Given recent events around George Floyd and far beyond, this special episode of the a16z Podcast features Shaka Senghor, a leading advocate for criminal justice reform (and bestselling author), and Terry Brown, a former police officer in East Palo Alto (who has since run his own security firms) — who, incidentally, both grew up in Detroit but ended up on different sides of the law — in conversation with a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz.

The conversation goes deep and on the ground (please note that the discussion also includes details of violence, in case you have young children listening). 

Are humans fundamentally good? (with Rutger Bregman)

Dutch historian and De Correspondent writer Rutger Bregman got famous for the lashings he gave Tucker Carlson and the assembled plutocrats of Davos. But his work is far more utopian than polemical. The conversation we had on this show almost a year ago on his previous book Utopia for Realists is still one of my favorites.

Bregman’s new book, Humankind: A Hopeful History, is even more ambitious: it’s an effort to establish that human beings, human nature, is kinder, friendlier, more decent, than we are given credit for. And that a new world could be built atop that understanding.

I’m not convinced by everything in this book, to be honest. But that tension makes this conversation unusually generative. We discuss the deeply social, egalitarian lives of hunter-gatherers, whether the advent of human civilization was a huge mistake, and how our views toward religious faith have changed radically since our early 20s; and we debate whether humans have a nature at all, the implications of the Holocaust, whether we can build a society without CEOs, politicians, and bureaucrats, and more

By the end, I’m still not sure I believe there is one human nature. But, I do think that if we believed Bregman’s view of our nature, rather than, say, Donald Trump’s view of our nature, maybe we could build something much more beautiful.

Book recommendations:

Affluence without Abundance by James Suzman

Behind the Shock Machine by Gina Perry

The Lost Boys by Gina Perry

How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog) by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut

Want to contact the show? Reach out at ezrakleinshow@vox.com

Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas.

New to the show? Want to check out Ezra’s favorite episodes? Check out the Ezra Klein Show beginner’s guide (http://bit.ly/EKSbeginhere)

Credits:

Producer/Editor – Jeff Geld

Researcher – Roge Karma

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389: How to Host a Successful Virtual Summit for Influence, Impact, and Income

Liam Austin made $50k off his first online event, and hasn’t looked back. Since then, Liam has hosted another 17 virtual summits and online business networking events.

In total, these events have brought together more than 400 speakers and 100,000 business owners.

Virtual summits allow you to connect with industry leaders and influencers in your niche while growing your own audience.

Hosting a virtual summit sounds pretty straightforward:

• interview a bunch of influential people in your niche
• collect registrations of people who want to watch those interviews
• sell access to the recordings after they expire

But the virtual summit model has a lot of nuance and strategy, and behind-the-scenes action that all has to come together to make it a hit.

That’s why I invited Liam on the show.

If you’re looking for ways to grow your business and make meaningful connections within your industry, this episode lays out that blueprint for you.

Tune in to hear Liam talk through:

• The core benefits of hosting a virtual summit
• How he made $50k from his first summit and learned some valuable lessons
• What it’s going to take to create your own virtual summit in your industry
• And more

Full Show Notes and PDF Highlight Reel: How to Host a Successful Virtual Summit for Influence, Impact, and Income

Scott discusses why the optimism around when life can resume to normalcy is problematic, as well as how vaccination is going to become an industry that creates trillions of dollars in shareholder value. He also shares why he thinks HBO Max is the worst brand move in the last 20 years. 

Our guest this week is Bloomberg reporter and author of No Filter, Sarah Frier. She talks about the role social platforms play in our elections and everyday lives.

Lastly, an Office Hour question has Scott questioning the three elements to success.  

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From politician to priest

I first met Cyrus Habib at a conference a few years ago. You don’t forget him. He’s a Rhodes scholar. Iranian-America. As lieutenant governor of Washington state, he was the youngest Democrat elected to statewide office in the country. And he’s blind.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I read a piece in the New York Times that I didn’t expect: Habib, who had a clear shot to be the next governor of Washington, is leaving politics to become a Jesuit. He is going to take a vow of obedience, of poverty, of chastity. He is going to give up his phone for years. And most fascinating of all, he doesn’t think of it as an act of sacrifice. “I don’t see it as a shrinking of my world,” he told the Times. “I see it as a shrinking of my self.”

That is not something you read every day. So I asked Habib if he would come on the podcast and talk to me about this decision. The result is a remarkable conversation about Habib’s intertwining faith and political journeys, what you can and can’t achieve through political service, whether religion is the modern counterculture, how the forces of meritocracy and achievement ensnare even their winners, what it means to lead a life of joy, whether freedom comes through choice or constraint, the Jesuit theory of social change, whether a decision like this is selfish or selfless, and so much more.

This conversation takes a bit of a winding path. But where it goes is really, really worth it.

Book recommendations:

The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything by James Martin

Tattoos on the Heart by Greg Boyle

Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon

Laudato Si’ by Pope Francis

Want to contact the show? Reach out at ezrakleinshow@vox.com

Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas.

New to the show? Want to check out Ezra’s favorite episodes? Check out the Ezra Klein Show beginner’s guide (http://bit.ly/EKSbeginhere)

Credits:

Producer/Editor – Jeff Geld

Researcher – Roge Karma

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices