Pod Insights The Ezra Klein Show The Opinions: A Pro-Life Case for Harris and a Writing Contest With ChatGPT About this episode Our Times Opinion colleagues recently launched a new podcast called “The Opinions.” It’s basically the Opinion page in audio form, so you can hear your favorite Times Opinion columnists and contributing writers in one place, in their own voices.
It’s an eclectic and surprising mix of perspectives, as you’ll see with these two segments we’ve selected for you to enjoy. The first is with the Times Opinion columnist (and friend of the pod) David French, a lifelong conservative who’s staunchly pro-life, on why he’s voting for Kamala Harris this November, and the second is with the novelist Curtis Sittenfeld, who enters into a writing competition of sorts against a new writer on the block — ChatGPT.
Mentioned:
“David French on the Pro-Life Case for Kamala Harris”
“Can You Tell Which Short Story ChatGPT Wrote?”
You can subscribe to “The Opinions” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio — or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Ezra Klein? Today, I want to share a new show from New York Times Opinion. It is called The Opinions, and it is the opinion page of the New York Times come to life in audio. And so I wanted to play two I really liked here. The first one is from my friend and colleague, David French, the Times opinion columnist. David is a very conservative guy, never voted for a Democrat for president in his life. He's a very pro-life guy. But he's talking here about why he's going to be casting a ballot for Kamala Harris this November. Enjoy.
0:31 Speaker 01 This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.
0:45 David French? My name is David French, and I'm an opinion columnist at the New York Times.
0:50 David French? I've been a conservative since the moment I started being interested in politics. I was a Cold War Reagan conservative. I came of age in the 1980s, and that was my political identity. And for a long time, it also was my professional identity. I was a free speech lawyer for many years. I was a pro-life litigator for many years. I was a Romney delegate to the 2012 Republican National Convention. So I was deeply embedded, both in the conservative legal movement and in the Republican Party itself before the rise of Donald Trump. But I am, for the first time in my adult life,
1:35 David French? going to vote for a Democrat for president in 2024. I'm going to vote for Kamala Harris. Some people say I can't vote for Kamala Harris because I'm pro-life and a Christian. But in fact, I believe Donald Trump is harming the pro-life movement in a profound way.
2:01 David French? I'm often asked if I'm still conservative. The answer is I'm voting against Trump precisely because I'm conservative. That's why I'm doing it. I was a Reagan Republican because of the commitment of the party to certain conservative principles. The current Republican Party is not the Reagan Republican Party in its policies, and it is certainly, absolutely not, the Reagan Republican Party when it comes to its commitment or understanding of the importance of character. Now, with the rise of the MAGA Republican Party, the party has transformed itself.
2:45 David French? And so therefore, if I'm a Republican because of a commitment to character and a specific kind of conservatism, and it's no longer committed to those things, then it has no claims on my loyalty at all.
3:00 David French? I had never voted for Donald Trump. I like to say I have voted for Mitt Romney for president more than any other person alive, including probably Mitt Romney. So I've written in Mitt Romney, for example. But I had not affirmatively cast a vote for the Democratic candidate. And I will tell you when this really began to change. It wasn't just January 6th, although January 6th elevated the stakes dramatically. It was the one-two punch of January 6th and seeing how far Trump himself and MAGA had strayed from its commitment to the American rule of law. It was also then that Russian attack on Ukraine and the response of the Biden-Harris administration
3:44 David French? to that contrasted with the MAGA response. What I've seen is this administration was on the right side of those issues, and Kamala Harris has doubled down on those commitments to be on the right side of those issues.
4:07 David French? I'm an evangelical Christian and I've been pro-life for reasons related both to my faith and to my understanding of science and justice. And it was one of the primary reasons why I continued my affiliation with the Republican Party because of the Republican Party's consistent commitment to a pro-life position. But with the rise of Donald Trump, I was very, very concerned about his effect. Abortions went up under his presidency. And since the Dobbs decision, the pro-life movement has been in a state of political collapse.
