For the last episode of Season 4, Rose and Katie are joined by Matthew Yglesias, journalist and author of the Substack, Slow Boring. They cover everything from the value and political future of US foreign assistance, to climate politics and the new “abundance” movement, and how we navigate a rapidly changing media ecosystem.
Matthew Yglesias, journalist and author of the Substack newsletter on pragmatic policy, Slow Boring, which quickly became one of Substack’s top political publications after launching in 2020. Matt co-founded Vox in 2014 alongside Ezra Klein and Melissa Bell, where he covered politics and economic policy, and co-hosted The Weeds podcast. Before launching Vox, he wrote for Slate, Think Progress, The Atlantic, TPM, and the American Prospect. Matt has authored several books, including “The Rent Is Too Damn High,” “One Billion Americans,” and “Heads in the Sand.”
Shownotes
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Transcript
[00:00:05] ROSE MUTISO: I’m Rose Mutiso.
[00:00:06] KATIE AUTH: I’m Katie Auth, and this is High Energy Planet, the podcast from the Energy for Growth Hub about new ideas to solve global energy, poverty and the people behind them. Today’s episode is a special one because it’s the final episode of season four,
[00:00:19] ROSE MUTISO: Woohoo! We did it.
[00:00:20] KATIE AUTH: We did it and we’re so grateful to everybody who’s listened and supported us and to all of our guests who’ve come on and talked through big things with us, and we’re already looking ahead to what’s coming in season five.
[00:00:32] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah, and we are closing out with a great guest. So Matt Iglesias. You may know him from his substack newsletter on Pragmatic Policy, slow Boring, which quickly became one of Substack top political publications after launching in 2020. So Matt also co-founded Vox in 2014, alongside Ezra Klein and Melissa Bell.
[00:00:49] ROSE MUTISO: Where he covered politics and economic policy and co-hosted the Weeds podcast. Before launching Vox, he wrote for Slate, think Progress, the Atlantic TPM, and the American Prospect. Matt has authored several books, uh, many of which you’ve probably read Dear Listener, and is also well known for his sometimes contrarian, but always saw provoking Twitter presence.
[00:01:08] KATIE AUTH: Matt’s a slightly different guest for us because he doesn’t focus, specifically or a whole lot on global energy poverty. But we wanted to have him on because he thinks in really interesting ways about lots of issues that intersect with it. So today we’re really excited about digging in with him on three of those issues, the value in political future of US foreign assistance. Climate politics and the new abundance movement. And finally, how we navigate a rapidly changing media ecosystem as policy wonks.
[00:01:39] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah. And , I’ll just chime in to say, you know, I’ve been following Matt’s work for years. So, , Vox came on the scene just as I was transitioning from the lab. So Matt, you probably dunno, I was a scientist before all of this. So I was transitioning from the lab to policy and , his writing was a great model for how to bridge the gap between Wonkish explanation and, and politics.
[00:01:58] ROSE MUTISO: And I was very much on one side of those two equations. So, um, he has views. I agree with others. I don’t, which is exactly why I’m excited for this conversation. It is not gonna be boring and it’s not gonna be an echo chim chat. So Matt, that’s expectation. We can’t let the audience down. This is gonna be a very fun conversation. Are you
[00:02:16] MATT YGLESIAS: Okay, I’ll try to be fun. Uh, always challenging.
[00:02:26] ROSE MUTISO: so, uh, Matt, we always start with the same question, uh, to all our guests. Um, tell us something about how and where you grew up and how it shaped you.
[00:02:35] MATT YGLESIAS: sure. Uh,, So I grew up in New York City, in Manhattan, , in Greenwich Village. , I, I would say shaped me in a, a lot of different ways. , But, you know, one of them that that’s really stuck with me is, you know, I was born in 1981 and New York had a lot of problems back then. It was, it was a very troubled place in a lot of ways.
[00:02:54] MATT YGLESIAS: Some people really loved it. My, my parents were artists, so they were like the kind of people who wanted to raise kids in a city at a time when that was very unfashionable. but it was affordable, , at that time because. Mostly because of the problems. But, you know, I lived in what was at the time, uh, you know, a, a middle class neighborhood that I don’t quite wanna say normal people lived in, but like professors and artists and people who worked in publishing.
[00:03:20] MATT YGLESIAS: They were, we, they were eccentric people, but they weren’t like super rich. And the apartment I grew up in now it’s owned by a managing director for Goldman Sachs. Um, and I’ve had like a very good, successful career and I couldn’t possibly afford to live where I grew up. Um, and that’s just something that I think about all the time.
[00:03:40] MATT YGLESIAS: And it’s, it’s that, that city, I mean, urban America has gotten so much better in a lot of ways since the eighties, but the upshot of that has been, just incredible scarcity of housing and this, this like terrible scramble for places to live.
[00:03:53] KATIE AUTH: So I am curious if you had an experience similar to mine. Both my parents were artists also, and I think they were always like a little bemused and confused about why I was so interested in like economics and policy and law. They were like, oh, this is your form of rebellion against your artist parents, like
[00:04:11] MATT YGLESIAS: Uh, yeah, I mean a little bit. I mean, so my, um, both of my mom’s brothers, uh, and her father are all economists, so I, I, you know, I, I had some of that out there, but yeah, I mean, uh, I don’t know, rebellion, but one thing that I think about also all these times is that, you know, there was a kind of avant garde community, uh, of adults, you know, who I knew when I was a kid, and they had a lot of ideas that I think were like really out of step with most people.
[00:04:40] MATT YGLESIAS: Uh, but they were aware of that sort of like, part of being, like, artists in Greenwich Village in the eighties and nineties was like self-consciously, like, like we are the weirdos
[00:04:53] KATIE AUTH: And a little proud, proud of it, maybe. Yeah.
[00:04:55] MATT YGLESIAS: Yeah.
[00:04:56] MATT YGLESIAS: And where I often just find myself disagreeing, sort of with the approach of a lot of people a little bit younger than me who went into politics, is that I, I feel like a lot of them want politics to have some of the energy that, like my mom felt in art.
[00:05:13] KATIE AUTH: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:14] MATT YGLESIAS: You know what I mean? It’s like they don’t want it to be about, because I totally appreciate a desire to like not be a ting boring
[00:05:22] MATT YGLESIAS: conformist who’s like obsessed with what is the average person’s most based desires in the world. But I do think that politics sort of is inherently about that, and that if you wanna really like challenge people and their values and like shock the system and stuff like that, you, you should be doing something
[00:05:42] MATT YGLESIAS: else.
[00:05:42] KATIE AUTH: you think this was the fault of like the West Wing? A lot of people get mad at the TV show, the West Wing for sort of like fooling young people into thinking it was an idealistic enterprise. Uh, and I was one of those people, but.
[00:05:55] MATT YGLESIAS: Uh, you know, I like the West Wing. I feel like they’re actually very pragmatic in the West Wing.
[00:06:00] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah. Well, I, well, I think I, it’s interesting pushing back a bit because I do think like a part of politics is, is the vibe. Like if you think of the Obama vibe, that that swept the nation, the MAGA vibe, you know, that is kind of, you know, defying a lot of even conservative kind of policy, political logic, and there’s something, there’s some X factor, but that is kind of, that you can really tap into some nerve. But I think maybe what we haven’t figured out is how to manufacture that moment, or if you
[00:06:30] MATT YGLESIAS: Yeah. But I think so. You are right, but I feel like the vibes often plays a opposite role to that. Right? So like I know that like a lot of. People, but mostly women who I know are like really sort of like
[00:06:47] KATIE AUTH: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:47] MATT YGLESIAS: by, by Trump on a, on a vibes level by what he represents about men and women and gender and sexuality in a way that they weren’t appalled by Mitt Romney or George W.
[00:06:58] MATT YGLESIAS: Bush. Um, at the same time, part of what Trump did politically was like when Democrats were beating him on the abortion issue. He like reeled back and he moderated, right? And Obama was this incredible avatar of like, cool, for millennials, especially for like millennials with like forward-thinking, advanced, progressive cultural views.
[00:07:21] MATT YGLESIAS: But then you look at like, what was Obama saying? He was saying that as a matter of religious conviction, marriage is between a man and a woman. He was like going to black churches and like yelling at people for being bad parents and stuff like, like things that by contemporary standards seem like incredibly reactionary.
[00:07:41] MATT YGLESIAS: And so like part of what he was doing there was, was having it both ways, right? Like he had, he had all these fans, young fans, enthusiasts, volunteers, et cetera, who were actually way more progressive than the stands that he was articulating because he symbolized cultural and social change.
