Ezra Klein on Media, Politics, and Models of the World (Ep. 13)

On the bias of video and podcasts

关于视频和播客的偏见

When you use the medium of video, what is the bias in using video in terms of what kind of material, what kind of message?

当您使用视频这一媒介时，使用视频对于什么样的材料、什么样的信息有什么偏见？

How does that slant what any site, but including Vox.com, is going to do and be?

这对任何网站（包括 Vox.com 在内）的未来发展有何影响？

One thing about cable news is it actually isn’t that different than writing.

有线新闻的一件事是它实际上与写作没有什么不同。

You are basically writing a script.

你基本上是在写一个脚本。

There are elements, and there’s visual, but you are really writing a script, and you read it aloud.

有元素，也有视觉效果，但你实际上是在写剧本，然后大声朗读。

At least, I should say the way I did, it worked that way.

至少，我应该说，我所做的就是这样。

When I started Vox, I had the great fortune to hire a guy named Joe Posner who I met at a media conference and struck me from the second I met him as a real video genius.

当我创办 Vox 时，我很幸运地聘请了一个名叫乔·波斯纳 (Joe Posner) 的人，我在一次媒体会议上认识了他，从我见到他的那一刻起，我就被他视为一个真正的视频天才。

The reason Vox’s video is great, and I have no compunction saying it’s great because I don’t have all that much to do with it, is because Joe, and Joss Fong, and the rest of that team, they really think about video as its own form in a very different way than I had before.

Vox 的视频之所以很棒，我毫不内疚地说它很棒，因为我与它没有太多关系，是因为 Joe、Joss Fong 以及该团队的其他成员，他们确实以一种与我以前非常不同的方式将视频视为自己的形式。

We will be talking through stories, and I will come to them with something from the site that did really well.

我们将通过故事进行讨论，我将向他们提供网站上表现非常好的一些内容。

And I’ll say, “Hey, we should make a video out of this.

我会说，“嘿，我们应该用这个制作一个视频。

Look how well it performed on the site.” They’ll say, “Nope.

看看它在网站上的表现有多好。”他们会说：“不。

It’s not a visual topic.”

这不是一个视觉主题。”

In terms of the bias you’re talking about, the overwhelming bias in doing really good video work is stories that are fundamentally visual.

就你所说的偏见而言，制作真正优秀的视频作品的压倒性偏见是基本上是视觉的故事。

A story that is two people talking to each other is not that interesting.

两个人互相交谈的故事并不那么有趣。

I’ll actually give an example from podcasting.

我实际上会举一个播客的例子。

What we are doing right now is not interesting video.

我们现在所做的并不是有趣的视频。

Early on in Vox, one of the first video series we launched was Vox Conversations.

在 Vox 早期，我们推出的第一个视频系列之一是 Vox Conversations。

We had me interviewing people much as I do on my podcast, The Ezra Klein Show.

我们让我采访人们，就像我在播客《埃兹拉·克莱因秀》中所做的那样。

We had me doing long-form interviews with people often for about an hour.

我们让我经常对人们进行大约一个小时的长篇采访。

We put them up, and they never really performed that well.

我们把它们放了上去，但它们的表现从来都没有那么好。

The reason was it just wasn’t fundamentally visual, what we were doing.

原因是我们所做的事情从根本上来说并不是视觉化的。

The thing that I have learned to take much more seriously than I did a year ago, two years ago, is that you actually have to begin by asking the question, “Why is this a good thing to watch,” as opposed to in print, which is, “Why is this story simply interesting?”

我学会了比一年前、两年前更加认真地对待一件事，那就是，你实际上必须首先问一个问题：“为什么这是一部值得观看的好东西”，而不是在印刷品中，即“为什么这个故事很有趣？”

It just is interesting to see what it looks like when people in Saudi Arabia are going about their daily lives if you’re from Southern California.

如果你来自南加州，看看沙特阿拉伯人的日常生活是什么样子，真是很有趣。

I do think video has a bit more bias towards international than print.

我确实认为视频比印刷品更偏向于国际化。

I would say — and I’d be curious for your thoughts on this, because I do think underneath this question, you have a theory here — I have not seen a systematic difference yet that has influenced our coverage in the way that I did see it, say, when we moved to social being the distribution mechanism.

我会说 — 我很好奇你对此的想法，因为我确实认为在这个问题的背后，你有一个理论 — 我还没有看到系统性的差异，它以我所看到的方式影响了我们的报道，比如说，当我们转向社会作为分配机制时。

Put much more of a focus on content that front-loaded identity.

更多地关注预先加载身份的内容。

I haven’t seen that yet in video.

我还没在视频中看到过。

Doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

并不意味着它不存在。

I just haven’t found it.

我只是还没找到。

You get more people to care about the history, but precisely because it has become emotional to them.

你会让更多的人关心历史，但正是因为历史对他们来说已经变得情绪化。

Maybe what you have taught them, they don’t so easily budge from, because it is so vivid in some way.

也许你教给他们的东西，他们不会轻易改变，因为它在某种程度上是如此生动。

I do think this is going to both subtly and importantly change editorial.

我确实认为这将微妙而重要地改变社论。

When you’re creating a Netflix series, or you’re creating a YouTube channel, you are creating a kind of video that you expect to persist.

当您创建 Netflix 系列节目或创建 YouTube 频道时，您正在创建一种希望持续存在的视频。

People are going to come back to it, and they’re going to come back it, and they’re going to come back to it.

人们将会回到它，他们将会回到它，他们将会回到它。

You brought up the Syria video that was a huge hit for Vox.

你提到了在 Vox 中大受欢迎的叙利亚视频。

I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I want to say it was watched 50, 60 million times.

我没有具体数字，但我想说的是它的观看次数有 50、6000 万次。

Its major rise actually came a couple months after we first posted it, and not through anything we did, it just somehow got rediscovered during a secondary wave of fighting and news coverage of Syria, and it exploded.

它的大幅增长实际上是在我们首次发布它的几个月后发生的，并不是通过我们所做的任何事情，它只是在叙利亚的第二波战斗和新闻报道中以某种方式被重新发现，然后它就爆炸了。

The reason this is important is when you’re looking at cable news, or a lot of forbearer news content that disappeared as soon as it was put on, there the competition became about having the newest thing, the thing that other people didn’t have, much like traditional news does.

这一点很重要的原因是，当你查看有线电视新闻或许多一播出就消失的早期新闻内容时，竞争就变成了拥有最新的东西，其他人没有的东西，就像传统新闻一样。

If you are trying to create things that are going to be continuously relevant three months from now, eight months from now, a year from now, five years from now, putting more emphasis on the history of a conflict like in Syria, is going to give you a better chance of having something that can be profitably rediscovered going forward.

如果你试图创造出在三个月后、八个月后、一年后、五年后持续相关的东西，那么更加强调像叙利亚这样的冲突的历史，将会给你一个更好的机会，让你有更好的机会在未来重新发现一些可以盈利的东西。

You wouldn’t quite call that a political ideology, but maybe known, identifiable victims get a larger voice in some way, even if those victims otherwise — literally, like the whales — have no voice whatsoever.

你不会完全称其为政治意识形态，但也许已知的、可识别的受害者以某种方式获得了更大的发言权，即使这些受害者在其他方面——“字面上，就像鲸鱼一样”——没有任何发言权。

I sometimes tend to think it’s a kind of progressivism which is favored, but there’s another part of me which thinks about libertarian arguments — the seen versus the unseen, the invisible opportunity cost.

我有时倾向于认为这是一种受到青睐的进步主义，但我的另一部分思考自由主义的论点——可见与不可见、看不见的机会成本。

That very easily gets lost in print, because you’ve got to cite some boring cost-benefit study, but there are ways to show secondary consequences in the narrative of a video that typically would fail on a newspaper page.

这很容易在印刷品中丢失，因为你必须引用一些无聊的成本效益研究，但是有一些方法可以在视频叙述中显示次要后果，而这些后果通常不会出现在报纸上。

There would have been a time on the Internet when you’d have said that Upworthy proved — potentially — that a certain kind of soft, cultural progressivism was going to be dominant online.

