Best Of: A Breath of Fresh Air With Brian Eno
7/21/20261 hr 31 min
How Brian Eno expanded the possibilities of what music and sound can be.
Eno is a trailblazing musician and producer who’s worked on seminal records by U2, David Bowie, the Talking Heads and Coldplay, among others. But Eno isn’t just a great collaborator with other artists; he’s also a great collaborator with machines. Long before we started worrying about A.I. replacing human creativity, Eno was tinkering with generative systems to pioneer ambient music – a genre that has deeply influenced how we listen to music today.
We recorded this conversation in 2025, and it’s one of my favorite recent episodes of the show. So I wanted to resurface it this summer for anyone who may have missed it the first time.
This episode contains strong language.
Mentioned:
What Art Does by Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse
East West Street by Philippe Sands
Silence by John Cage
Book Recommendations:
Printing and the Mind of Man edited by John Carter and Percy H. Muir
A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander
Naples ’44 by Norman Lewis
Music Recommendations:
“The Velvet Underground” by the Velvet Underground
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker, Kate Sinclair and Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Aman Sahota and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. Transcript editing by Sarah Murphy. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Alyssa Jane Moxley, Sophie Abramowitz, Geeta Dayal, Jack Hamilton and Victor Szabo.
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Ezra Klein· Host0:32
I want to share one of my favorite episodes in recent memory with a musician and artist and legend, Brian Eno. We spoke in 2025 about his book, What Art Does, and what art and creativity mean in the age of AI. The conversation remains a breath of fresh air, so I hope you, at this particular moment, enjoy it. [gentle music] I've got an email from a lot of you lately saying, "Can we do a show just off the news? Can one show not be in the grim march of events?" So here it