Talks & Entertainment

To trace the global history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a pattern of growing unaffordability and shortage: a national housing crisis, not enough workers, a shortfall of chips for cars and computers, an insufficient clean energy infrastructure. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough. 

In Abundance, journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson explain how one generation’s solutions have become the next generation’s problems and offer a call to rethink big, entrenched problems that seem mired in systemic scarcity, from climate change and housing to education and healthcare. Progress requires the ability to see promise rather than just peril in the creation of new ideas and projects, and an instinct to design systems and institutions that make building possible. 

Klein is a columnist and podcast host at The New York Times and the author of Why We’re Polarized. Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic, host of the podcast “Plain English,” and the author of Hit Makers. They’ll be in conversation with Jerusalem Demsas, a staff writer at The Atlantic, host of their policy podcast “Good on Paper,” and the author of On the Housing Crisis. 

A limited number of tickets include access to a post-event book signing.