曾经有一段时间，在互联网上，你可能会说，Upworthy 证明了————有可能————某种软性的、文化进步主义将在网络上占据主导地位。

Then I think we’ve seen sites like Breitbart and IJR, Independent Journal Review, were able to take a form of soft-to-hard cultural conservatism and using almost the exact same techniques send those super-viral as well.

然后我认为我们已经看到像 Breitbart 和 IJR（独立期刊评论）这样的网站能够采取一种从软到硬的文化保守主义形式，并使用几乎完全相同的技术来传播这些超级病毒。

If you look at these two kinds of content, you find different victims.

如果你查看这两种内容，你会发现不同的受害者。

With Upworthy it is a young LGBT kid who’s been bullied at school.

《Upworthy》讲述的是一名在学校受到欺凌的 LGBT 孩子。

With IJR you’ll see an elderly grandmother who is victimized for her Christianity.

在 IJR 中，您会看到一位因基督教而受害的年迈祖母。

Blogs, which I was part of and a big beneficiary of, for a moment you really did flatten things out.

博客，我是博客的一部分，也是其中的一个大受益者，有那么一刻，你确实把事情变得扁平化了。

It was really easy to publish at a pretty flat rate online.

以相当统一的价格在线发布确实很容易。

Doing good video: it just costs more money, it takes more time.

制作好的视频：它只是花费更多的钱，需要更多的时间。

Doing good animation: it costs more money, it takes more time.

制作好的动画：需要更多的钱，需要更多的时间。

We have substantially lowered the level of investment needed to do it well, but it is still very different than it is in text.

我们已经大幅降低了做好这件事所需的投资水平，但它仍然与文本中的有很大不同。

VR and AR, from what I know of those — and again this will all get cheaper over time — my sense there too is you’re going to have a pretty big advantage for organizations able to afford what are increasingly real studios, which the New York Times did not have to have a studio in 1996.

VR 和 AR，据我所知 ——随着时间的推移，这些都会变得更便宜 ——我的感觉是，对于那些能够负担得起越来越真实的工作室的组织来说，你将拥有相当大的优势，而《纽约时报》在 1996 年是不需要有工作室的。

And then when I was trying to in some way compete with a New York Times op-ed column as a blogger — which is not how I saw it, but I think in some way what was going on — everything was flattening there.

然后，当我试图以某种方式与《纽约时报》的专栏作家竞争时， ——这不是我的看法，但我认为在某种程度上正在发生的事情 —— 那里的一切都在扁平化。

We are so far from even having an idea of what will work in VR beyond gaming and porn — and I, by the way, don’t mean that in a dismissive way — that I just wouldn’t know how to speculate yet.

我们还远远不知道除了游戏和色情之外还有哪些东西可以在 VR 中发挥作用 ——顺便说一句，我并不是说以轻蔑的方式 —— 我只是还不知道如何推测。

People think crime rates are higher than they are because it’s reported a lot, but if presentation becomes that vivid, it may just be people are so put off by the actual worst news, they may want a kind of soft-pedaled — almost like the kittens on the Internet — they’ll want everything to be gentle and pleasant.

人们认为犯罪率比实际情况高是因为报道太多，但如果表述变得那么生动，可能只是人们对实际最坏的消息感到如此推迟，他们可能想要一种温和的态度——就像互联网上的小猫一样——他们会希望一切都温柔而愉快。

When I watch any show recommended by anyone I know, including you, even if the show is putatively a cheery, happy show, the level of discomfort that people seem to want to endure of awkwardness, of conflict, is much higher than where I am.

当我观看我认识的人（包括你）推荐的任何节目时，即使该节目被认为是一部欢快、快乐的节目，人们似乎想要忍受尴尬、冲突的不适程度也比我所在的地方高得多。

Cable news is another good example.

有线电视新闻是另一个很好的例子。

I do not have the constitution to wake up and watch people yell at each other about politics.

我没有资格一觉醒来就看到人们因政治问题互相大喊大叫。

I don’t know where people get that capability, but I very much don’t have it.

我不知道人们从哪里获得这种能力，但我非常没有。

My lesson from this I think is in some ways the opposite of yours.

我认为我从中得到的教训在某些方面与你的相反。

People are attracted to a much higher level of conflict than I completely understand, and my sense is that will remain true in a VR-AR world.

人们被比我完全理解的更高层次的冲突所吸引，我的感觉是，在 VR-AR 世界中，这一点仍然如此。

I don’t really see a reason to believe that would change.

我实在看不出有什么理由相信这种情况会改变。

So now I could see something that would say there will be a bias against particularly gruesome stories, that there will not be a sharp uptick in people wanting to experience what things are like in Aleppo in a VR-AR world.

所以现在我可以看到，人们对特别可怕的故事会有偏见，想要在 VR-AR 世界中体验阿勒颇的人们不会急剧增加。

But I don’t think that moves towards kittens and feel-good stories of happy events.

但我不认为这会导致小猫和快乐事件的美好故事。

I think you probably have a lot of what I would think of as sort of where news is now — a lot of conflict but conflict in a space of discomfort, conflict in a space of safe outrage, conflict in a space of you think you’re right and the other person is wrong, not necessarily a move towards actual cheeriness.

我想你可能有很多我所认为的新闻现在的情况——很多冲突，但冲突是在不舒服的空间中，冲突在安全的愤怒空间中，冲突在你认为自己是对的而另一个人是错的空间中，不一定是走向真正的快乐。

People seem to like cheeriness a lot less than I would think they would.

人们似乎比我想象的更不喜欢快乐。

One of the things about podcasts that I really enjoy about it, is that it has a very rambling — at least at this point in the format’s evolution — there’s much more of a rambling, looping, bullshitting quality to it.

我真正喜欢播客的一点是，它有一种非常漫无目的的 ——至少在格式演变的这个阶段—— 它有更多的漫无目的、循环、废话的品质。

You are able in a podcast to talk about something where you may not be right in a way that people are, I find, much harder on you in print for doing.

你可以在播客中谈论一些你可能不正确的事情，但我发现，人们在印刷品上对你的要求要严格得多。

Something that I find is true in the discussions I hear on podcasts, is they are much more personal — including newsmakers, by the way.

我在播客上听到的讨论中发现的一点是真实的，那就是它们更加个人化——顺便说一句，包括新闻人物。

The conversation that I had with Malcolm Gladwell, or even the conversation I had with Cory Booker, ended up focusing quite heavily on the senator’s spirituality.

我与马尔科姆·格拉德威尔的谈话，甚至是我与科里·布克的谈话，最终都集中在这位参议员的灵性上。

Which I think if I had been creating that conversation for print, I would have felt embarrassed or strange ending up that personal, but podcasting, because of the way people listen to it as a secondary activity, almost as a conversation they are part of, without having to participate in while they’re doing something else.

我认为，如果我一直在为印刷品创建这样的对话，我会感到尴尬或奇怪，最终以个人的方式结束播客，因为人们将其作为次要活动来听，几乎作为他们参与的对话的一部分，而不必在他们做其他事情时参与。

I often think of podcasting as if you’re walking around with your friends, but you just don’t have any actual friends there.

我经常认为播客就好像你和朋友一起散步，但那里没有任何真正的朋友。

That is moving towards much more personal topics, a much more intimate set of ideas, and away from harder, crisper, more concrete presentations of what we already know.

这正在朝着更加个人化的话题、更加亲密的想法发展，而不再是对我们已知的内容进行更难、更清晰、更具体的表述。

On attitudes towards business and leadership

关于对商业和领导力的态度

They’re less likely to be people who came up through the ranks, like producing ball bearings, or running a coal mine, or an oil refinery.

他们不太可能是通过晋升的人，比如生产滚珠轴承、经营煤矿或炼油厂的人。

That’s pretty well established.

这是非常确定的。

Do you think that’s true in media, and also, what would you say is exactly your skill that makes you the CEO of the part of Vox you run?

你认为这在媒体领域是真的吗？而且，你认为正是你的技能使你成为了你所管理的 Vox 部门的首席执行官？

The idea of who a CEO is, and what a CEO is, is more sharply defined in a way that is probably not good, than it was 50 years ago.

与 50 年前相比，关于 CEO 是谁以及 CEO 是什么的概念现在有了更明确的定义，但这种方式可能不太好。

That’s a fair bit of it, we have professionalized the management class.

