole market.

01:38:14.700 And innovators like Jenny Nguyen.

01:38:17.320 I would say 50% of the people that come visit the sports bra aren't sports fans.

01:38:21.740 They come to be in community.

01:38:23.360 They come to be part of this culture.

01:38:26.280 Courtside with Laura Carrente is an iHeart Women's Sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.

01:38:32.240 Listen to Courtside with Laura Carrente on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:38:38.520 Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.

01:38:42.300 The number one hit podcast, The Girlfriends, is back with something new.

01:38:47.240 The Girlfriends Spotlight, where each week you'll hear women share their stories of triumph over adversity.

01:38:53.900 You'll meet June, who founded an all-female rock band in the 1960s.

01:38:58.260 I might as well have said, we're going to walk on the moon.

01:39:01.400 But she showed them who's boss.

01:39:02.980 They would rush up and say, not bad for chicks.

01:39:06.000 Come and join our girl gang.

01:39:09.280 Listen to The Girlfriends Spotlight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:39:15.600 Hey, I'm Jay Shetty.

01:39:21.880 This episode, Lizzo opens up like never before about self-love, transformation, and finding real peace in a world that constantly tries to define you.

01:39:32.700 It's not me anymore.

01:39:33.920 Whoever Lizzo is to the world is not really even me.

01:39:36.620 And that disconnect is depressing.

01:39:39.980 The Grammy goes to Lizzo!

01:39:42.380 Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:39:50.560 Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you?

01:39:52.780 Why is my cat not here?

01:39:54.080 And I go in and she's eating my lunch.

01:39:55.820 Or if hypnotism is real?

01:39:57.500 You will use a suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control.

01:40:01.040 But what's inside a black hole?

01:40:02.720 Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe.

01:40:06.040 Well, we have answers for you in the new iHeart original podcast, Science Stuff.

01:40:10.040 Join me, Jorge Cham, as we answer questions about animals, space, our brains, and our bodies.

01:40:15.700 So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to Science Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Gavin Newsom - March 26, 2025

And, This is Ezra Klein

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