[00:08:03] MATT YGLESIAS: Right? And, and, and, and it felt, and, and I think it’s true also that like his presidency empowered cultural forces that were more left wing than like his own articulated stands. and, you know, and you. You saw this in the, in the energy space too, right? I mean, he gave like these very eloquent speech and we’re gonna, we’re gonna halt the rise of the oceans.
[00:08:28] MATT YGLESIAS: But he also had the all of the above energy policy Right. And was much more conservative actually than post-Obama Democrats were. But he made people feel like, you know, these big dramatic things were
[00:08:44] KATIE AUTH: Yeah, absolutely. So we wanted to start by kind of touching on one of the vibes of the current, , era, which is the, not only the destruction of US foreign assistance and USAID, but also there’s a, a political recoiling from anything that sounds like aid, anything that looks like engaging overseas in a charitable way.
[00:09:04] KATIE AUTH: And, , I think people think about USAID mostly when it comes to food assistance and global health. , But I worked at USAID for many years. It’s also crucial to enabling the energy transition. So it’s loan guarantees for energy infrastructure and it’s grants to energy entrepreneurs and it’s trainings.
[00:09:21] KATIE AUTH: It’s all these things that people don’t necessarily think about. . And I know that you like alternative histories. We were curious, what’s the alternative history of the United States without foreign assistance over the last 75 years? What do you think that might’ve looked like?
[00:09:40] MATT YGLESIAS: Well, I, I, I mean, it’s, it’s hard to imagine, right? Because the United States after World War II became committed to an enduring global role in the world, right? And there were pros and cons to that. I think, you know, most people feel that like the Vietnam War was not our finest hour as a country, um, you know, or, or the coup in Guatemala in 1954.
[00:10:05] MATT YGLESIAS: , But like we were engaged constantly, basically everywhere, right? There was a, you know, , an iron curtain and if you were not behind the iron curtain, like we were up upping your business and we cared about what was happening. And the positive of that caring was all these, these things, you know, flowing from FDRs good neighbor policy to JFK, trying to promote land reform to different things that happened in, in the foreign aid space.
[00:10:34] MATT YGLESIAS: And, and I think you can’t really imagine just like. Cabining off the aid piece from, you know, it’s like, what if we tried to do the Cold War without ever helping an ally with any pro like that, that wouldn’t make sense. Right. The issue is that after, you know, not the past 75 years, but the past 30 years, right.
[00:10:56] MATT YGLESIAS: The, the Cold War ended and a lot of these structures and institutions just kept continuing. Right? NATO continues, it expanded. Foreign aid continues in a lot of ways. The, the quality of the foreign aid programming got a
[00:11:12] MATT YGLESIAS: lot better in the post Cold War era because there was like more focus on actual humanitarian benefits and less on, you know, these, these elaborate, , calculus.
[00:11:23] MATT YGLESIAS: I mean, something I wrote about last year was that we got pretty good at deterring, , COTAs in Sub-Saharan Africa, uh, through our foreign assistance programs.
[00:11:35] ROSE MUTISO: but
[00:11:35] ROSE MUTISO: yeah.
[00:11:36] MATT YGLESIAS: yeah.
[00:11:36] MATT YGLESIAS: Um, but then as, as China became more powerful, as Russia became more powerful, , that, that became a lot less efficacious, you know, and it, and it became more, more contentious and, and more difficult.
[00:11:48] MATT YGLESIAS: And today, I don’t wanna say today, pre-Trump, we had a lot of things happening in international development assistance that were good, but I don’t think we had a really, you know, like a public that was bought in on the idea that like, it was good to be doing those things. George W. Bush started PEPFAR because he got excited about it.
[00:12:11] MATT YGLESIAS: , Top level, like elite liberals, like, like the results. So it was like, oh, this is so good. It’s bipartisan, but, but it almost got derailed by abortion politics. , And you, and you kick it out and it’s like, people, people just aren’t marching in the streets
[00:12:28] ROSE MUTISO: so Matt, and I know you’ve written a lot about like now ’cause you are, you really see the merit of the more humanitarian public health, like where you like small investments, huge impact on actual human life and I get that and I, I think to be honest, I think that’s what maybe a lot of the public would associate aid with. Like what Katie said, but like, help me. And you’ve, you’ve kind of criticized the, like more like trying to Yeah. To orchestrate economic development or all of these other kind of, you, you said like, like the mission of aid is kind of the mandate is like expanding, expanding, expanding to things that we can do well, but kind, could you help me draw a line to like, I think I, you know, the kind of, the kind of aid we had post like, you know, like marshall Plan, which was just really about, you know, not just humanitarian, but really about reconstruction and doing the things that you’re now saying, we can’t do well, and, and ‘especially cause like, you know, I, I, you know, kind came of age in africa when we were just like in this kind of recipient of, of, aid and it, it’s like a different, like the vibe to use the word again, the vibe of this new era of aid is, is different. It’s humanitarian and, and whereas before there seems to be a broader mandate. And, and, and that broader mandate is what you seem to be kind of challenging now.
[00:13:37] MATT YGLESIAS: Well, I mean, I, I just haven’t seen a lot of positive success stories. I mean, I’m not against it, right? Like obviously that is a more even, you know, in, in, in geostrategic terms, right? I mean, if we could develop an aid program that would transform the economies of Central America, right? I think you could really sell the voters on that.
[00:14:01] MATT YGLESIAS: Like we’re having all these issues with migration, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, if, if people believed like, we know how to do this, but it will cost $11 billion.
[00:14:12] MATT YGLESIAS: Like I, you, I think you could talk Trump into it, right? Um, and so I don’t, I mean, this is not my. Area of expertise, like what worked about the Marshall Plan and like why, you know, why, why we struggled, why has like big push infrastructure projects not delivered the kind of results that, that we’re hoped for.
[00:14:32] MATT YGLESIAS: So, I mean, I’m definitely, you know, like I’m, I’m here for it. Um, and, and you know, and I, and I think obviously that the, the, the energy piece that you guys focus on is really important. Particularly because there are, you know, there are ways in which American policy and, and the developed world, you know, was directly counterproductive in terms of letting countries, , you know, get the kind of energy that they need.
[00:14:58] MATT YGLESIAS: You hope always for like, spillover benefits of, um, you know, technological transformations, things like that. , But you know, I mean, I, I remember trying to ask some people in Jamaica, uh, about the economic situation there and like. It wasn’t, I mean, I don’t know. I didn’t like, I didn’t like find out that much.
[00:15:17] MATT YGLESIAS: that was all that helpful, you know, in terms of like, what actually, like is the problem, like what would be useful here? Um, it seems like they have like a huge energy bottleneck around using imported diesel and oil to generate their electricity. And they’re doing that because there’s some local stakeholders who are very politically powerful and normal people e everyday people are more focused on like day-to-day problems than on this like.
[00:15:49] MATT YGLESIAS: Pie in the sky critique of electricity generation. But then it is true that the United States is like showing up sporadically and being like, Hey, you guys should have more solar panels. But like, it’s very mountainous. The beach is an important part of the economy. Like it doesn’t really, it doesn’t really
[00:16:05] MATT YGLESIAS: work. And you know, so I, I know the government there has some idea that they wanted to build nuclear. This is how I heard about it. You know, that may, maybe they should have, have nuclear power in Jamaica. And I say like, great. , But I mean, as you guys know better than me, there’s like 90 million technical and regulatory obstacles to that, that are like probably not gonna be solved on the scale of a small
[00:16:28] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah. And, And, definitely not by aid. I think you’re onto something where there’s so many structural challenges and I think this is
[00:16:34] ROSE MUTISO: a thing that we’re trying to figure
[00:16:35] ROSE MUTISO: out. And I think that Katie is doing a great
[00:16:37] ROSE MUTISO: job of spearheading
[00:16:38] ROSE MUTISO: this. A lot of kind of the community of thinking about like,
[00:16:42] ROSE MUTISO: aid can solve everything, obviously.
[00:16:45] ROSE MUTISO: Um, but what is it
[00:16:47] ROSE MUTISO: that we can do well? And, and, and hopefully that’s more than just, you know, humanitarian assistance.
[00:16:52] KATIE AUTH: Well, and I wanna like double back to something Matt, you said, ’cause like you critiqued the US for showing up sporadically. And I think that’s absolutely true and that’s one critique I made having been at aid that like, uh, we have great intentions, we have really smart people working on these issues, and then we sort of drop in and we pull out and we maybe like suggest a couple things.
[00:17:14] KATIE AUTH: Like if you want to have sustained and transformative impact, you have to be more. Kind of thoughtful and engaged on a prolonged basis than that. And I, it made me think of like, you know, you said like if you could, um, actually put together a vision for how to transform Latin America, you could sell it to anybody, including Trump.