就这样，我们已经使管理阶层专业化了。

There has become a set of signifiers that are more often, first, you learn as a CEO.

首先，作为首席执行官，你首先需要学习一组能指。

It’s one reason you’re actually able to do that kind of lateral movement, because part of what is being selected for is this, “Do you seem like a CEO?

这是你实际上能够进行这种横向调动的原因之一，因为被选中的部分原因是，“你看起来像首席执行官吗？

Do you know how to work the CEO circuit?

你知道CEO巡回赛如何运作吗？

Do you know other CEOs?”

你还认识其他首席执行官吗？”

It has become a job unto itself.

它本身已经成为一项工作。

The signaling around it, a job and a set of skills unto themselves.

围绕它的信号、一份工作和一套技能本身。

Those things are not taught in the same way coming up the ranks.

这些东西在晋升过程中不会以同样的方式教授。

I’ve been very struck after I moved to running Vox, because now, particularly in my first year, I went to a bunch of these conferences, and I met more of these people.

在我开始运营 Vox 后，我感到非常震惊，因为现在，特别是在我的第一年，我参加了很多这样的会议，并且遇到了更多这样的人。

I just got a bit more of a sense of this, and how much it’s a language, and how much it’s a culture, and how much it’s a social scene of these people who see each other at the same conferences.

我只是对这一点有了更多的认识，它在多大程度上是一种语言，在多大程度上是一种文化，在多大程度上是这些在同一会议上见面的人们的社交场景。

It’s a real circuit.

这是一个真实的电路。

I had never thought of that, and you don’t think of that as a CEO skill, but it makes perfect sense.

我从来没有想过这一点，你也不认为这是首席执行官的技能，但它是完全有道理的。

And it’s not something that would have been selected for before.

这不是以前会选择的事情。

I would want to see something more systematic about what skills CEOs really end up using, and what the bulk of companies need, before I totally bought into the thesis.

在我完全接受这篇论文之前，我希望更系统地了解首席执行官最终真正使用哪些技能，以及大多数公司需要什么。

I’m not saying it’s impossible, by any means.

无论如何，我并不是说这是不可能的。

I am not saying that individual firms are overpaying.

我并不是说个别公司支付过高的费用。

What I am saying is that it is, by the same token, pretty clear that the compensation game has become fundamentally point scoring, that it really isn’t about the money.

我想说的是，出于同样的原因，很明显，薪酬游戏已经从根本上变成了得分，它实际上与金钱无关。

I don’t think anybody thinks that the kinds of pay increases we’re seeing amongst CEOs is coming from the cost of feeding a CEO’s family having risen really sharply in recent decades.

我认为没有人认为我们在首席执行官中看到的薪资增长是由于近几十年来首席执行官家庭的伙食成本急剧上升。

What you would want is something that begins to tamp down on the collective action issue of every CEO needing to be paid more than every other CEO simply in order to prove they’re a good CEO, because it’s become a status symbol.

你想要的是开始解决集体行动问题，即每位首席执行官需要比其他首席执行官获得更多的报酬，只是为了证明他们是一名优秀的首席执行官，因为它已经成为一种地位的象征。

There’s a story I love from Walter Isaacson’s book on Steve Jobs.

沃尔特·艾萨克森（Walter Isaacson）关于史蒂夫·乔布斯（Steve Jobs）的书中有一个我喜欢的故事。

He talks about how for years and years and years after he came back to Apple, Jobs took only a dollar a year.

他谈到，在他回到苹果公司后的很多年里，乔布斯每年只拿一美元。

The board, for years, was saying to him, “Come on.

多年来，董事会一直对他说：“加油。

Take a salary.

拿工资。

You’re doing a great job.

你做得很好。

You’re building a great company.

您正在建立一家伟大的公司。

Take a salary.”

拿工资。”

He wasn’t, and he wasn’t, and he wasn’t.

他不是，他不是，他不是。

One day, he did.

有一天，他做到了。

He said, “Listen, I think we’ve done the turnaround.

他说：“听着，我认为我们已经完成了转变。

It’s time for me to begin taking a salary.” They said, “Great,” and they came to him with what they thought was a really generous package.

我是时候开始领薪水了。”他们说：“太好了”，然后他们带着他们认为非常慷慨的包裹来找他。

He told them to screw off and demanded something that was stratospheric.

他让他们滚蛋，并提出了一些天价的要求。

The point for him was not the money.

对他来说，重点不是钱。

He had been taking a dollar a year.

他每年拿一美元。

The point for him was that if he was going to get paid, that pay was going to reflect that he was better than every other CEO in the world.

对他来说，重点是，如果他要获得报酬，那么报酬将反映出他比世界上所有其他首席执行官都更好。

That’s a very good argument for highly graduated marginal tax rates that would make that kind of thing a lot less useful for anyone.

对于高度累进的边际税率来说，这是一个很好的论据，它会让这种事情对任何人都没有多大用处。

From blogging, and I think I was reasonably early on in figuring out how to merge a lot of new blogging with traditional journalism skills at the American Prospect.

从博客开始，我认为我很早就想出了如何将美国展望的许多新博客与传统新闻技能融合起来。

Brought that to the Washington Post and was able to figure out a way to build something out of that there.

把它带到了《华盛顿邮报》，并找到了一种方法来从中构建一些东西。

Saw some things in TV that you could probably do, taking some of the ethos of blogging, and what we were beginning to see, and what the audience was responding to, and taking that to cable news.

在电视上看到一些你可能可以做的事情，借鉴博客的一些精神，以及我们开始看到的内容，以及观众的反应，并将其带到有线电视新闻中。

I have been reasonably good at steering a course through a pretty rapidly changing media landscape.

我相当擅长在瞬息万变的媒体环境中引导方向。

You’ve learned all these things on your own.

所有这些东西都是你自己学会的。

You’re a very good self-learner.

你是一个非常好的自学者。

Maybe that’s the key meta skill that makes this work in the leadership position, or no?

也许这就是让这项工作处于领导地位的关键元技能，或者不是？

That came reasonably naturally.

这是很自然的事。

The thing that I think I’m good at doing as a manager is understanding what the folks working with me are actually doing, and so getting a sense of what they actually need.

我认为作为一名经理，我擅长做的事情是了解与我一起工作的人实际上在做什么，从而了解他们真正需要什么。

The way I tend to work with people is by trying to figure out what the project is and what their broad project is.

我倾向于与人们合作的方式是试图弄清楚项目是什么以及他们的广泛项目是什么。

I don’t mean literally what their task is right now, but what is their project at my organization?

我并不是说他们现在的任务是什么，而是他们在我的组织中的项目是什么？

What are they trying to do over the course of a year?

他们在这一年里想做什么？

Then figuring out how to support in that.

然后弄清楚如何提供支持。

Compared to other people I know — and this is feedback I’ve gotten — I’m pretty good at figuring out how people understand the work they are doing, and then how I can support them in that.

与我认识的其他人相比 — 这是我得到的反馈 — 我非常擅长弄清楚人们如何理解他们正在做的工作，然后我如何支持他们。

The other thing that I think I’m not bad at is having a pretty clear idea that I’m able to communicate of where we’re going.

我认为我不擅长的另一件事是有一个非常清晰的想法，我能够传达我们要去的地方。

I didn’t think this was going to be a huge issue.

我不认为这会是一个大问题。

I didn’t think a lot about branding when we started Vox.

当我们创办 Vox 时，我并没有对品牌考虑太多。

In fact, I thought media brands were probably becoming less important as content disaggregated and moved around socially.

事实上，我认为随着内容的分解和社交传播，媒体品牌可能变得不那么重要了。

It turned out they were getting more important, and that along the way, we were able to define a pretty clear one.

事实证明它们变得越来越重要，而且一路走来，我们能够定义一个非常清晰的概念。

Something that I’m pretty good at doing is defining that, and hopefully holding to that, and communicating that.

我非常擅长做的事情就是定义这一点，并希望坚持这一点，并传达这一点。

Definitely leadership and CEOing is something that I am learning as I’m going along.

毫无疑问，领导力和首席执行官管理是我在工作中不断学习的东西。

It might be hard for me to get the perspective to say what I am good at or not good at from a meta level on that.

