Graham Platner, Jon Ossoff and the New Rules of Political Attention

Attention is working in really unusual ways this election cycle. Graham Platner, a political unknown a year ago, ended up dominating his Senate primary against Maine’s sitting governor – even as his campaign was rocked by a series of scandals. James Talarico also seemed to come out of nowhere to become the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas. Jon Ossoff has ginned up a ton of excitement as a potential 2028 presidential contender, in part because of his viral videos. Meanwhile, the former reality TV personality Spencer Pratt became a political star on X during his bid to become mayor of Los Angeles and yet failed to make the runoff. All of this has a lot of lessons for how attention is working right now in American politics. So I wanted to have on my favorite person to talk to on this topic. Chris Hayes is the host of “All In With Chris Hayes” on MS NOW and the author of “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource.” Mentioned: “Donald Trump is going to win the election and democracy will be just fine (https://www.bangordailynews.com/2024/...) ” by Jared Golden “We Took AOC to a Deep Red Data Center Town (https://substack.perfectunion.us/p/we...) ” by More Perfect Union “America Dissected (https://crooked.com/podcast-series/am...) ” by Dr. Abdul El-Sayed “Can James Talarico Reclaim Christianity for the Left? (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/op...) ” with James Talarico, The Ezra Klein Show “Joe Rogan Experience #2352 - James Talarico (   • Joe Rogan Experience #2352 - James Talarico  ) ” with James Talarico, The Joe Rogan Experience “Why Everyone Wants Jon Ossoff to Run for President (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/08/op...) ” by Michelle Goldberg “Obama Suddenly Panicked After Gazing Too Far Into Future (https://theonion.com/obama-suddenly-p...) ” by The Onion Book Recommendations: Transcription (https://us.macmillan.com/books/978037...) by Ben Lerner The Godfather (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...) by Mario Puzo Alan Opts Out (https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/tit...) by Courtney Maum Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast (https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-k...) , and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-... (https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-...) . This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Julie Beer and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Johnny Simon. Our recording engineer is Johnny Simon. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts (http://nytimes.com/podcasts) or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-acce.... For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com (https://pcm.adswizz.com) for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.