[00:17:37] KATIE AUTH: And I did wanna sort of go back to that and say, foreign assistance has always occupied this weird political space where, as you said, it was not politically popular. We all knew that it existed because there was an elite sort of structure at the top that agreed this was a good thing, and now that’s collapsed.
[00:17:54] KATIE AUTH: So I’m curious, like, looking forward, what do you see as most viable? Like a, we somehow rebuild that sort of elite coalition B, we somehow make foreign assistance like truly politically popular, or C, kind of doomed. It’s that era is over.
[00:18:12] MATT YGLESIAS: I mean, I do think that trying to rebuild elite consensus is important. , It’s why, you know, I mean, people I know who are real development professionals, you know, very annoyed by the extent to which Elon Musk sort of pulled out kind of trivial things to use to like bash and denigrate, uh, the work that USAID is doing.
[00:18:35] MATT YGLESIAS: That being said. If your self-image is, I am working in a very important policy area that I am aware or does not have a lot of mass political buy-in, but that is advancing via a bipartisan elite consensus. Well, you need to think hard then about how do I keep right of center elites invested in this.
[00:19:00] MATT YGLESIAS: Right? And a lot of that stuff, right? That means like you have a limited pool of funds, right? So there could be an idea that is good, but even if you just didn’t do it, you could do something else that’s good with your, your limited pool of funds. You know? And like I, I, I mean, I, I wondered about that abortion fight around pepfar.
[00:19:23] MATT YGLESIAS: Like I, I’m pro-choice. I I agreed with the Biden administration’s. View on that, but how much damage was done ultimately to the elite consensus when, when we know the reason that program got off in the first place, like was specifically Rightwing, evangelical
[00:19:46] MATT YGLESIAS: Christians got interested in this problem. So like, don’t we in fact need to address it in a way that accords with their moral value?
[00:19:56] MATT YGLESIAS: You know? Now if you think it’s gonna totally ruin it to the point that it’s not worth doing it all that, that’s fine. But, you know, there’s a kind of, , a hostage taking. The other thing, I mean now I’m just talking your book, uh, but it’s like there is an incredible amount of money. And energy and work and policymaking that is done in the United States and other developed countries about climate
[00:20:23] MATT YGLESIAS: change. And if you understand what the climate change issue is really, it is primarily an international development and kind of foreign assistance type topic. And so if you align the resources that exist in that space with like a recognition that like ultimately, like the big problem we’re trying to avert is like despair and problems in low low-income countries, right?
[00:20:53] MATT YGLESIAS: So like we should try to focus those resources on things that are helping people in the developed world. You know? Is that aid, is it not like, no, not really. Right? But it’s like if you develop a technology that is useful. In low income countries, that has a very large impact on the global emissions picture versus if you antagonize normal voters by trying to get them to use bad straws.
[00:21:26] MATT YGLESIAS: has like,
[00:21:27] KATIE AUTH: Straws are always the
[00:21:29] KATIE AUTH: example.
[00:21:30] ROSE MUTISO: that’s
[00:21:30] ROSE MUTISO: always
[00:21:30] MATT YGLESIAS: no, because it’s a, it’s a, it’s
[00:21:32] MATT YGLESIAS: a large
[00:21:33] ROSE MUTISO: Well,
[00:21:34] KATIE AUTH: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
[00:21:35] ROSE MUTISO: I
[00:21:35] ROSE MUTISO: actually
[00:21:36] ROSE MUTISO: this is a good segue into our next, kind
[00:21:37] ROSE MUTISO: of,
[00:21:38] ROSE MUTISO: we, we kind of have
[00:21:39] ROSE MUTISO: tried to bucket
[00:21:39] ROSE MUTISO: this conversation
[00:21:40] ROSE MUTISO: to bin, so yeah, climate politics. And again, I think, like we really do,
[00:21:44] ROSE MUTISO: we, we don’t often have like a real political mind on this podcast.
[00:21:48] ROSE MUTISO: And we kind of wanna, you know, and it’s something that we suffer from in the policy space, is a lack of appreciation and, and clearly politic. Uh, climate is a, like the politics are just, we bad in, in the climate, , policy strategy game. So, Obviously from our playbook,
[00:22:01] ROSE MUTISO: right? We’ve always been advocating for, basically making the, the case
[00:22:05] ROSE MUTISO: that in poor countries growth and access must come first.
[00:22:08] ROSE MUTISO: This is a development play. Climate is a development issue, vulnerability, resilience, all of that. And this makes both not just moral sense, this makes climate sense, right, to your point. , But then, you know, I think that there’s this parallel conversation about rich high emitting countries, both now and
[00:22:24] ROSE MUTISO: historically and, and into the future
[00:22:26] ROSE MUTISO: to some extent.
[00:22:27] ROSE MUTISO: And what what they do in their climate that isn’t, that wouldn’t,
[00:22:31] ROSE MUTISO: you know, when you say that don’t, doesn’t fall into like climate
[00:22:33] ROSE MUTISO: action is development. It’s just, it’s
[00:22:35] ROSE MUTISO: a different category and it’s something
[00:22:36] ROSE MUTISO: that we’ve
[00:22:37] ROSE MUTISO: struggled to kind of
[00:22:39] ROSE MUTISO: put a
[00:22:39] ROSE MUTISO: handle on. ’cause it’s complicated.
[00:22:40] ROSE MUTISO: The case is
[00:22:41] ROSE MUTISO: clear if you’re a poor country
[00:22:42] ROSE MUTISO: about
[00:22:42] ROSE MUTISO: where climate and development and whatever.
[00:22:44] ROSE MUTISO: Intersect and then for rich countries.
[00:22:46] ROSE MUTISO: So, so
[00:22:46] ROSE MUTISO: right now, it’s been interesting to see this growth first argument that the hub has really taken with poor countries, that growth, development, access, that’s what matters. That’s the climate play. So now we see this in the us uh, and it’s cropping up even with this kind of abundance narrative. Yeah. So, um, so I’m just curious from your perspective, and, and both with your political hat, hat, but also. Kind of looking a little bit around the politics too. How do we square a uS narrative built on, or a global narrative built on abundance and a low pain transition, including like, we’ll solve problems with innovation, with a justice based global narrative that says the wealthy must do more, give more, cut more, and, and so it’s like rich countries are adopting this growth first framing, but they’re dropping the, you know, you broke it, you fixed it part. And are we dis distorting both climate, climate case, the climate case and the moral case?
[00:23:35] MATT YGLESIAS: so just with a political hat on, you know, like first and foremost, I, I never used to cover climate energy, right? , The media’s a little siloed off, right? So I’m covering like economic policy in the United States. If somebody had floated, you know, in 2008, 2009, maybe the president should say, we’re gonna cut all Social Security benefits by 30% and that’s gonna save us tens of billions of dollars a year.
[00:24:05] MATT YGLESIAS: And then we’re gonna put that money into PEPFAR and that’s gonna save millions of lives. Everybody would’ve been like, that’s stupid. Like, we’re not gonna do that. Right? And if I was to come up and say like, oh, but like really we could save a lot of lives, it would be like super duper moral. Everyone’s still gonna be like, sure, Matt.
[00:24:26] MATT YGLESIAS: But like that’s still stupid, right? Like, I wouldn’t get college students to march, I wouldn’t get a grant
[00:24:33] MATT YGLESIAS: from a foundation to do advocacy around that, right? Like every single person would be like, I, I hear what you’re saying. Like you’re not wrong, but like, that’s not how the world works. That’s not how democracies function.
[00:24:47] MATT YGLESIAS: The American government is going to try to help Americans first and foremost somehow, while I wasn’t paying attention.
[00:24:59] ROSE MUTISO: When you’re doing economic policy.
[00:25:00] MATT YGLESIAS: This very moralized construct took over the climate space where like the analysis is not wrong, right? Like the industrial revolution was strongly beneficial on net, like net net emissions prosperity.
[00:25:15] MATT YGLESIAS: But almost all of the prosperity went to developed countries. The majority of the downsides are coming to poor countries. That is extremely unfair, and the rich countries should. Like bear the cost of addressing it, but like, they’re not going to.
[00:25:34] MATT YGLESIAS: So I, I don’t, you know, I, I mean, I don’t wanna be an asshole about it.
[00:25:39] MATT YGLESIAS: And like, but in any other context, I think we would just take for granted that like, this isn’t, this isn’t gonna gonna happen. Um, oh, Olo, Teo, I, I’m probably saying his name wrong. You know, he wrote this interesting book about, you know, reparations and like global restorative justice. I studied philosophy in college.
