BROADCASTS.com

b'\\u201cThe Jetsons\\u201d premiered in 1962. And based on the internal math of the show, George Jetson, the dad, was born in 2022. He\\u2019d be a toddler right now. And we are so far away from the world that show imagined. There were a lot of future-trippers in the 1960s, and most of them would be pretty disappointed by how that future turned out.\\n\\nSo what happened? Why didn\\u2019t we build that future?\\n\\nThe answer, I think, lies in the 1970s. I\\u2019ve been spending a lot of time studying that decade in my work, trying to understand why America is so bad at building today. And James Pethokoukis has also spent a lot of time looking at the 1970s, in his work trying to understand why America is less innovative today than it was in the postwar decades. So Pethokoukis and I are asking similar questions, and circling the same time period, but from very different ideological vantages.\\n\\nPethokoukis is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of the book \\u201cThe Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised.\\u201d He also writes a newsletter called Faster, Please! \\u201cThe two screamingly obvious things that we stopped doing is we stopped spending on science, research and development the way we did in the 1960s,\\u201d he tells me, \\u201cand we began to regulate our economy as if regulation would have no impact on innovation.\\u201d\\n\\nIn this conversation, we debate why the \\u201970s were such an inflection point; whether this slowdown phenomenon is just something that happens as countries get wealthier; and what the government\\u2019s role should be in supporting and regulating emerging technologies like A.I.\\n\\nMentioned:\\n\\n\\u201cU.S. Infrastructure: 1929-2017\\u201d by Ray C. Fair\\n\\nBook Recommendations\\n\\nWhy Information Grows by Cesar Hidalgo\\n\\nThe Expanse series by James S.A. Corey\\n\\nThe American Dream Is Not Dead by Michael R. Strain\\n\\nThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.\\n\\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of \\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d 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.\\n\\nThis episode of \\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show\\u2019s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.'