我可能很难从元层面上看出我擅长或不擅长什么。

I keep that list going, and I keep it updated, and I keep referring back to it, I am able to be pretty efficient.

我会保留这份清单，不断更新它，并不断回顾它，我能够非常高效。

If I don’t, I get lost and overwhelmed and anxious.

如果我不这样做，我就会迷失、不知所措和焦虑。

I don’t find the big tasks to be the hard thing there.

我不认为重大任务是困难的事情。

The thing that is really hard to do is the tasks that take between 3 and 15 or 20 minutes.

真正难做的是需要 3 到 15 或 20 分钟的任务。

You keep in your head, when you probably have 30 minutes where you can knock out a couple of them.

当你可能有 30 分钟的时间可以击倒其中几个时，你就牢记在心。

They don’t feel like a big enough deal.

他们觉得这没什么大不了的。

You don’t remember them.

你不记得他们了。

You didn’t write them down in a clear place.

你没有把它们写在明确的地方。

They just sit there causing you, or at least me, endless anxiety.

他们只是坐在那里给你，或者至少是我，带来无尽的焦虑。

When I actually have them in front of me, I will stay on top of them.

当我真的把它们放在我面前时，我会留在它们之上。

Actually staying on top of them is more important, certainly, than I gave it credit for a year ago.

事实上，保持领先地位当然比我一年前所认为的更重要。

That’s an ethos that comes out of — I did that as a blogger, and I found Dylan Matthews doing that kind of thing.

这是一种精神，源于 —— 我作为一名博主就是这样做的，我发现迪伦·马修斯也在做那样的事情。

You can teach a lot of skills, but you can’t teach obsession.

你可以传授很多技能，但你无法传授痴迷。

There’s a real difference between somebody who is obsessed with the work they’re doing and someone who is simply skilled at the work they’re doing.

痴迷于自己正在做的工作的人和仅仅熟练于自己正在做的工作的人之间存在着真正的区别。

I will take the obsession and teach the skills over getting the skills and having to teach the obsession.

我会接受痴迷并教授技能，而不是获得技能并不得不教授痴迷。

You can teach a lot of skills, but you can’t teach obsession.

你可以传授很多技能，但你无法传授痴迷。

There’s a real difference between somebody who is obsessed with the work they’re doing and someone who is simply skilled at the work they’re doing.

痴迷于自己正在做的工作的人和仅仅熟练于自己正在做的工作的人之间存在着真正的区别。

I will take the obsession and teach the skills over getting the skills and having to teach the obsession.

我会接受痴迷并教授技能，而不是获得技能并不得不教授痴迷。

I don’t deal with a lot of government regulation myself, so it hasn’t had some big effect there.

我自己并没有处理很多政府法规，所以它并没有产生很大的影响。

I’m sure —

我确定——

I am much, much, much more sympathetic and have a much better understanding of, say, why wages are sticky.

我非常非常同情，并且更好地理解为什么工资是粘性的。

Or you’ve been talking about Bryan Caplan’s idea about firing aversion.

或者你一直在谈论布莱恩·卡普兰关于消除厌恶情绪的想法。

And then Matt Yglesias, my cofounder, had great set of tweets about hiring aversion.

然后，我的联合创始人马特·伊格莱西亚斯 (Matt Yglesias) 发布了一系列关于招聘厌恶的推文。

Things that often seem mysterious to me about why a firm didn’t just swoop in and take this market opportunity seem a lot less mysterious to me now that I’ve been in a big one and been able to see that from a lot of different vantage points at the Washington Post, and that was a firm that I think has been very successful in changing and evolving and transforming.

对于我来说，为什么一家公司不直接介入并抓住这个市场机会的事情对我来说似乎不再那么神秘了，因为我已经进入了一家大公司，并且能够从《华盛顿邮报》的许多不同角度看到这一点，而且我认为这是一家在变革、发展和转型方面非常成功的公司。

But I also saw how hard and wrenching that was and how many ways it could have gone wrong and didn’t, I think in that case, due to some really strong and good leadership.

但我也看到了这是多么困难和痛苦，有多少种可能会出错的方式，但我认为在这种情况下，由于一些非常强大和优秀的领导，它没有出错。

Then at Vox this is a young firm, and Vox Media itself is more than 600 employees now, though, so it isn’t that small.

然后在 Vox，这是一家年轻的公司，不过 Vox Media 本身现在有 600 多名员工，所以规模并不算小。

Vox.com is more like 70.

Vox.com 更像是 70。

Even there I have a sense of, my God, just the difficulty of growth, the organizational cost of growth, the dangers it puts you into, the overstretchedness, the lack of slack in any of the systems so that you can deal with things that are longer-range while you’re trying to deal with what’s going on today.

即使在那里，我也感觉到，天哪，成长的困难，成长的组织成本，它给你带来的危险，过度紧张，任何系统都缺乏松弛，这样你就可以在努力处理今天发生的事情的同时处理更长远的事情。

My sense of how the economy works on a micro level has changed a lot from just being inside larger firms.

我对经济在微观层面如何运作的认识与仅仅在大公司内部相比已经发生了很大变化。

That I think has influenced me quite a bit.

我认为这对我影响很大。

I’d say the other thing is I am probably much more — and, again, I’m not sure this is a policy idea — I am much more skeptical of anything anybody says about how a firm or a government organization, or anything else, works.

我想说的另一件事是，我可能更加 ——而且，我不确定这是一个政策想法 —— 我对任何人所说的有关公司或政府组织或其他任何东西如何运作的任何说法都持怀疑态度。

One of my big takeaways from now having sat through a lot of meetings with consultants, a lot of meetings with people trying to sell ideas or companies to me, a lot of meetings where I was trying to sell an idea to someone else, is that there is just a lot of bullshit in the economy.

从现在开始，我参加了很多次与顾问的会议，与试图向我推销想法或公司的人们的很多次会议，以及我试图向其他人推销一个想法的很多次会议，我的一大收获是，经济中存在着很多废话。

There is a lot of bullshit in organizations, and there is in a way I don’t totally understand an accepted level of bullshit between everybody.

组织中有很多废话，而且在某种程度上我并不完全理解每个人之间可接受的废话程度。

I seem to be at meetings all the time where everybody seems to know that only half of whatever idea is being pitched as a savior to everything is really being implemented or really going to work.

我似乎一直在参加会议，每个人似乎都知道，无论什么想法被认为是一切的救世主，只有一半真正得到实施或真正发挥作用。

I constantly see in media now people touting some kind of great pilot project or some little innovation they came up with that is covered as if it will save media, but I can look at it and know there’s no way that will be spread through the workflow of even the host organization much less than any other organization.

我现在经常在媒体上看到人们吹捧某种伟大的试点项目或他们提出的一些小创新，这些创新被报道为好像可以拯救媒体一样，但我可以看到它，并且知道即使是主办组织的工作流程也不会比任何其他组织传播得少得多。

I’ve become much more cynical about — I think of this a lot, by the way, with Snowden and the NSA.

我对 变得更加愤世嫉俗——顺便说一句，我经常想到斯诺登和美国国家安全局。

On the one hand a lot of those revelations are really, really, really important.

一方面，这些启示中的许多内容确实非常非常重要。

On the other hand, it’s a lot of consultant documents about what they were doing on behalf of the government, and I often think about how much of that is really getting effectively done, which in some ways makes it scarier.

另一方面，有很多关于他们代表政府所做的事情的顾问文件，我经常思考其中有多少是真正有效完成的，这在某些方面使它更可怕。

One way of reading those documents is the government has become this omniscient, all-seeing surveillance state.

解读这些文件的一种方式是，政府已经成为无所不知、无所不在的监视国家。

My guess is that their ability to use that data —

我的猜测是他们使用这些数据的能力 -

The way that works is fairly well understood.

其工作方式是相当容易理解的。

But when government produces things are you now more cynical about that than you used to be?

但是当政府生产东西时，你现在是否比以前更加愤世嫉俗？

I will say one thing about both government and private-sector production, which is something that I do think is important is there is an advantage to being willing to do kludgy, difficult, somewhat unpleasant things.

关于政府和私营部门的生产，我想说一件事，我确实认为这一点很重要，因为愿意做笨拙、困难、有些不愉快的事情是有优势的。

That is something I probably take more seriously than I did before.