[00:26:01] MATT YGLESIAS: He’s a philosopher. It, like, it’s a good book. Like I, I, I agree with him, but like, but like, what does that mean? Right? And so it’s like when we talk about. You know, like the federal budget deficit and like social security and Medicare and Medicaid and tax trade offs. Like, nobody just like comes in, you know, like the Kool-Aid man and is like, what if we just gave all this money to Nigeria because like, we’re, we’re not going to, right.
[00:26:30] MATT YGLESIAS: And so I, I think ultimately, not that I wanna like tell people to be immoral or anything, but like stepping back from that ledge and to say, look, we are doing climate policy in rich countries, but much too much of that policy is focused on local emissions rather than trying to impact global emissions.
[00:26:55] MATT YGLESIAS: And when we think about global energy development, we focus on climate in this like tunnel vision kind of. Way, you know? , And it’s like, I, I mean this is, this is in you guys bailiwick, but it’s like, it’s like really scandalous to try to be like, no, you guys can’t have natural gas. Because it’s like bad for the climate.
[00:27:26] MATT YGLESIAS: Like PE
[00:27:27] MATT YGLESIAS: people need, you know, air conditioning and, and all the same stuff as anybody else. So like, it’s an incredibly difficult problem, but I think like acknowledging how difficult it is, like at the front rather than expecting people to bear large sacrifices for the benefit of foreigners in the future.
[00:27:49] ROSE MUTISO: Now I, I, I totally get you,
[00:27:50] ROSE MUTISO: This makes sense
[00:27:51] ROSE MUTISO: and this is how the world works. We’re just
[00:27:54] ROSE MUTISO: kind of constantly, like Katie and I are always kind of turning
[00:27:57] ROSE MUTISO: this around in our minds,
[00:27:58] ROSE MUTISO: privately together, separately with friends.
[00:28:00] ROSE MUTISO: So is, is political expedience the
[00:28:03] ROSE MUTISO: only viable lens? Yeah. Because like even if
[00:28:05] ROSE MUTISO: we do all of these things that you’re saying, which we’re doing, so we’re doing climate policy via, you know, we, we were
[00:28:10] ROSE MUTISO: trying to, we’re doing
[00:28:11] ROSE MUTISO: it poorly. Like, but
[00:28:12] ROSE MUTISO: there’s like, there’s a kind of a, a policy reframe around innovation and industrial policy. All of these kind of good
[00:28:19] ROSE MUTISO: things, that are ,
[00:28:20] ROSE MUTISO: happening in fits and starts. But like
[00:28:22] ROSE MUTISO: that, that’s a kind of the, the new climate policy
[00:28:24] ROSE MUTISO: frame.
[00:28:25] ROSE MUTISO: But you know, this kind of like low, like we’ll just have
[00:28:29] ROSE MUTISO: win-win,
[00:28:30] ROSE MUTISO: win,
[00:28:30] ROSE MUTISO: win, win, win, win. There’s
[00:28:32] ROSE MUTISO: some parts of the
[00:28:32] ROSE MUTISO: climate problem.
[00:28:33] ROSE MUTISO: There’s some like non-human planetary factors. Who knows? And I know there’s a lot of
[00:28:38] ROSE MUTISO: science and like, there’s not a lot of clarity about what
[00:28:40] ROSE MUTISO: those sensitivities are, but it, it seems like trade-offs. Are needed at
[00:28:44] ROSE MUTISO: some point. And so just even looking outside of climate, ,
[00:28:47] ROSE MUTISO: like
[00:28:47] ROSE MUTISO: what’s your
[00:28:48] ROSE MUTISO: framework for like, when you stick your neck out on
[00:28:50] ROSE MUTISO: high stakes issues, even when the politics are bad?
[00:28:52] ROSE MUTISO: Like what
[00:28:53] ROSE MUTISO: is, what is a theory of political
[00:28:54] ROSE MUTISO: leadership on, on
[00:28:55] MATT YGLESIAS: Right.
[00:28:56] ROSE MUTISO: cases? How does it work when it’s like, this is just how the world works,
[00:28:58] MATT YGLESIAS: I think setting priorities is really important. Like for me, for personally, if you have to spend down political capital, you know, helping the global poor is a good thing to, to do, right. , Also, my, my wife and I, you know, we give, um, we give 10% of our, of our income to, uh, give well to, you know, global public health charities in part because I think that’s an important issue.
[00:29:26] MATT YGLESIAS: And in part because I don’t think it’s an issue that democratic politics is going to adequately address. Right? All politicians take some risks, political risks. They do things that have downsides. It’s important to be smart about what downsides you take. I mean, this is is why I bring up the plastic straws, right?
[00:29:51] MATT YGLESIAS: Which is like, that seems like a thing where the political pain level
[00:29:57] MATT YGLESIAS: is high relative to the
[00:30:01] MATT YGLESIAS: substantive benefit, right? So you wanna think, like, if I’m going to ask people to run risks and lose votes, can it be, I mean, I think I, I know people who served in congress in, the late Bush, early Obama eras and who lost their seats in 2010, and there’s pretty good evidence that casting a vote for the Affordable Care Act, , hurt those people.
[00:30:26] MATT YGLESIAS: And they, and they might’ve stayed in Congress, but I think they mostly hold their heads high. And say millions of Americans got health insurance that they wouldn’t have otherwise had because of that vote. That’s why I got involved in politics, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. , Now if you lost yourself votes because you voted for the Waxman Markey bill that died in the Senate,
[00:30:49] ROSE MUTISO: yeah. What was that for?
[00:30:50] MATT YGLESIAS: what, what do you, what do you hold your head high about?
[00:30:52] MATT YGLESIAS: Right? And, and so I, I, you know, I don’t think Joe Biden lost a ton of votes over plastic straws, but like, why lose one, right. Especially if Trump’s gonna come in and reverse it, right? And so like, thinking about like what is really high impact, what’s permanent and hard to reverse? Right, like, like what’s there and then like, what can we do in civil society to make people, you know, think more seriously about these things?
[00:31:21] MATT YGLESIAS: Because people aren’t just like totally istic. , And, and, and immoral, you know, to quote another, uh, philosophy book, a former professor of mine , Anthony Appia, he has a book called The Honor Code, and it’s about how, you know, moral revolutions take place that, you know, in China, they went from binding girls’ feet to not doing that.
[00:31:44] MATT YGLESIAS: Um, in England, they went from being the leaders of the international slave trade to the leading opponents, like people do change their minds about things. It’s not normally done by like a practical person in electoral politics, like wagging their finger on, on election day, but like writers and artists and, you know, there, there are ways to change, change consciousness and make people take other people’s interests more seriously.
[00:32:10] MATT YGLESIAS: But it’s hard.
[00:32:11] KATIE AUTH: Yeah. And this actually, I was gonna, ’cause I’ve, I’ve read your stuff about GiveWell and I think it’s, it’s awesome and it also. Sort of makes it sound as if you’re arguing that there are some things that realistically just we shouldn’t expect to come from the realm of professional politics and that therefore we have to rely more on private philanthropy, more on other groups to do that work, whether it’s international assistance or climate stuff.
[00:32:40] KATIE AUTH: First , do you agree with that?
[00:32:42] MATT YGLESIAS: Yeah, and, and you know, and I, and I always tell people in addition to my. Life is a contrarian climate scold. Like I, I have rooftop solar panels, I have an induction stove. Um, I have a, a plugin car. Like, because I, I not, and to be clear about some of this stuff, not just because, like I wanna reduce my, like, personal carbon footprint or whatever, but because, uh, my understanding is that like being an early adopter of innovative technologies, it doesn’t always pay off, but it can be a way of driving innovation and like moving cost curves down.
[00:33:24] MATT YGLESIAS: If it was possible for me to like, go buy a small modular nuclear reactor, like I, I, I would do that. Like, I would, I would overpay. I can’t, but like, I
[00:33:34] MATT YGLESIAS: I think it.
[00:33:35] KATIE AUTH: subscribers on slow, boring,
[00:33:37] MATT YGLESIAS: I, but like, I actually do think it’s like, it, it, so, ’cause sometimes people, you know, will dismiss it as, as greenwashing or whatever, but like, it is meaningful when like big tech companies make those kind of private sector advanced marketing commitments.
[00:33:52] MATT YGLESIAS: We, we haven’t seen that SMR payoff yet, but like we, we might, I mean, regulatory changes are in the works. The fact that companies in this space can say, I believe that Google and Microsoft, et cetera will pay an above market premium for this. That’s not a long-term sustainable energy solution. But that could get, you know, assembly lines going and, and really do something that’s transformative for the, the world.