4:45 David French? It's not even been able to win a referendum in a red state. Trump was the very first president since Carter to end his presidency with a higher abortion rate and ratio and tens of thousands of more abortions. So you're beginning to have a world with more abortions, decreased support for the pro-life movement, and then Donald Trump himself and the MAGA movement fundamentally changes the Republican Party platform to the point where it was no longer recognizably pro-life. And it was the most watered-down platform on abortion
5:26 David French? in 40 years. And so it strikes me as bizarre if people make the argument that as an evangelical Christian, you have to support the man who watered down the pro-life platform in the Republican Party, the man who oversaw the first increase in abortions in decades, the man who has been found liable for sexually abusing a woman, and a man who's bragged, bragged about his sexual exploits, that that's the person that Christians have to support, or they're not being faithful, strikes me as not just destructive, but also laughably ridiculous.
6:11 David French? It's a mistake to think of voting for somebody as endorsing all aspects of their coming presidency. No, it's an endorsement of the things I like, and it's not an endorsement of the things that I don't like. And it's definitely a repudiation of the other side. Here's the way I would put it. I think there are ample opportunities for the pro-life movement to work with a Harris administration to enact policies that will make abortion less appealing as an alternative for women. So, for example, I have long supported the Biden administration's efforts to create an expanded child tax credit. I do think that there are policies
6:56 David French? that are aimed at improving the lives of young mothers that pro-life people can work with the Harris administration on. Also, I'm not naive. There are things that I would oppose. So, for example, if she is wanting to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which is prohibiting direct federal funding of abortion, I would oppose that. If she was wanting to enact a federal law codifying Roe, I would oppose that. But I would also note that pro-life folks can block some of those policies with their votes down ballot. The president is not... She would not be queen of America. She would need the votes in the House and the Senate to enact national change.
7:39 David French? So this idea that everything depends on the vote for the president is just completely wrong. And right now, I think there's an appetite for a return to a more normal American politics and a more calm America. And I think you see that through her candidacy, not through the candidacy of Donald Trump.
8:11 Ezra Klein? The second episode of The Opinions that I wanted to share is a little different. It's based off an experiment the Opinion page ran, seeing how ChatGPT matched up to a human novelist when it came to writing a sexy beach read. The human they enlisted was the novelist and short story writer Curtis Sittenfeld, one of my favorites, and both Sittenfeld and ChatGPT got the same prompt. The prompt was five words: lust, regret, kissing, middle age, and flip flops. And remember, if you enjoyed these, you can subscribe to our new show, The Opinions, by clicking the link in the show notes or searching for it wherever you get your podcasts.
8:51 Speaker 01 This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news, here's what to make of it.
9:04 Speaker 03 I'm Susanna Meadows. I'm an editor in the New York Times Opinion section. My job is to bring writers into our pages who are grappling with big questions and who can surprise us. I'm here today with a fiction writer I have long been a fan of, Curtis Sittenfeld. She's the author of the book Prep and, more recently, Romantic Comedy. And she's here to talk about a recent piece we worked on together that featured a writing competition of sorts. We pitted an original short story from Curtis that she wrote for The Times against a story created by ChatGPT, both in the genre of a short, lusty, summer beach read.
9:49 Speaker 03 Hi, Curtis.
9:50 Speaker 04 Hi, Susanna.
9:52 Speaker 03 So before we get into the writing competition, can we talk for a second about your relationship to AI?
9:59 Speaker 04 So I see it as a huge unknown, not necessarily a positive unknown, potentially threatening. And if I'm having a meal with other writers and the topic of AI comes up, it's like a bummer. Like, I'm kind of like, ugh, I've gone to this portion of the evening. I'm not a cheerleader. Like, I wanted to write a better story than AI did. But I also feel some sincere curiosity. Like, how would this work? Can it write fiction? Like, in a weird way, if it could write fiction... That was interesting to me, that fact would be interesting.
10:39 Speaker 03 Uh huh.
10:40 Speaker 04 I'm one of many, many novelists whose books were used to train ChatGPT without compensation, without my agreeing to it. And I think at the time I had seven books published and it had used five of them. And I was like, I am very insulted it used five and I'm very insulted it did not use the other two, which were the ones that were the most negatively reviewed and the lowest selling. Like, I was like, even you.
11:12 Speaker 03 So when you came to us with this idea, I was genuinely curious to see what it could produce and how good it would be.
