The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-08-02 · 16 min · 2,218 words

Christopher Nolan’s Trojan Horse

Listen to the original audio · Transcribed with NVIDIA Parakeet · Timestamps stay in sync with the live audio

Admit I'm a little late weighing in on the Odyssey. Chalk it up to having young kids, I don't make it to the movies as much as I would like. But my god, what a trick Christopher Nolan pulled off here. Elon Musk did not understand this movie.

At all. But this movie sure understood who Elon Musk is, who Donald Trump is, who we have become. I really believe that it points a way out. Tricks are central to the Odyssey. Odysseus is in myth.

A trickster. He's described in that famed first line of the story. as the man of many ways. or of many while's, or of many turns. He is, depending on the translation you read, an ingenious man.

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