[00:34:21] MATT YGLESIAS: And so, like, you know, private actions make a. Difference even in a space as heavy. I mean, nuclear for good reason is a heavily regulated space, and you need public policy change to make these things work. I mean, hydro, all this stuff, like you can’t do energy policy without the government being involved at some level, but like, what we do for
[00:34:46] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah, it, it almost seems like that these like complicated and obscure links between what’s happening at the ground people level, at the government level, you know, and it’s like where, where we started in the beginning where it’s not all just the vibes and you can’t try to do avantgarde art with politics, but there’s some way that those interconnect, those levels, interconnect that what we’re doing, , as people matters what government is doing. And they sum in between. And I think that maybe the political strategy is figuring out how to balance those two sides, so,
[00:35:15] MATT YGLESIAS: Yeah. How they go and, and, and how to define the problem sort of accurately. Right. I mean, I, I do think it’s, we, you know, just. To, to sort of understand like what’s going on and then where your opportunities to make a difference actually are.
[00:35:32] KATIE AUTH: So I’m curious if you were the Matt Yglesias Private philanthropy, and you had a billion dollars to spend over the next five years, and your ultimate goal was clean, abundant energy for everybody in the world. Where would you put that money?
[00:35:48] MATT YGLESIAS: I just give it to you,
[00:35:50] MATT YGLESIAS: you know, and we’d, we’d all hang out together in the office. May, may, may, may. Maybe we could, maybe we could get a nicer office. Um, people
[00:35:58] MATT YGLESIAS: people know we’re in, we’re in the same building. Um,
[00:36:01] KATIE AUTH: We’re office neighbors. Yeah,
[00:36:03] MATT YGLESIAS: so, uh, you know, I mean, I, I would try to be a responsible person who first did, uh, due diligence and talked to a lot of people,
[00:36:12] MATT YGLESIAS: um, about their ideas. Yeah. Um, you know, but I do think that. Like advanced nuclear and advanced geothermal are the areas where technological breakthroughs that require policy support could have really large downstream impacts. Right? Where you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t construe this as well. America is doing advanced geothermal research in order to help people in East Africa, but if we did it and it worked, it would be very helpful to them.
[00:36:54] MATT YGLESIAS: And, but it would be helpful to us too. Like that’s a, you know, to explain like, why are we doing
[00:36:59] MATT YGLESIAS: this is easy. I mean, I just think that that’s like. Very underrated, and you, you have some people doing things that are like, obviously at the opposite end of that, like, you know, there, uh, the Bezos Earth Fund gives money to an organization that does a lot of like, , far left politics and also plants, trees in urban heat islands in Los Angeles and Chicago.
[00:37:25] MATT YGLESIAS: I, I’m not against people planting trees in, in Los Angeles and Chicago, but that’s like a quintessential, like, like low impact hyperlocal kind of kind of philanthropy versus trying to create, you know, scalable,
[00:37:41] ROSE MUTISO: So I have, I have a question. Do you think that philanthropy can, is
[00:37:45] ROSE MUTISO: this a function
[00:37:45] ROSE MUTISO: of philanthropy
[00:37:46] ROSE MUTISO: main? So this is ultimately,
[00:37:47] ROSE MUTISO: even if we put in the bezoses and the like
[00:37:49] ROSE MUTISO: Gateses and all these people together,
[00:37:51] ROSE MUTISO: um, this
[00:37:53] ROSE MUTISO: is not a huge. Ultimately in the
[00:37:55] ROSE MUTISO: grand scheme, a huge pile of money. And so
[00:37:57] ROSE MUTISO: it just seems like philanthropy.
[00:37:59] ROSE MUTISO: There’s this narrative
[00:38:00] ROSE MUTISO: sometimes in philanthropy that tries to over quantify like, we’ll find the best and most
[00:38:04] ROSE MUTISO: effective, scalable, you know, the best
[00:38:07] ROSE MUTISO: use of every dollar. But then is
[00:38:09] ROSE MUTISO: this, is that a fall fallacy
[00:38:10] ROSE MUTISO: to think that you need or can
[00:38:12] ROSE MUTISO: deploy philanthropy
[00:38:13] ROSE MUTISO: that way as
[00:38:14] ROSE MUTISO: opposed to, you can be subjective.
[00:38:15] ROSE MUTISO: That
[00:38:15] ROSE MUTISO: may be like working locally in
[00:38:17] ROSE MUTISO: LA and planting trees is a thing you wanna do.
[00:38:19] ROSE MUTISO: Or giving money to the museum or the local opera or
[00:38:21] ROSE MUTISO: whatever it is. And that, that is like, that there’s a kind of inherently subjective
[00:38:25] ROSE MUTISO: function within philanthropy
[00:38:27] ROSE MUTISO: and, and part of the thing that both, I think
[00:38:29] ROSE MUTISO: what you would both kind of
[00:38:31] ROSE MUTISO: aspects of climate, philanthropy that you
[00:38:32] ROSE MUTISO: might agree with
[00:38:33] ROSE MUTISO: or that you might disagree with are
[00:38:35] ROSE MUTISO: making subjective choices.
[00:38:37] ROSE MUTISO: And sometimes when we frame them as
[00:38:39] ROSE MUTISO: like, this is the thing that you should do objectively and
[00:38:42] ROSE MUTISO: we’ve decided as philanthropy, this is the best way that,
[00:38:44] ROSE MUTISO: that is kind of a distortion of that. This is just like.
[00:38:48] ROSE MUTISO: There’s only so
[00:38:49] ROSE MUTISO: much you can do. It’s not that much money. People are making subjective choices and to frame it as like, this is the most important thing that we need to do is,
[00:38:55] ROSE MUTISO: is kind of
[00:38:57] MATT YGLESIAS: But I, I think, I think that supporting people who have the right, uh, so to speak, vibes or I would say worldview and like basic diagnosis of the problem is important. So, you know, like I think that, like Bill Gates right? Has a smart integrated worldview that takes global public health seriously. Also takes climate seriously and is thinking about the question of climate change from the standpoint of somebody who cares about global public health outcomes rather than from the standpoint of somebody who’s passionate about his neighborhood
[00:39:36] MATT YGLESIAS: park.
[00:39:37] MATT YGLESIAS: Um, and it’s like, it’s great if you’re passionate about your neighborhood park, like that’s amazing. But if, if I am a philanthropist who wants. To support people who are doing work on climate and energy. I wanna find people who are interested in global issues and who are interested in global poverty and build them up, build their profile up, build it so that, you know, I’ve got a 10-year-old, you know, and so he gets a certain amount of like, downstream, you know, political propaganda through kids shows
[00:40:13] MATT YGLESIAS: and, and like, it’s not very good, you know, it’s, it’s not,
[00:40:18] ROSE MUTISO: Is he watching
[00:40:18] ROSE MUTISO: Captain Planet?
[00:40:20] MATT YGLESIAS: uh, no.
[00:40:20] MATT YGLESIAS: Well, there was a show. He’s outgrown it,
[00:40:23] MATT YGLESIAS: but
[00:40:23] ROSE MUTISO: which, I love by the way.
[00:40:24] MATT YGLESIAS: yeah. No, no, no. I, I, there’s a show called called Wild Crats, uh, that he loved when he was younger and. You know, so it’s like for kids who are interested in animals, it’s a lot of animal facts and stuff. Uh, but there’s like a villain in the show who’s paisley paver.
[00:40:40] MATT YGLESIAS: And Paisley paver always wants to like destroy natural habitats and put up buildings. So she’s the bad guy. And like, I sympathize, like conserving natural, natural landscapes and habitats is really important. But like, you know, the, the real villain is like, who’s not letting you know Paisley do infill.
[00:41:04] MATT YGLESIAS: Housing development. So that paving these things gives the only problem. Where are the people who don’t live in nice suburban, you know, like in most of the world, people are living in like very bleak housing accommodations and they would love to knock down the forest and live in a nice suburban subdivision and there would be a huge upgrade, uh, for, for their standard of living.
[00:41:27] MATT YGLESIAS: Right? And so it’s like, it’s very common to portray to people, not just small children, but like normies right? Issues in which the environment and the behavior of people in rich countries are centered
[00:41:43] MATT YGLESIAS: and the existence of people in poor countries is just
[00:41:47] MATT YGLESIAS: Wiped off the planet, right? And so, like philanthropists can’t like determine
[00:41:55] ROSE MUTISO: Mm-hmm.
[00:41:55] MATT YGLESIAS: but they drove that particular
[00:42:00] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah, they can focus attention and narratives. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, No, no, I, I, I, I see
[00:42:05] ROSE MUTISO: that. But yeah, no, it’s super interesting though because
[00:42:07] ROSE MUTISO: sometimes I think about, so for example, this part of the climate
[00:42:10] ROSE MUTISO: movement that is not concerned at all with
[00:42:12] ROSE MUTISO: energy and energy is the most impactful thing. Transforming the
[00:42:15] ROSE MUTISO: energy system is the most impactful thing.