11:20 Speaker 04 I mean, just in my defense, you, you came to me and we're like, wouldn't it be fun to write fiction for the opinion page? And I was like, that would be fun. And then I think we had some back and forth about a few ideas, including what is a beach read? And then the idea just came to me like, oh, what if it was this contest between AI and me? We would both get the same prompts. We'll give a list of possible ideas that readers can choose from. And there's a combination of very summary stuff like pop songs and sand and sunscreen.
12:02 Speaker 04 And also mixed in are things that I like to write about, like ennui and ambivalence and self-consciousness and privilege.
12:11 Speaker 03 So we had a list of 20 things that Curtis came up with. And then we gave readers a place where they could write in their own suggestions of what they wanted you and ChatGPT to write about. And then looking at the responses, it seemed pretty clear what they wanted.
12:27 Speaker 04 It was lust.
12:29 Speaker 03 Lust was number one.
12:30 Speaker 04 Regret was number two, which I just, what summarizes humanity more than lust and regret?
12:36 Speaker 03 Right.
12:36 Speaker 04 And then kissing was number three.
12:38 Speaker 03 And so then we gave these suggestions from readers to you, Curtis. And there were hundreds, right, that you looked through and, and so then you decided on what?
12:48 Speaker 04 So I decided on middle age and flip flops, which even that captures the range. It would be like. Jet skis, murder, fruity cocktails. I think there was one that was like, when your thighs stick to the chair that you're sitting on outside.
13:09 Speaker 03 Good one, yeah.
13:10 Speaker 04 But I actually found it moving or touching that I think there were at least 10 write-ins for middle age. But I think people knew that this would be a summer romance or sort of going in that direction and that they were kind of saying like, let the characters be middle aged. So I do think there is this kind of cultural hunger for middle aged romances. And I was glad in a small way to try to satisfy that hunger.
13:38 Speaker 03 So we had our prompts.
13:40 Speaker 04 Write a thousand word short story in the style of Curtis Sittenfeld that includes these elements, lust, kissing, flip flops, regret, and middle age.
13:50 Speaker 03 So while Curtis was toiling away at her original short story for us, I had the task of entering the prompts into ChatGPT and it took 17 seconds and, you know, and the words just appeared.
14:04 Speaker 04 To see the speed at which it spits out sentences was the most unsettling part. Cause also in a very biased way, I'm like, my story is better. I'm like, it wrote its story? I don't know. A million times better. And my story is probably not a million times better. So it's like, like the, the speed is unsettling.
14:27 Speaker 03 So now we're going to play for you the beginning of both short stories, one by ChatGPT and one by Curtis, but not necessarily in that order. So you'll have to guess which is which. After you hear these, we'll come back and we'll tell you if you're right. Let's start with beat read number one.
14:45 Speaker 01 You probably can see where this is going. When my flight from LaGuardia landed in Minneapolis on that August afternoon, the first text I received was from the executive director of the nonprofit I'd be holding the training for the next day, canceling our dinner because of a family emergency. The second text was from my friend Jenny, asking me to look at the profile of a guy named James on the dating app we both used, and to let her know if it was the same "asked not one question" James I'd gone out with around Christmas. That date had felt like such a waste of an evening that I'd given myself a break from the absence. By the time the seatbelt light had gone off, I'd texted Jenny to tell her it wasn't,
15:29 Speaker 01 and I'd received a heart on the app from a man who is currently online, whose handle was MTNbiker1971. He was 53, a year younger than me. He had deep brown eyes and was bald with a gray and brown beard. And three of his five photos featured him on a bike. I swear, I swear, that Mountainbiker1971 and I already had exchanged generic greetings before it occurred to me that because my settings showed profiles within 10 miles of me, he was local. "Oh, sorry," I typed. "Just realized you live in Minnesota, and I'm only visiting for 36 hours." Before I could send this, a new message came in from him.
16:12 Speaker 01 "What's your favorite fruit that's considered a vegetable, and what's your best episode of TV ever?" So I deleted "Oh, sorry," and typed "Okra and the season finale of Severance. You?" Can you see where this is going? You probably can see where this is going. By the time I was in an Uber, he told me his name was Brian, he worked for an environmental advocacy group. And the previous weekend, on a trail, he'd ridden his bike past a woodpecker sitting on the back of a deer. He'd been so close that he and the deer had made eye contact. I typed, "Just to clarify, you did or didn't also make eye contact with the woodpecker?" "Sadly, no," he replied. "Next time?"