我可能比以前更认真地对待这件事。

Let me give you an example here, because this is the way Vox particularly has really changed my view on things.

让我在这里举个例子，因为这就是 Vox 真正改变了我对事物的看法的方式。

If we had started Vox just bootstrapped — which is one of the things we pretty seriously considered, so just getting venture capital and doing it on our own — there are a lot of things we would have done that we did anyway, make things like card stacks, etc., but there are lot of things that Vox Media built capacities to do —

如果我们只是自力更生地创办 Vox——这是我们非常认真考虑的事情之一，所以只要获得风险投资并自己做——就有很多我们本来会做的事情，比如制作卡片叠等，但 Vox Media 有很多能力可以做——

Vox Entertainment, which is part of Vox Media out in LA and is building collaborations basically with television — other things, too, but television primarily — that is just something that if we had bootstrapped this we never would have been considering, because the slog to get anywhere in television, the number of meetings that don’t go anywhere, I just absolutely would never have been able to do it.

Vox Entertainment 是洛杉矶 Vox Media 的一部分，基本上正在与电视建立合作——还有其他事情，但主要是电视——如果我们自己启动的话，我们永远不会考虑这一点，因为在电视上取得任何进展的过程很艰难，有大量的会议没有进展，我绝对不可能做到这一点。

Something I actually now see as an organizational advantage of certain kinds of organizations is a willingness to do things that aren’t fun and that may not turn out well, that may actually be pretty inefficient.

事实上，我现在认为某些类型的组织的组织优势是愿意做一些不有趣的事情，结果可能不会很好，实际上可能效率相当低。

Because when you’re running really lean things that maybe don’t have a very high payoff — even if that payoff if it comes is pretty good — often don’t look good, not because of expected value, but just because of literally what you can bear as a human being.

因为当你经营真正精益的事情时，可能不会有很高的回报 ——即使回报相当不错——通常看起来并不好，不是因为预期价值，而是因为你作为一个人所能承受的。

And I think that way with government, too.

我对政府也是这样认为的。

As you say, there’s an attraction — recognizing the government is inefficient — to just saying, “Well, let’s just do cash transfer for everything.

正如你所说，有一种吸引力——“认识到政府效率低下”——只是说，“好吧，让我们用现金转移一切吧。

Let’s go UBI for everything.”

让我们对一切都实行 UBI。”

But there is a lot that government does, often not that well, that somebody needs to be doing, because a lot of the people you want to help are actually really difficult to help.

但政府做了很多事情，但往往做得不够好，需要有人去做，因为很多你想帮助的人实际上很难帮助。

This is something — now moving away from lessons learned from Vox — this is one of the things I believe strongly in policy that we underrate.

这是一些事情——“现在正在摆脱从 Vox 吸取的教训”——“这是我坚信的政策中我们低估的事情之一。

A lot of what we’re trying to do in government is not help people who want “free stuff,” but is help people who are actually very, very difficult to help.

我们在政府中试图做的很多事情并不是帮助那些想要“免费东西”的人，而是帮助那些实际上非常非常难以帮助的人。

This is particularly true in health care.

在医疗保健领域尤其如此。

On social value and finding meaning in business

论社会价值和寻找商业意义

There’s a story about the invisible hand, and you know all of this.

有一个关于看不见的手的故事，你都知道。

If you have someone who’s more left-wing or more progressive, or other points of view, I would think there’s more of a psychological dissonance between the fiduciary responsibility to a particular group and one’s political views, and that somehow is discordant.

如果你有一个更左翼或更进步的人，或者其他观点，我认为对特定群体的信托责任和一个人的政治观点之间存在更多的心理不和谐，并且在某种程度上是不和谐的。

It does get solved, but do you ever think about that clash, and what are your thoughts on that?

它确实得到了解决，但是你有没有想过那次冲突？你对此有何看法？

Now, people who are conservative, libertarian, maybe more to the right, they tend to see less of a conflict between fiduciary responsibility and the overall good of society.

现在，保守派、自由主义者，也许更右翼的人，他们往往较少看到信托责任与社会整体利益之间的冲突。

In a sense them being a CEO is morally more of a seamless venture.

从某种意义上说，他们担任首席执行官在道德上更像是一次无缝的冒险。

That might even be the wrong view.

这甚至可能是错误的观点。

There might be a real conflict there.

那里可能存在真正的冲突。

Say you own some factory farms and you answer to your shareholders.

假设您拥有一些工厂化农场，并且您向股东负责。

Correct?

正确的？

People who you would broadly call progressives, is there for them a greater psychological clash in principle between the CEO’s responsibility and what they think about politics?

对于那些被广泛称为进步派的人来说，首席执行官的责任与他们对政治的看法之间是否存在更大的原则性心理冲突？

You used an example there that I think is a good example, but will cut very much towards the argument that this would be harder for somebody on the left, which is you’re talking about an industry where you have as a by-product high levels of pollution.

你在那里举了一个例子，我认为这是一个很好的例子，但它会非常切合这样的论点，即这对左翼人士来说会更困难，也就是说你正在谈论一个副产品有高水平污染的行业。

My guess is that kind of industry will select against people who have highly environmentalist views rising to the tops of those firms.

我的猜测是，这类行业会选择那些具有高度环保主义观点的人来担任这些公司的高层。

I could be wrong about that, but that would be my assumption.

我可能是错的，但这只是我的假设。

Whereas I think there are also industries where it will cut a little bit the other way.

但我认为也有一些行业会以相反的方式削减一点。

Media might actually be one of those industries where in order to do the things that your shareholders want you to do it will imply pushing in leftward direction.

媒体实际上可能是那些为了做股东希望你做的事情而意味着向左推的行业之一。

I just assume that people select into industries that they basically find morally aligned with their views, at least at that top level where you have a lot of selection power, if you’re going to be running one of these firms.

我只是假设人们选择的行业基本上在道德上与他们的观点一致，至少在你有很大选择权的顶层，如果你要经营这些公司之一。

As we talked about, CEOs can be more generalists now.

正如我们所讨论的，首席执行官现在可以成为更多的通才。

If you’re at that level on the market you probably have selected somewhere where you just don’t find it to be a problem.

如果你在市场上处于这个水平，你可能已经选择了一个你不认为这是问题的地方。

I will say, though, that even as someone who I think in contemporary American politics falls more on the center-left side of the spectrum, I have always found the amount of corporate social responsibility stuff to be a little puzzling.

不过，我要说的是，即使我认为在当代美国政治中属于中左派，但我始终发现企业社会责任的内容有点令人困惑。

I don’t find it intuitively appealing myself.

我觉得它对我自己没有直观的吸引力。

As a human nature thing something that I’ve become more sensitized to is that you might ask how does somebody who becomes CEO of a widget factory see their life’s work as having meaning, because who cares about all these widgets?

作为人性，我变得更加敏感的是，你可能会问，成为小部件工厂首席执行官的人如何看待他们一生的工作有意义，因为谁关心所有这些小部件？

Why didn’t they go if they’re that talented into whatever?

如果他们在任何方面都那么有才华，为什么不去呢？

One thing that that kind of analysis will miss, the question of why does it matter if you’re just creating stuff for kids, or whatever, toys, is how much people end up identifying with their firm as the larger whole.

这种分析会忽略一件事，即如果你只是为孩子们创造东西，或者其他什么玩具，为什么重要的问题是，有多少人最终将他们的公司视为一个更大的整体。

How much it’s the health of the firm, the health of the workers, the corporate culture that people are really proud of that bind them together.

公司的健康、员工的健康以及人们真正引以为豪的企业文化将他们联系在一起。

That’s their community.

那是他们的社区。

That’s their neighborhood.

那是他们的邻居。

That’s where their status comes from.

这就是他们的地位的来源。

It is within that kind of outlook that this sort of corporate social responsibility stuff becomes very appealing, that if the place you’re deriving your value is from the idea of what sort of firm did you create — not what did your firm create, but what sort of firm did you create — then the question of what is the moral character of your firm, how proud are the people in your firm with being there, that becomes a very important part of the way that you personally get satisfaction from your work.

正是在这种观点下，这种企业社会责任的东西变得非常有吸引力，如果你的价值来源于你创建了什么样的公司——“不是你的公司创建了什么，而是你创建了什么样的公司”——那么你的公司的道德品质是什么，你公司的员工有多自豪，这些问题就成为你个人从工作中获得满足感的一个非常重要的部分。

I have definitely run into CEOs who seem more interested in the character of the firm they’re creating than anything that their firm is creating.

我确实遇到过一些首席执行官，他们似乎对他们正在创建的公司的特征比他们公司正在创建的任何东西更感兴趣。

On things under- and overrated

关于被低估和高估的事情

The movie The Matrix.

电影《黑客帝国》。

Overrated or underrated?

被高估还是被低估？

Now the list of restaurants that seem excellent that I have not been able to go to is longer than my arm.

现在我没能去的看起来很棒的餐厅名单比我的手臂还长。

It’s almost hard for me to rate it highly enough given how pleased I am by the development.

考虑到我对它的开发感到多么高兴，我几乎很难对它给予足够高的评价。

I thought what National Review did around Trump was very much — I don’t know that it would have happened at a place that didn’t have as clear an internal character as what Buckley gave that institution.

我认为《国家评论》围绕特朗普所做的事情非常“——”我不知道这会发生在一个没有巴克利赋予该机构那么清晰的内部特征的地方。

If it had been just a more normal magazine it just wouldn’t have tried to play that role.

如果它只是一本更普通的杂志，它就不会尝试扮演这个角色。

That role was something worth trying to play.

这个角色是值得尝试去扮演的。

What Buckley achieved, whatever you think of his politics, I think he’s definitely underrated at this point.

巴克利所取得的成就，无论你如何看待他的政治观点，我认为他在这一点上肯定被低估了。

Professional sports.

专业运动。

Even as I think professional sports is way overrated, sports journalism is continuously underrated.

尽管我认为职业体育被高估了，但体育新闻却一直被低估。

It is always some of the best journalism we’re doing in America and nearly always the best-written form of journalism that we do in America.

它始终是我们在美国所做的最好的新闻报道，而且几乎总是我们在美国所做的最好的新闻报道形式。

One of my favorite books is The Muhammad Ali Reader.

我最喜欢的书之一是《穆罕默德·阿里读本》。

It is the case that basically every great writer of the 20th century did their Muhammad Ali piece.

基本上20世纪的每一位伟大作家都写过穆罕默德·阿里的作品。

You can just go through there and it is an amazing tour of particularly New Journalism, but there is a capacity to use sports to write about anything in the American experience.

你可以去那里，这是一次令人惊叹的新新闻之旅，但有能力利用体育来写任何美国经历。

It is really tremendous.

实在是太伟大了。

On the flip I just somehow do not have the part of my brain, really just do not — and again, I want to continue to say this is not a normative claim, this is a claim about my own experience — I do not have the part of my brain that even allows me to empathetically access why someone would care what a bunch of people playing for a team that they went to because it paid them the most money —

另一方面，我只是不知何故没有我的大脑的一部分，真的只是没有 ——再说一遍，我想继续说这不是一个规范的主张，这是关于我自己的经历的主张 —— 我的大脑的一部分甚至没有让我能够同情地理解为什么有人会关心为什么有人会关心一群人为他们所在的球队效力，因为这给了他们最多的钱——

Work he did on gun control didn’t really go anywhere, but in terms of the task force piece of the administration it was well conducted.

他在枪支管制方面所做的工作并没有真正取得任何进展，但就政府的特别工作组而言，它进行得很好。

He has been very, very important in pushing through a bunch of congressional deals.

他在推动国会达成一系列协议方面发挥了非常非常重要的作用。

And he’s played a role that I respect in organizations of often being the skunk at the party, particularly in Obama’s dealings with the military.

他在组织中扮演了我尊敬的角色，经常成为派对上的臭鼬，特别是在奥巴马与军队打交道时。

Biden’s role in a lot of that was to act as the counterweight in a way that’s very socially uncomfortable and is related to Joe Biden’s very particular set of skills which may not have been — are not always adaptive, but I think are adaptive in that particular circumstance.

拜登在很多方面的角色是以一种在社交上非常不舒服的方式充当制衡者，这与乔·拜登非常特殊的一套技能有关，这些技能可能并不总是具有适应性，但我认为在特定情况下是具有适应性的。

Yet, at the same time he’s been, by all accounts, a very successful vice president.

然而，与此同时，从各方面来看，他都是一位非常成功的副总统。

People forget that his was actually the most highly rated convention speech at the 2012 convention, even more so, if I remember correctly, than Bill Clinton.

人们忘记了，他实际上是 2012 年大会上收视率最高的大会演讲，如果我没记错的话，甚至比比尔·克林顿还要高。

He arguably really played a big role in the election by getting their debates back on track after Obama flubbed the first debate.

可以说，在奥巴马输掉第一场辩论后，他让辩论重回正轨，在选举中发挥了重要作用。

He is looked at in a way that I have looked into, and reported on, and tried to understand as sort of a joke.

我对他进行了研究、报道，并试图将其理解为一个笑话。

The gap between the esteem in his public reputation as Uncle Joe and the gravity of his career, and what he’s done, and the role he’s played with Obama I think is very, very, very wide.

我认为，他作为乔叔叔的公众声誉的尊重与他职业生涯的严肃性、他所做的事情以及他在奥巴马中扮演的角色之间的差距非常非常大。

On the Klein, Obama, and Clinton models of politics

论克莱因、奥巴马和克林顿的政治模式

He has developed, over his time in office, much more so than when he ran in ’08, a pretty structuralist view of how Congress works, of how American politics works, of how automatic a lot of functions of public opinion and partisan opinion are.

在他的任期内，他对国会如何运作、美国政治如何运作、公众舆论和党派舆论的许多功能如何自动发挥作用，已经形成了一种相当结构主义的观点，这一观点比他08年竞选时更加明显。

These are things that the “Hope and Change Obama” didn’t believe in ’08.

这些是“希望与改变奥巴马”在 08 年不相信的事情。

He thought that you could really bridge these divides.

他认为你真的可以弥合这些分歧。

There was a lot more cynicism among members of the press, including myself.

包括我自己在内的媒体成员中存在更多的愤世嫉俗。

That cynicism was borne out.

这种愤世嫉俗的态度得到了证实。

I think he shares it, now.

我想他现在也分享了。

He believes — in ways I don’t fully understand and don’t think he’s really able to give a good account of — that there is an essential goodness of the American people, that they will rise up and demand better of their leaders, and maybe it just has to get to a bad enough point or something.

他相信——“以我不完全理解的方式，也不认为他真的能够很好地描述”——美国人民有一种本质上的善良，他们会站起来，要求他们的领导人做得更好，也许只是到了一个足够糟糕的地步或其他什么程度。

But I think he’s wrong about that.

但我认为他的想法是错误的。

You actually need to change how the system works, not expect that at some point the American people are going to say enough is enough.

你实际上需要改变系统的运作方式，不要指望在某个时候美国人民会说受够了。

Again, this is my best recounting of what the nature of his optimism is.

这再次是我对他乐观本质的最好描述。

He definitely pushes back quite strongly on what he calls the jaded easy cynicism, but I think it’s correct.

他确实强烈反对他所谓的厌倦的、轻松的愤世嫉俗，但我认为这是正确的。

But when she’s in office, she has a real “I will work with you on anything no matter how small endlessly to build up trust.” That’s kind of her approach.

但当她上任时，她会真正地“我会在任何事情上与你合作，无论多么小，以建立信任。”这就是她的做法。

She believes you can get more out of that than I believe you can.

她相信你能从中得到比我相信的更多的东西。

She believes there’s more that personal relationships can do to create grounds for bipartisan cooperation.

她认为，人际关系可以为两党合作创造更多基础。

Her critique of Obama would be that he doesn’t spend that much time, and when he does spend the time, does not evince enough enjoyment of reaching out and spending time and building relationships with opposed members of Congress.

她对奥巴马的批评是，他没有花那么多时间，而且即使他花了时间，也没有表现出足够的享受与反对派国会议员接触、花时间和建立关系。

If you got her late at night after she’s had a couple drinks, she would tell you that the difference between her and him is that she really will spend all that time with Mitch McConnell.