[00:42:16] ROSE MUTISO: That there’s parts of the climate problem that are
[00:42:19] ROSE MUTISO: like doing research on, like understanding risk, tail risk, this and that. Like intervention, like really kind of out there
[00:42:26] ROSE MUTISO: thinking, that are part of the solution that I guess like sometimes with our energy
[00:42:30] ROSE MUTISO: lens, like this is the important thing.
[00:42:32] ROSE MUTISO: We miss out
[00:42:32] ROSE MUTISO: on that.
[00:42:33] ROSE MUTISO: I think we could deploy funding. And there’s just
[00:42:35] ROSE MUTISO: like that basically they’re
[00:42:36] ROSE MUTISO: like, there, there are many flavors to the problem and sometimes we try to create a centralizing
[00:42:40] ROSE MUTISO: narrative that maybe some of philanthropy should be trying to shine a light on these edge cases.
[00:42:46] MATT YGLESIAS: I mean, I, I, I, I think that that is true. There’s a lot that, you know, is out there. I mean, there’s a lot of. F known unknowns. I think about ecosystems and the interrelationship of all these things, but I don’t, I don’t think it’s true that that’s under explored. I mean, it’s true that we don’t know as much as we should about the details, , of this kind of thing.
[00:43:10] MATT YGLESIAS: But, you know, it’s a really, um, my, uh, my wife used to work on a, a climate communications, uh, project, and she taught me through that about, um, the idea of solution aversion. So like, if people know that your proposed solution to a problem, it’s something that they really don’t wanna do, uh, they become averse to acknowledging that, that the problem exists, right?
[00:43:42] MATT YGLESIAS: It’s not, it’s not logical, right? Like a, you know, uh, hopefully, uh, chat. GPT would
[00:43:47] MATT YGLESIAS: say you’re correct. That this is a problem, but your proposed solution is something that I reject, but like real people don’t have that
[00:43:56] MATT YGLESIAS: kind of distance. Right? And so until you can have tractable solutions, it’s just really hard to keep being like, this is bad, this is bad, this is bad.
[00:44:09] MATT YGLESIAS: If anything, it’s driven. I think, um, backlash politics and, and denialism. I mean, I used to know Americans who would look at the European Center right parties with so much jealousy
[00:44:22] MATT YGLESIAS: and
[00:44:23] MATT YGLESIAS: be like, if, if only Republicans would be as sensible as the Tories or the CDU or something like that. But what we’ve seen in Europe is that when you had that bipartisan consensus around solutions that don’t
[00:44:36] MATT YGLESIAS: work, it’s just, it’s driven these outsider populist parties.
[00:44:42] MATT YGLESIAS: Because like at the end of the day, like people in England don’t like paying
[00:44:47] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah.
[00:44:47] MATT YGLESIAS: more for electricity
[00:44:49] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah.
[00:44:50] ROSE MUTISO: No, I agree. And I don’t think, I wasn’t trying
[00:44:51] ROSE MUTISO: to like, uh, suggest that we should be putting money
[00:44:54] ROSE MUTISO: towards climate alarm, but just like that maybe at a framework level, philanthropy should be looking for not just like the centralizing highest impact thing, but also is there a way that we could also use it to shine a light to like just other
[00:45:07] ROSE MUTISO: parts of the problem that are not like the centralizing narrative, but
[00:45:10] MATT YGLESIAS: Yeah, no, I, I mean that, that makes sense. You know, um, but I, I really do. I, I just think the part of it that is the impact on humans in poor countries continues to be like, what I hear from people all the time is like. Isn’t like Miami gonna be underwater? And I’m like, I don’t know. Like, I think if you think about it, like it probably actually won’t be like, it’s a very big city.
[00:45:39] MATT YGLESIAS: Uh, the United States is a very rich country, right? But it’s like, okay, is somebody who is like in really bad shape now, uh, because they’re a subsistence farmer, going to be pushed to starvation? Like Yeah,
[00:45:54] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah,
[00:45:54] MATT YGLESIAS: you know, like tho those
[00:45:56] ROSE MUTISO: yeah.
[00:45:57] ROSE MUTISO: And
[00:45:57] ROSE MUTISO: it’s
[00:45:58] MATT YGLESIAS: that are,
[00:45:58] ROSE MUTISO: yeah, but I think that like solving those
[00:46:00] ROSE MUTISO: outcomes then
[00:46:00] ROSE MUTISO: comes back to our aid
[00:46:01] ROSE MUTISO: conversation. ’cause I
[00:46:02] ROSE MUTISO: think that because it’s about resilience
[00:46:05] ROSE MUTISO: now, adaptation now. And so yeah, these,
[00:46:07] ROSE MUTISO: these, these, the timescales, the solutions,
[00:46:09] ROSE MUTISO: how the human and the non-human systems interact are so complicated.
[00:46:13] ROSE MUTISO: It is a
[00:46:13] ROSE MUTISO: lot to, to make sense of,
[00:46:15] MATT YGLESIAS: I mean, speaking of like another doomed political problem, uh, migration
[00:46:20] MATT YGLESIAS: is, is.
[00:46:21] ROSE MUTISO: episode up with like just
[00:46:22] KATIE AUTH: Oh,
[00:46:23] MATT YGLESIAS: Right. And I, somebody was telling me yesterday, she was like, no, like, you need to be more of a climate alarmist, Matt, because there’s gonna be more pressure on migration. And
[00:46:33] MATT YGLESIAS: I was like, Ugh. Because like, I’m such a, like, you know, I, I mean, I’m a political realist, but I’m also such an immigration dove.
[00:46:42] MATT YGLESIAS: And
[00:46:42] MATT YGLESIAS: I’m like, you know, I mean, there is a, not just a zero cost, like a negative cost adaptation, uh, available in the form of letting people go to places that are cold currently. Um, very few people live in places that are cold right now, uh, because it’s unpleasant and to an extent because of history. Uh, but, um, those places are becoming warmer.
[00:47:10] MATT YGLESIAS: Um, it is, uh, you know, we, we, we have ways that we can, we can do these things, but there’s intense resistance to talking about. Migration in the climate context as anything other than like, use the plastic straw or like, next thing you know, all these Nicaraguan coffee farmers are gonna be like wanting to mow the lawn for
[00:47:35] KATIE AUTH: Right. Right.
[00:47:37] MATT YGLESIAS: really the bad outcome here? Like
[00:47:39] KATIE AUTH: Yeah. And, and there’s a lot of people in our space who use that argument as a sort of a way to build political bridges to the right and say, you should care about development because all these migrants are gonna wanna come in. And that argument makes you feel icky. Like it’s
[00:47:55] KATIE AUTH: not, uh, there’s just a, there’s a, there’s a deep tension there
[00:48:01] KATIE AUTH: for
[00:48:01] MATT YGLESIAS: Yeah. I mean, I, I don’t love it. Uh, no. A good again, though, I mean, what I do think is true is that if you had a really persuasive development story, even if it was fairly costly, I do think that the migration. Hook could get you some right wing buy-in on it, and that would be good. Um, you know, I, I, I think it’s, it, it’s challenging though because I
[00:48:30] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah.
[00:48:31] ROSE MUTISO: And
[00:48:31] MATT YGLESIAS: feel that the stories we have are that
[00:48:35] MATT YGLESIAS: compelling,
[00:48:37] KATIE AUTH: we
[00:48:37] MATT YGLESIAS: you know,
[00:48:38] KATIE AUTH: Yeah.
[00:48:38] MATT YGLESIAS: like
[00:48:39] ROSE MUTISO: Well, it wasn’t this, I think that, I mean, it has
[00:48:40] ROSE MUTISO: been part of the, the strategy is
[00:48:42] ROSE MUTISO: this was like in kind of partnership with
[00:48:44] ROSE MUTISO: Latin American countries investing, like that was
[00:48:46] ROSE MUTISO: part of it. Like making,
[00:48:48] ROSE MUTISO: that was actually formal immigration policy for
[00:48:51] ROSE MUTISO: a while that you kind of develop in those kind of, in support development and
[00:48:54] ROSE MUTISO: stability and security in
[00:48:56] ROSE MUTISO: those countries.
[00:48:57] ROSE MUTISO: So I think at a policy
[00:48:59] ROSE MUTISO: and tactics level, there’s a way that some
[00:49:01] ROSE MUTISO: of these tactics might land,
[00:49:02] ROSE MUTISO: but the headline
[00:49:04] ROSE MUTISO: messaging that we use both in, when we,
[00:49:08] ROSE MUTISO: outside of the tactical level, when we talk about climate, immigration, or develop immigration, is just, it just falls flat. It just becomes icky.