16:55 Speaker 01 By the time I'd entered my hotel room, he'd written, "I don't usually suggest it this quickly, but wanna grab a drink tonight?" So far, I'd answered no question untruthfully. When he'd said he lived in St. Paul, I'd typed "I'm currently in downtown Minneapolis." I hesitated for a few seconds, then typed "I'm free tonight."
17:18 Speaker 03 All right, so that was just the beginning of beetroot number one. Here's the start of the second short story. Let's see if you can tell who wrote what.
17:29 Speaker 01 The flip-flop moment. Lydia had always been practical. It was her hallmark, the trait that kept her life organized in neat rows, like the files on her desk or the cushions on her sofa. At 48, this practicality had become her armor, protecting her from the reckless impulses that she might have indulged in during her younger years. And so, when she walked into the coffee shop on that sweltering July afternoon, it was with the same cautious optimism that she had applied to everything else in her life. The coffee shop was called Java Junction, an ironic nod to its nondescript location. It was where she met her friends for book club, where she studied with her son while he was in high school, and where she'd spent countless hours with her late husband.
18:14 Speaker 01 That was the first thing she'd felt when she entered, the lingering echo of shared memories. She was here for a meeting with her college friend Julie, and Julie was late, which gave Lydia plenty of time to observe. She sat at a small table near the window, which was always Lydia's favorite spot. The sunlight spilled over the table, creating a halo around her as she skimmed through a magazine, her flip-flops occasionally brushing the edge of the table. She had never been one for extravagant shoes. Practical, again. But on that day, the flip-flop seemed to betray a different side of her, a side that wanted to feel something more, something less anchored. Julie arrived, panting slightly from the heat. She was a whirlwind of energy,
18:58 Speaker 01 always dressed in vibrant colors and speaking in rapid bursts. The two friends embraced, and Lydia noticed how the decades had changed them both. Julie still had that unfiltered joy, while Lydia felt a certain grayness to her own existence. They talked about their lives, Julie's recent move to a beach town, and Lydia's endless workdays. The responsibilities of being a single mother, the growing distance from her teenage son. They laughed about old times and reminisced about their college days. And for a moment, Lydia felt something she hadn't in a while, a spark of connection, of vitality.
19:35 Speaker 01 As they chatted, Lydia noticed a man sitting alone at a nearby table. He was tall with an easy smile and eyes that seemed to dance with mischief. He wore a pair of flip flops, practical, but worn with a casual confidence. Lydia couldn't help but glance at him every now and then, her gaze lingering longer than she intended.
19:58 Speaker 03 Okay, so now you've heard both stories. We can reveal, if you haven't already figured it out yourself, which one Curtis wrote. Curtis?
20:08 Speaker 04 I wrote the first one, the one that has the title. You probably can see where this is going.
20:14 Speaker 03 To me, the difference was so obvious immediately, just down to the details, Curtis, that you used, like making eye contact with a woodpecker, which is a sentence that I've definitely never read or considered in my life. What I found interesting is that there were similar things that you both hit, aside from the prompts that you both worked off of. Like you both use the word optimism, but you said extravagant optimism, which I love. Like I just, I savored that when I read it. And then ChatGPT's version was cautious optimism, which we've all heard a million times. But it just was so clear that this is a human being writing this
20:58 Speaker 03 versus the other thing, which was just so dull and soulless. And so anyway, Curtis, tell me what you thought the difference was.
21:06 Speaker 04 Well, it's funny, actually, that you're using the word soulless, because more than 20 years ago, I went to the Iowa Writers Workshop and the director at the time was Frank Conroy. And I might be paraphrasing, but he would say, what makes fiction work is not, okay, I'm definitely paraphrasing, but is not pure quality. But you can feel the press of a soul under the words, like one soul communicating with another. And I feel like there is some sweatiness or nervousness or yearning that I think is actually.
21:43 Speaker 04 Is inside of me and is in my fiction and is in a lot of people.
21:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:48 Speaker 04 But I feel like if you plucked an individual sentence from ChatGPT's story, it's probably fine or even better. Like, it's probably like smoothly written. But cumulatively, something is missing. Like, there's not any real emotion or anything that makes it feel very specific.
22:17 Speaker 03 And there was just, there are no stakes in the second one.
22:20 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I think of writing styles as spices. The more unusual a flavor is, the more divisive it will be. The people who like it will really like it, the people who don't. And the ChatGPT story feels like lunch from like a fast casual chain where you're like on a road trip and you're like, I just have to fill my stomach and like keep driving or whatever. It's just, there's nothing special about it.
22:53 Speaker 03 So what did you do to prepare?
22:55 Speaker 04 In general, I like to do quote unquote, research for fiction because I feel like it just always makes it interesting. And I don't know what I don't know. And I have a friend who is in her early 50s and lives in New York and like intermittently does dating apps. And she read it for me. And I have another friend who's a serious biker. And I said, if Brian's dating app profile handle is mountainbiker1971, is that like no real bike or whatever? How? And he was kind of like, it is douchey was his word. I don't know if we say douchey on a family podcast. And he was like, but I think it actually does what you're trying to achieve.
23:40 Speaker 04 Which is like, I mean, he's born in 1971, you know, like there was things I was trying to do as succinctly as possible because I had already exceeded the word count.
23:49 Speaker 03 And we should say, I mean, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but all these things that you're talking about are all the things that you're pretty sure ChatGPT didn't do.
23:57 Speaker 04 Yeah.
23:58 Speaker 03 And then it made me think, oh, so is that what a soul is? Is that what the human part is?
24:03 Speaker 04 No, I think, I mean, it's true, like. You know, because I wanted to bring honor to humankind.
24:09 Speaker 03 And you did.
24:10 Speaker 04 Before, oh, thank you, thank you. I'm speaking on behalf of humankind. I spent a lot of time on this 1,200 words, whether it was getting feedback from my friends and driving to this park or watching, like I had seen the David Bowie cover band that I'd seen in real life is called The Band That Fell to Earth. I had seen them in person, but then like watching a little bit of their videos online, being like, how many members are in the band?
24:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, because you want it to feel real. Would you say that is also how you are in the story? Or is that oversimplifying?
24:51 Speaker 04 You mean like because of the effort?
24:53 Speaker 03 And the specificity of the details and all that you, I mean, there's so much of you, even if it's just you researching what the St. Paul Park is like, it's, that's you in there.
25:05 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, it's funny, because if I read fiction by one of my friends, I often have the feeling that I was spending time with them.
25:16 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:17 Speaker 04 Like, that's, that's how much you can kind of feel someone's essence come through their fiction or feel their personality come through their fiction. Everyone has a sensibility or like words they would or wouldn't use or observations they would or wouldn't make. So, yeah, I mean, I wrote every sentence in this story, so of course, there's a lot of me in there, even though there's also like none of me in there.
25:42 Speaker 03 Right.
25:42 Speaker 04 But I also, one thing I want to say is, I remain humble about this in the sense that I think this story that AI wrote reads like a story written by AI.
25:56 Speaker 03 Yes, I agree. I did find it somewhat reassuring, at least just for the moment, in terms of writing and creativity, that we're not as screwed as I might have thought for now.
26:09 Speaker 04 But I think that it is adapting quickly. You know, the way this stuff works, if it was drastically improved in like three months, six months, the conversation we're having is sort of true in August 2024, and I don't know how long it'll be true.
26:30 Speaker 03 Right.
26:33 Speaker 03 Curtis, thank you so much for joining me and for doing this experiment. It was so much fun. For me, too. Thank you, Susanna. So to read the rest of these scintillating beach reads, and I hope you do, you can visit the link in this episode's show notes or visit nytimes.com and search Sittenfeld.
27:04 Speaker 01 This show is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Vishaka Durba, Phoebe Lett, Christina Samulski, and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Brusak, and Annie Rose Strasser. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabaro, and Afeem Shapiro. Additional music by Amen Sahota. The fact-check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samulski. The executive producer of Time's Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.
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