如果你在深夜喝了几杯酒后找到她，她会告诉你她和他之间的区别在于她真的会和米奇·麦康奈尔一起度过所有的时间。

Even when people treat her unfairly and treat her badly, she will continue reaching out with them.

即使人们对她不公平、对她不好，她也会继续与他们接触。

She talked in our interview about her husband — people impeaching him at 4 p.m.

她在我们的采访中谈到了她的丈夫——人们在下午 4 点弹劾了他。

and him having them over for a drink at 9 p.m.

晚上 9 点他请他们过来喝一杯。

She really sees that as something that can really work in changing outcomes.

她确实认为这确实可以改变结果。

I don’t really agree.

我不太同意。

To a first approximation, knowing which party people belong to is basically how to predict the way they’ll vote.

初步估计，知道人们属于哪个政党基本上就是如何预测他们的投票方式。

That is even truer since she was last involved in legislative politics, and I don’t think there’s going to be that much margin in a more attentive personal relationship to being the legislator in chief.

自从她上次参与立法政治以来，情况更是如此，而且我认为，作为首席立法者，在更细心的个人关系中不会有那么多余地。

talked in our interview about her husband — people impeaching him at 4 p.m.

在我们的采访中谈到她的丈夫——人们在下午 4 点弹劾他。

and him having them over for a drink at 9 p.m.

晚上 9 点他请他们过来喝一杯。

She really sees that as something that can really work in changing outcomes.

她确实认为这确实可以改变结果。

I don’t really agree.

我不太同意。

To a first approximation, knowing which party people belong to is basically how to predict the way they’ll vote.

初步估计，知道人们属于哪个政党基本上就是如何预测他们的投票方式。

On diversity, demographic anxiety, and what’s missing in public discourse

关于多样性、人口焦虑以及公共话语中缺失的内容

If you think of yourself in the role of an editor, so you have an American society, diversity has gone up, and a lot of people have reacted to this I would say rather badly — and I think you would agree with me they’ve reacted rather badly — but there’s still a way in which the issue could be framed that while diversity is actually a problem, we can’t handle diversity.

如果你把自己想象成编辑的角色，那么你有一个美国社会，多样性已经上升，很多人对此的反应我会说相当糟糕——我想你会同意我的观点，他们的反应相当糟糕——但仍然可以通过某种方式来阐述这个问题，尽管多样性实际上是一个问题，但我们无法处理多样性。

Putnam almost says as such, and do you think there’s currently a language in the media where you have readers who are themselves diverse, where it’s possible not to just be blaming the bigots, but to actually present the positive view, “Look, people are imperfect.

普特南几乎是这样说的，你认为目前媒体中有一种语言，你的读者本身就是多元化的，有可能不只是指责偏执者，而是真正呈现积极的观点，“看，人都是不完美的。

A society can only handle so much diversity, and we need to learn this.” What’s your take on that?

一个社会只能应对如此多的多样性，我们需要学习这一点。”您对此有何看法？

Arlie Hochschild, who I’ve had on my show —

阿莉·霍克希尔德（Arlie Hochschild），我在我的节目中见过她——

There are probably types of advancement in society that is zero-sum, particularly when you begin really trying to open up the floodgates.

社会中有些类型的进步可能是零和的，特别是当你开始真正尝试打开闸门时。

So I think that’s correct, and I think that we don’t have a good language for it.

所以我认为这是正确的，而且我认为我们没有一个好的语言来表达它。

I don’t know what it would mean to get one, but one thing that has annoyed me this year is I really dislike the use of political correctness as a language for it.

我不知道得到它意味着什么，但今年让我恼火的一件事是我真的不喜欢使用政治正确作为它的语言。

One, it doesn’t explain very much.

一，它没有解释太多。

But two, I think that something that has happened a lot of the time here is people have somewhat either unconsciously — or I think at times cynically — mixed up an elite debate and a nonelite debate.

但第二，我认为这里经常发生的事情是，人们在某种程度上要么无意识地“或者我认为有时愤世嫉俗地”混淆了精英辩论和非精英辩论。

There is a debate about political correctness on college campuses, and with very sort of cutting-edge issues like transgender rights, or safe spaces, or trigger warnings, that a lot of people who graduated from Ivy League schools particularly are very invested in — in the media.

大学校园里存在着一场关于政治正确性的辩论，而且涉及诸如变性人权利、安全空间或触发警告等非常前沿的问题，许多从常春藤盟校毕业的人尤其对媒体非常投入。

Particularly people who what they like to do is write about things in a very free and untrampled way, and they see this as an attack on them.

特别是那些他们喜欢以一种非常自由和不被践踏的方式写东西的人，他们认为这是对他们的攻击。

They don’t like what they see in their Twitter mentions, a whole range of why people get upset.

他们不喜欢在推特上看到的内容，这就是人们感到不安的一系列原因。

I’m not even questioning the validity of that anger, I’m just saying that is a very different set of issues than somebody who wants to be able to say, “Mexican immigrants are criminals too often, and they shouldn’t be in this country.”

我什至不是质疑这种愤怒的有效性，我只是说，这与那些想要说“墨西哥移民经常是罪犯，他们不应该在这个国家”的人截然不同。

The things that Trump is keying into are things like Jon Chait is a big critic of contemporary academic political correctness, but does not believe the things that Trump is saying about Muslims being allowed to travel to the US are viable at all.

特朗普强调的事情是，乔恩·柴特（Jon Chait）是当代学术政治正确性的严厉批评者，但他不相信特朗普所说的关于允许穆斯林前往美国的事情根本不可行。

There are a bunch of things that are settled among elites about what is an acceptable thing to say or not that Trump is reopening.

关于特朗普重新开放的言论是否可以接受，精英们已经达成了一系列共识。

Then there are a bunch of things that are unsettled among elites that Trump doesn’t care about.

还有一些精英们尚未解决的问题，而特朗普并不关心。

There’s been a sort of conflation of those issues around political correctness that has been unhelpful to understanding his coalition and why there’s real power there.

这些问题在某种程度上与政治正确性混为一谈，这无助于理解他的联盟以及为什么那里有真正的权力。

There’s maybe a tendency for stories to evolve into a language without shame.

故事可能有发展成为一种无耻语言的趋势。

Does that ever worry you about media, and what is the role of shame in politics, and what should we be shaming more often?

您是否曾担心过媒体？羞耻在政治中的作用是什么？我们应该更频繁地羞辱什么？

The particular ideology he has, there are these long things, debates about whether the media is liberal or it’s conservative, and I tend to think they miss a lot of nuance on it, but what the media really is, is not committed to single-payer, but committed to diversity, to pluralism, to tolerance, to things that I think of as more cosmopolitan values than particularly liberal values, or at least liberal in the contemporary political sense of values.

他所拥有的特殊意识形态，有这些很长的事情，关于媒体是自由派还是保守派的争论，我倾向于认为他们错过了很多细微差别，但媒体真正是什么，并不致力于单一支付者，而是致力于多样性、多元化、宽容，以及我认为比特别自由主义价值观更国际化的价值观，或者至少是当代政治价值观中的自由主义价值观。

Trumpism is a lot less conservative than it is traditionalist, restrictionist; it collides with that set of cosmopolitan, urban values.

特朗普主义远不如传统主义、限制主义那么保守。它与国际化的城市价值观相冲突。

One place where I think people have a lot of upset about this — there is a lot of shaming in the media.

我认为人们对此感到非常不安——媒体上有很多羞辱。

We talked about it a couple minutes ago, around racial resentment.

几分钟前我们讨论了种族仇恨问题。

There’s a lot of, “No, you need empathy for this set of ideas, but this other set of ideas you can confidently attack.” So I don’t think the media operates without shame, I just don’t think it shames single mothers, nor do I think it should.

有很多，“不，你需要对这组想法产生同理心，但你可以自信地攻击另一组想法。”所以我不认为媒体的运作是无耻的，我只是不认为它让单身母亲感到羞耻，我也不认为它应该这样做。

The flip of that is that a lot of — at least people in the media believe — that it has been more or less an unalloyed good that is has been harder to express antigay sentiments in public.

与此相反的是，很多人——至少媒体人士认为——它或多或少是一种纯粹的好处，很难在公开场合表达反同性恋情绪。

That’s the kind of calculation people are making.

