The d.j.—a twenty-nine-year-old named Conrad Taylor, who at one point was the youngest city-council member in Binghamton, N.Y.—cued up a Black Eyed Peas remix as Yang explained his interest in the evils of the smartphone. During his 2020 Presidential campaign, Yang advocated for a universal basic income of a thousand dollars per month, an idea that won endorsements from Nicolas Cage and Elon Musk. Now his focus has turned to device usage (and party planning), a concern he picked up, in part, from the social scientist Jonathan Haidt (“The Anxious Generation”). Haidt’s anti-smartphone advocacy, Yang explained, “is the single most heroic act I have seen from a private citizen over the last number of years”—so heroic, in fact, that he owns a T-shirt with Haidt’s picture on it.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter