This election felt like the peak of the TV-ification of politics. There’s Trump, of course, who rose to national prominence as a reality-TV character and is a master of visual stagecraft. And while Trump’s cabinet picks in his first term were described as out of central casting, this time he wants to staff some positions directly from the worlds of TV and entertainment: Pete Hegseth, his choice to run the Pentagon, was a host on “Fox and Friends Weekend”; his proposed education secretary, Linda McMahon, was the former C.E.O. of W.W.E.; Mehmet Oz, star of the long-running “The Dr. Oz Show,” is his pick to run Medicare and Medicaid; and he’s tapped Elon Musk, one of the most powerful figures in American culture, to lead a government efficiency effort. Two years ago, we released an episode that helps explain why politics and entertainment are converging like this. It’s with my old Vox colleague Sean Illing, host of “The Gray Area,” looking at the work of two media theorists, Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, who uncannily predicted what we’re seeing now decades ago.And so I wanted to share this episode again now, because it’s really worth stepping back and looking at this moment through the lens of the media that’s shaping it. In his book “The Paradox of Democracy,” Illing and his co-author, Zac Gershberg, put it this way: “It’s better to think of democracy less as a government type and more as an open communicative culture.” So what does our communicative culture — our fragmented mix of cable news, X, TikTok, YouTube, WhatsApp and podcasts — mean for our democracy? This episode contains strong language.Mentioned:“‘Flood the zone with shit’: How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy” by Sean Illing“Quantifying partisan news diets in Web and TV audiences” by Daniel Muise, Homa Hosseinmardi, Baird Howland, Markus Mobius, David Rothschild and Duncan J. WattsBook Recommendations:Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil PostmanPublic Opinion by Walter LippmannMediated by Thomas de ZengotitaThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Sonia Herrero, Carole Sabouraud and Isaac Jones. Our production team also includes Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin, Jack McCordick and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Full Episode
So as the year comes to a close, I wanted to dust off some episodes I think have some renewed relevance right now. If you've listened to the show for a while, you've probably heard me bring up some of the mid-century media theorists like Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, these people who were thinking about how TV and visual media would reshape politics and society.
And this election felt like, I mean, it was beyond, I think, what they would have predicted. There's Trump, of course, a reality TV star who runs his campaigns and in some ways his administrations like a reality TV show. Many of his picks come from the TV and entertainment world.
Chris, you had people like Dana White and Hulk Hogan introducing Donald Trump on the final night of the Republican National Convention. So the episode I'm sharing today, which was taped in 2022, offers a framework for thinking about that TVification of politics. It's a conversation with my friend Sean Illing, the host of the Gray Area podcast and a co-author of the book, The Paradox of Democracy.
Enjoy. From New York Times Opinion, this is The Ezra Klein Show. In their new book, The Paradox of Democracy, Zach Gershberg and Sean Illing make a simple but radical argument. They write, quote, it's better to think of democracy less as a government type and more as an open communicative culture. Their point there is that democracies can end up in many types of governments.
We tend to think of liberal democracies, but that's only one possibility. You can have illiberal democracies. Democracies can vote themselves into fascism. Democracy doesn't guarantee you any particular outcome. And so what drives a democracy, what decides what it becomes or what it stays, is that open communicative culture.
The way its members learn about the world, debate it, and ultimately persuade each other to change it or not change it. And communicative cultures are shaped by the technologies upon which they happen. Oral cultures are different than textual ones. Radio is different than TV. Twitter is different than TikTok or Facebook.
Political scientists spend a lot of time theorizing about democratic institutions and how elections work, but communicative institutions and the cultures and technologies by which we communicate, they get a lot less attention. And I guess I'm a member of the media, so I would think this, but I think it's a huge mistake.
I've become almost obsessed in recent years with Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, the great mid-20th century media ecologists. I honestly think you have to pick any two theorists to act as guides to our current moment. You could do a lot worse than them. And so I'm always looking for an excuse to talk about them and to talk with other people trying to apply them to our current political age.
So I was thrilled to see this book hit my desk. Sean Illing is one of the authors. He is a PhD political theorist who switched careers and became a journalist, which has always given him, in my view, an interesting dual perspective. He is the interviews writer at Vox, and he sits in my old chair hosting the podcast Vox Conversations.
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