[00:49:15] MATT YGLESIAS: Right. And, you know, also things can I, so part of the pitch for NAFTA was that economic development in Mexico would reduce, uh, immigration pressures. Um, and, and like that just wasn’t true, like factually, right? It had, I believe the opposite impact, like the new capital investments were mostly in northern Mexico.
[00:49:38] MATT YGLESIAS: So it like pulled more people close to the American
[00:49:43] MATT YGLESIAS: border, uh, from which, you know, it was easier to migrate. Also, the development didn’t totally work out as well as people forecast. But also, also, uh, we exported a lot of corn. From the US to Mexico, which helped people get food, uh, which is good. It’s good for people to eat, but that like encouraged people to leave their free, you know, so it’s,
[00:50:04] ROSE MUTISO: it’s,
[00:50:04] ROSE MUTISO: complicated.
[00:50:05] MATT YGLESIAS: it’s, challenging to predict what is actually gonna impact migration in a specific way.
[00:50:11] MATT YGLESIAS: And so I, beyond the IC factor, you know, it is like, it’s not a great idea to make, like grandiose promises, um, when you’re not sure you can
[00:50:21] MATT YGLESIAS: deliver.
[00:50:22] KATIE AUTH: a lot of good research showing that up to a point, raising people’s incomes actually enables more migration. ’cause you
[00:50:27] MATT YGLESIAS: Yeah.
[00:50:28] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah.
[00:50:29] KATIE AUTH: to make that move.
[00:50:30] ROSE MUTISO: And I, I think just maybe tying this all together ’cause this is, you know, I
[00:50:34] ROSE MUTISO: think one thing I’ve really appreciated about your writing,
[00:50:36] ROSE MUTISO: Matt, is
[00:50:37] ROSE MUTISO: just really
[00:50:39] ROSE MUTISO: urging
[00:50:40] ROSE MUTISO: us to be specific in
[00:50:41] ROSE MUTISO: our problem statement. So we
[00:50:43] ROSE MUTISO: wanna, ’cause sometimes we’re talking about climate, but we’re trying to, the backdoor thing,
[00:50:47] MATT YGLESIAS: Yep.
[00:50:47] ROSE MUTISO: are you talking, you
[00:50:48] ROSE MUTISO: know, what is the problem you’re solving?
[00:50:49] ROSE MUTISO: And so we try to load
[00:50:51] ROSE MUTISO: up issues like climate or development with many
[00:50:53] ROSE MUTISO: things and like are not
[00:50:54] ROSE MUTISO: as specific on problem statements. So I think that, I think that maybe that’s
[00:50:56] ROSE MUTISO: one way we can tie up this section is that we kind of have this kind of inputs and
[00:51:01] ROSE MUTISO: outputs kind of problems and solutions mixed up.
[00:51:03] ROSE MUTISO: And is really, is something that like leads, leads us astray, I think a lot.
[00:51:08] MATT YGLESIAS: Yeah. I mean, I, I, I think that that’s right. And I think particularly in a world where, you know, so I mean like, people need to chase grants. Um, and so that means if somebody says, well, I’m interested in X,
[00:51:21] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah.
[00:51:21] MATT YGLESIAS: you know, and you have a solution you like,
[00:51:24] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah.
[00:51:24] MATT YGLESIAS: you gotta be like, well, my thing is
[00:51:27] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah. Oh, I wrote,
[00:51:28] ROSE MUTISO: I wrote a lot of academic papers
[00:51:30] ROSE MUTISO: where I was like, my very physics thing is
[00:51:32] ROSE MUTISO: gonna solve cancer,
[00:51:32] ROSE MUTISO: because I was like, everybody wanted, like you had to,
[00:51:35] ROSE MUTISO: you had to connect to cancer and health. Yeah, yeah,
[00:51:37] MATT YGLESIAS: Right. I mean, which I get, and like, I, I, I can’t tell people not to do that. It’s like, we all need to make a, make a, make a living here and, and get support for good projects. And then people who fund things, I think sometimes have a tendency to herd. And it’s like, well, I wanna fund stuff that my friends who I see on vacation are also funding.
[00:51:57] MATT YGLESIAS: Or then other times it’ll go the opposite way and it’ll be like, no, I wanna be an innovator. Right. And so, you know, people are doing things for, for bad reasons, which, um, you know, can impede uh, clarity of thought. So, I mean, just one thing that I try to do as a person in the media at least, is like, try to straighten it out
[00:52:20] MATT YGLESIAS: a little if I can, because it’s.
[00:52:25] MATT YGLESIAS: It, it can be distorting when like, everything has to be everything or, or, or nothing. Could be what it is. Or we can’t like admit to each other. They’re like, maybe we just actually disagree about what’s
[00:52:36] KATIE AUTH: Mm-hmm.
[00:52:36] MATT YGLESIAS: Because, you know, as people we like, we like to get along
[00:52:39] MATT YGLESIAS: right. And say like, ah, it’s all the same.
[00:52:41] KATIE AUTH: So, I’m actually curious in the first Trump administration, uh, I think that was pre Substack, you were very active on Twitter, and you’ve written about sort of the mental toll that that took on you. And I think on a lot of us, like it fomented a lot of hysteria, a lot of sort of.
[00:52:58] KATIE AUTH: Like, um, anxiety, uh, in the second Trump administration, you’ve launched this substack.
[00:53:05] KATIE AUTH: Like, has that changed how you think about the political impact that you’re having and how you approach your audience? Has that platform kind of changed the way you work?
[00:53:15] MATT YGLESIAS: I mean, you know, uh, yes and no. Um, the main thing is not Twitter, but like I, I was writing for Vox at the time, which I helped launch. The way the ads supported internet worked at that time was you really needed to either go viral on Facebook or catch a wave of interest on Google News.
[00:53:40] MATT YGLESIAS: And so I found myself becoming incredibly, like twitchy
[00:53:44] MATT YGLESIAS: in terms of like, what would I write about?
[00:53:47] MATT YGLESIAS: It’s like Trump would say something like, outrageous. And I’d be like, I think I can use this as like a hook to get in. Like something that I think is important or
[00:53:57] MATT YGLESIAS: just like, I think people will really click on this if I like torque it up in a certain way. And it’s a, you know. I mean, it’s a business, you know, and like having the media have revenue is like really important.
[00:54:12] MATT YGLESIAS: But I think it was distorting my thinking about
[00:54:15] MATT YGLESIAS: things, you know, instead of saying like, what do I actually think is important here? What’s like going on today that I care about? What’s like a good way to understand this question? You know, everything would be like, oh, you know, like, here’s what’s really going on.
[00:54:31] MATT YGLESIAS: You know, just a, a certain style of writing. Whereas now, you know, in a subscription business, um, I have my own business senses,
[00:54:39] MATT YGLESIAS: but like, they’re different, you know, readers who have already decided to pay me
[00:54:45] MATT YGLESIAS: open up.
[00:54:46] ROSE MUTISO: among that number.
[00:54:47] MATT YGLESIAS: Oh, well thank you.
[00:54:48] MATT YGLESIAS: Um, you know, they open up a newsletter and the main thing that I’m hoping is that people don’t think.
[00:54:59] MATT YGLESIAS: Uh, this guy’s full of shit. Like, I’m, I’m not gonna, I’m not going to
[00:55:03] MATT YGLESIAS: resubscribe. You know what I mean? Like, this is just stuff that I can get elsewhere, or it’s stuff that’s not true, or he’s like, just up on some nonsense. And so I, I am thinking harder about like, how do I deliver
[00:55:18] ROSE MUTISO: yeah,
[00:55:19] MATT YGLESIAS: rather than like, surf these waves of attention.
[00:55:21] ROSE MUTISO: but I, I still notice
[00:55:23] ROSE MUTISO: I, because I got your newsletters, I
[00:55:24] ROSE MUTISO: still notice a timeliness. I think there’s
[00:55:25] ROSE MUTISO: still something
[00:55:26] ROSE MUTISO: journalistic and, you know, Katie and
[00:55:27] ROSE MUTISO: I both have
[00:55:28] ROSE MUTISO: substack new,
[00:55:29] ROSE MUTISO: we’re new to it, but we are still kind of a little bit
[00:55:30] ROSE MUTISO: like policy ish in
[00:55:32] ROSE MUTISO: the way we do our substack. And I think people like you, I think you’re very
[00:55:35] ROSE MUTISO: responsive.
[00:55:36] ROSE MUTISO: You’re very timely. So I think there’s still a journalistic hook, hook
[00:55:39] ROSE MUTISO: kind of responding to responsiveness
[00:55:41] ROSE MUTISO: that, that
[00:55:42] ROSE MUTISO: you know, that comes,
[00:55:43] ROSE MUTISO: that comes,
[00:55:43] MATT YGLESIAS: it’s timely.
[00:55:44] ROSE MUTISO: So, I, I, I, I, so
[00:55:45] ROSE MUTISO: I just, I don’t want you to kind of, kind of throw away the idea of like twitching and
[00:55:49] ROSE MUTISO: kind of
[00:55:49] MATT YGLESIAS: No, I mean, I just mean like
[00:55:51] ROSE MUTISO: hook.
[00:55:52] MATT YGLESIAS: compare compared to how it was,
[00:55:54] MATT YGLESIAS: you Um, because like. We would, you know, pre-write articles before events happened and write multiple versions of them so that we could hit go as quickly as possible, um,
[00:56:14] ROSE MUTISO: yeah,
[00:56:15] MATT YGLESIAS: when things happened. And, you know, it’s like, I mean, I, I wanna be in people’s impact ’cause I want them to read it.
[00:56:23] MATT YGLESIAS: I want, I wanna get attention. Um, and that’s, you know, part of the, the skillset of, of digital media. But it, it’s like just trying to think a little bit more clearly about what’s happening and not be in a total atmosphere of hysteria.
[00:56:38] MATT YGLESIAS: Um, which I think led
[00:56:39] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah.
[00:56:40] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah. So,
[00:56:41] ROSE MUTISO: so perhaps you’re the, the slow and the boring is, is really,
[00:56:44] ROSE MUTISO: uh, exemplified. Okay. So last question we ask everybody,
[00:56:48] ROSE MUTISO: on our show is, , a, a personal question. So, uh,
[00:56:51] MATT YGLESIAS: Yeah.
[00:56:51] ROSE MUTISO: what has changed most about you since you started this
[00:56:55] MATT YGLESIAS: Um, I mean, you know, I, I, I became a parent,
[00:57:00] MATT YGLESIAS: , Which has like really changed my life upside down. In a lot of ways it’s in a bad way. I think like made me more, um, more selfish or not like selfish, but like parentally, like, like less of like a dippy idealist and more of like, I actually care a lot about the welfare, of my kid, even though that’s, um,
[00:57:24] ROSE MUTISO: Yep.
[00:57:24] MATT YGLESIAS: but I think that’s made me a little bit more of a, a realist about politics and because as somebody who still like, believes in the idealistic things that I believed, but now doesn’t just think of people who care about.
[00:57:39] MATT YGLESIAS: I don’t know. To say people just care about themselves makes them sound really bad. To say people care a lot about their families, I think helps you to understand why people are a little bit selfish in their, in their view, and that, you know, we are, all of us across hundreds of thousands or millions of years descended from parents and grandparents and great
[00:58:04] KATIE AUTH: mm-hmm.
[00:58:05] MATT YGLESIAS: who cared enough about their families to keep them alive and fed and healthy and along to adulthood. And there’s just like a limited amount that you’re gonna badger people out of that worldview.
[00:58:18] KATIE AUTH: Rose and I have talked a lot about that, how it’s this weird thing of like, becoming a parent does make you more self-focused, more focused on your family. But in a weird way, it also sort of gives you a lot more empathy for people because you do understand, oh, they’re a parent who’s acting in what they think
[00:58:33] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah,
[00:58:34] KATIE AUTH: interest of their kid, and it really sort of connects you across, uh, groups, which is
[00:58:40] KATIE AUTH: helpful.
[00:58:41] ROSE MUTISO: real, real empathy builder. But yeah, it’s, it’s, it just, it, it, it’s grounding, it’s extremely grounding. I, I agree.
[00:58:50] KATIE AUTH: All right. Now we’re gonna play short circuit, which is a rapid fire round of questions. Are you ready, Matt?
[00:58:56] MATT YGLESIAS: I will try,
[00:58:57] KATIE AUTH: Okay. Uh, first, best place you’ve ever gone on vacation.
[00:59:02] MATT YGLESIAS: uh, south of France.
[00:59:04] ROSE MUTISO: It’s, that’s a good one. , Okay. You take over as CEO of Twitter,
[00:59:08] ROSE MUTISO: what’s the first thing you do?
[00:59:10] ROSE MUTISO: You
[00:59:10] ROSE MUTISO: send a fork on the road memo,
[00:59:12] ROSE MUTISO: perhaps?
[00:59:13] MATT YGLESIAS: Uh, uh, well, I, I know, so I, I, I want like, bring back links. Um, he’s, he’s, he’s de boosted posts with links and, and
[00:59:22] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah.
[00:59:23] KATIE AUTH: , Fill in the blank. The most important thing Democrats should do to win in 2028 is,
[00:59:30] MATT YGLESIAS: Uh, um, I, I, I, I think is to, um,
[00:59:37] MATT YGLESIAS: think more,
[00:59:38] KATIE AUTH: for
[00:59:38] KATIE AUTH: 2028.
[00:59:39] MATT YGLESIAS: sorry, I wanna, I wanna phrase it correctly. Um, I, I think, think more clearly about the benefits of energy as a mainstream economic issue as well as a thing that has pollution and other problems.
[00:59:53] ROSE MUTISO: Oh, okay. That’s okay. That’s fighting words. That, that energy is that of the, the center of the, of the, of the agenda. Okay. Alright, so, uh, moving on. Next question. So I know you’re an Agatha Christie fan as I am,
[01:00:04] ROSE MUTISO: so are you team Hercule Poirot, or team is Marple?
[01:00:07] MATT YGLESIAS: Um, I have only read the
[01:00:10] ROSE MUTISO: Uh,
[01:00:11] MATT YGLESIAS: so I, I I need to do Marple later.
[01:00:13] ROSE MUTISO: Yes, definitely.
[01:00:14] MATT YGLESIAS: those are better.
[01:00:16] ROSE MUTISO: I mean, you know what, I go back and forth like I really do go both. I think I, okay, fine. I don’t wanna bias your, your,
[01:00:21] ROSE MUTISO: your
[01:00:21] ROSE MUTISO: perspective, but I think that they standalone, so, okay. Go read some Marple and then let’s, let’s reconnect.
[01:00:26] MATT YGLESIAS: We will see what happens.
[01:00:27] KATIE AUTH: what book did you read as a kid that
[01:00:29] KATIE AUTH: had the most profound impact on you?
[01:00:32] MATT YGLESIAS: Oh, uh, plagues in peoples, uh, by
[01:00:35] MATT YGLESIAS: by William McNeil.
[01:00:36] KATIE AUTH: okay. I’ve never heard of that. I’ll have to
[01:00:38] ROSE MUTISO: Wait, how old were you as a kid
[01:00:40] ROSE MUTISO: when you read this?
[01:00:41] MATT YGLESIAS: Oh, I, I probably like 11 or 12.
[01:00:44] ROSE MUTISO: That seems
[01:00:44] ROSE MUTISO: just from the title, it seems kind of heavy
[01:00:46] MATT YGLESIAS: it’s, uh, but it, that’s why it had a profound
[01:00:49] ROSE MUTISO: and that’s why you are who
[01:00:50] ROSE MUTISO: you are. Okay. Now we know.
[01:00:53] ROSE MUTISO: All right, great. So, , Matt, thank you so much for being on the show.
[01:00:56] ROSE MUTISO: This was,
[01:00:57] ROSE MUTISO: I think, as advertised. I think this was a very interesting, conversation and, and we really loved having you.
[01:01:02] MATT YGLESIAS: Oh,
[01:01:02] MATT YGLESIAS: thank Thank you.
[01:01:04] KATIE AUTH: I’ll see you
[01:01:05] KATIE AUTH: in the office. Okay. All
[01:01:06] MATT YGLESIAS: Bye.
[01:01:07] KATIE AUTH: Thanks
[01:01:07] ROSE MUTISO: Matt.
[01:01:17] KATIE AUTH: That’s it for today’s show and the end of season four of High Energy Planet. We are so thankful to all of you who’ve listened, shared, and supported Rose and I this season.
[01:01:26] ROSE MUTISO: Yeah, and we’ve got exciting things coming up in season five, and we can’t wait to be back with more conversations.
[01:01:31] KATIE AUTH: As always, high Energy Planet is a production of the Energy for Growth Hub matching policymakers with evidence-based pathways to a high energy future. For everyone, find out more@energyforgrowth.org and share your questions and thoughts with Rose and I at Energy for growth on X and LinkedIn.
[01:01:46] ROSE MUTISO: And if you like today’s episode, be sure to rate interview the podcast and tell a friend about us. Audrey Zenner is our senior producer. Join us next time for more High Energy Planet.