这就是人们正在做的计算。

Broadly people like a lot of the trends and a lot of the policy decisions that have led to the possibility of more single motherhood, and they are very, very, very uncomfortable with the kinds of things that you would have to do and say to try to turn that back.

总的来说，人们喜欢很多趋势和很多政策决定，这些趋势和政策决定导致了更多单身母亲的可能性，并且他们对你必须做和说的那些试图扭转这种情况的事情感到非常、非常、非常不舒服。

Whereas a lot of the other kinds of shame, people are just making a different calculation.

而许多其他类型的耻辱，人们只是在进行不同的计算。

On the biggest moral blight of today

论当今最大的道德败坏

That tends to be something that comes along with big changes in morality.

这往往伴随着道德的巨大变化。

One of the ways I think about this is that I remember reading Ron Chernow’s Washington, the biography of Washington which is great.

我思考这个问题的方式之一是我记得读过罗恩·切尔诺的《华盛顿》，这是一本很棒的华盛顿传记。

I remember being surprised by the way the Founding Fathers talked about slavery in their letters to each other.

我记得我对开国元勋们在彼此的信中谈论奴隶制的方式感到惊讶。

It was very much the in-vogue thing to be against slavery.

反对奴隶制是当时非常流行的事情。

They all in their letters talked about it as a moral blight, and may it be gone from the Earth in 50 years, and the stain on this great nation, but they all just also had slaves, with the exception obviously of Hamilton.

他们都在信中谈到这是一种道德败坏，希望它在 50 年内从地球上消失，也是这个伟大国家的污点，但他们也都拥有奴隶，显然汉密尔顿除外。

There was something in that, in that they knew it was wrong, they knew they wanted it to stop, but it was just really hard to stop it at the time.

其中有一些东西，因为他们知道这是错误的，他们知道他们希望它停止，但当时真的很难阻止它。

It’s how the economy worked: they already had them, and they not just kept them but added more.

经济就是这样运作的：他们已经拥有了它们，而且他们不仅保留了它们，而且还增加了更多。

Looking back, it’s unconscionable, but when I talk to virtually anyone I know, I don’t know anybody that defends factory farming as a moral part of our society.

回想起来，这是不合情理的，但当我与几乎所有我认识的人交谈时，我不知道有谁会捍卫工厂化农业作为我们社会道德的一部分。

I don’t know anybody.

我谁也不认识。

You might hear it in reference to much poorer countries, but not to this one.

你可能会听到这个词指的是更贫穷的国家，但不是这个国家。

So we are running around knowing that we’re causing immense, tremendous suffering to sentient beings, and I don’t know, it’s a pain in the ass to eat less meat.

所以我们到处乱跑，知道我们正在给众生造成巨大的痛苦，但我不知道，少吃肉是一件很痛苦的事情。

I think it’s going to look really bad.

我认为它看起来会很糟糕。

Given that that’s one of the core things that we are, much as we’re evolved to, say, enjoy sex or have friends, why think that’s the one thing that’s going to change?

鉴于这是我们的核心事物之一，就像我们进化到享受性或拥有朋友一样，为什么认为这是会改变的一件事呢？

It seems to me that’s one of the least likely to change.

在我看来，这是最不可能改变的之一。

There are things like this before.

以前也有这样的事情。

Child labor, I would actually put a little bit in this category, where, for a very long time, you would say, “Well, we’ve always put kids to work.”

童工，实际上我会在这个类别中放一点，在很长一段时间里，你会说，“嗯，我们总是让孩子们去工作。”

In fact, that’s why you have kids, so you have all this extra labor laying around when you need it.

事实上，这就是你生孩子的原因，所以当你需要的时候你可以做所有这些额外的劳动力。

Then we got better at automating things, and workers became much, much, much more productive.

然后我们在自动化方面做得更好了，工人的生产力也变得非常非常高。

So I am not somebody who doubts the incredible deliciousness.

所以我并不是一个怀疑其令人难以置信的美味的人。

Now we’re getting pretty close.

现在我们已经非常接近了。

Again, I don’t want to say we’re there.

再说一次，我不想说我们在那里。

It’s not as good as the best burger.

它不如最好的汉堡。

Is it as good as a McDonald’s burger?

它和麦当劳的汉堡一样好吗？

Definitely, it is.

绝对是的。

Let’s say I were to defend the eating of meat, and I would say something like this.

假设我要捍卫吃肉，我会说这样的话。

If you eat vegetables, you still need to plow the proverbial field.

如果你吃蔬菜，你仍然需要耕地。

You kill mice.

你杀老鼠。

It may be a larger number, smaller number.

可能是较大的数字，也可能是较小的数字。

Let’s say it’s even a smaller number, but you’re always doing something morally unconscionable with respect to animals.

假设这个数字更小，但你总是对动物做一些在道德上不合理的事情。

Therefore, trying to apply human-to-human morality to relations with animals can’t work.

因此，试图将人与人之间的道德应用于与动物的关系上是行不通的。

We’re not sure what the right morality is.

我们不确定什么是正确的道德。

We can perform some acts of mercy and grace, but the very existence of a planet with so many billions of humans means there’s some ongoing, just massively cruel slaughter of animals.

我们可以做出一些仁慈和恩典的行为，但地球上有数十亿人类的存在就意味着对动物的大规模残酷屠杀仍在继续。

Yes or no?

是还是不是？

But we are torturing animals right now.

但我们现在正在折磨动物。

I don’t mean to get too much on the horse here, but what we do to egg-laying chickens, it’s just fucking crazy.

我并不是想在这里过分强调，但我们对下蛋鸡所做的事情实在是太疯狂了。

Not only is it fucking crazy, but we know it is because it is illegal now to tape it.

这不仅太疯狂了，而且我们知道这是因为现在录制它是违法的。

And it is so grotesque to watch it.

观看它真是太怪诞了。

I think that we can do better than that.

我认为我们可以做得更好。

There are a lot of places in life, and in living a moral life — environmentalism is a big one of these — where, given how complex human actions are, it is very hard to know with certainty that you’re making the right decisions.

生活中有很多地方，在道德生活中 ——环保主义是其中的一个重要因素—— 考虑到人类行为的复杂性，很难确定你正在做出正确的决定。

That’s true constantly in politics.

这在政治上始终如此。

That’s true constantly in everything we do.

我们所做的一切都是如此。

Nevertheless, we somehow stumble forward and try to do the best we can.

尽管如此，我们还是会跌跌撞撞地前进，并尽力做到最好。

Eating more plants and keeping fewer animals in conditions so terrible that we can’t actually bear to watch them and have had to pass laws so people stop trying to make us see them, I think that lends a fair bet.

在如此糟糕的条件下吃更多的植物，更少的动物，以至于我们实际上无法忍受观看它们，并且不得不通过法律，这样人们就不再试图让我们看到它们，我认为这是一个公平的赌注。

On travel

旅行时

Often times, when I’m traveling somewhere, part of why I learn so much about the place I’m going is that I’m thinking about it, I’m reading about it as I’m there watching it.

很多时候，当我去某个地方旅行时，我对要去的地方了解得如此多的部分原因是我在思考它，在观看它的同时阅读它。

A lot of it is the mustering of other kinds of attentional resources, watching movies, or documentaries, or consuming other kinds of culture from it before.

其中很大一部分是聚集其他类型的注意力资源，观看电影或纪录片，或者之前从中消费其他类型的文化。

There is more than just the seeing.

不仅仅是看到。

Sometimes people feel like the learning about a place is just going and seeing it.

有时人们觉得了解一个地方就是去看看它。

For me, I find that a lot of the benefits of travel are actually about things that I could have done even if I haven’t been there, but I would have never focused on in the same way, and with the same intensity, for the same period of time.

对我来说，我发现旅行的很多好处实际上是关于即使我没有去过那里我也可以做的事情，但我永远不会以同样的方式、同样的强度、在同样的时间内专注于这些事情。

This podcast is also being released to listeners of The Ezra Klein Show.

该播客也将向《埃兹拉·克莱因秀》的听众发布。

We encourage CWT listeners to check out his show if you haven’t already.

如果您还没有看过他的节目，我们鼓励 CWT 听众去看看。

Special thanks also to Panoply for lending us production help for this podcast.

还要特别感谢 Panoply 为我们提供此播客的制作帮助。