Ezra Klein

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[8] You know, one of our favorite episodes of Sam Harris ever, right, was him debating this man. That is right.

[9] This mysterious man, Ezra Klein, we were introduced to him there.

[10] Yeah.

[11] And we really just enjoyed him sparring with our favorite person.

[12] He's quick.

[13] Oh, he good.

[14] And smart.

[15] real good.

[16] So Ezra Klein is an American journalist, a blogger, and a political commentator.

[17] He co -founded Vox, where he is currently editor at large.

[18] He also has a new book called Why We're Polarized.

[19] Please enjoy Ezra Klein.

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[29] He's an armchair expert.

[30] You live in Oakland.

[31] I do.

[32] But you're from Irvine.

[33] Is that accurate?

[34] Yeah.

[35] Are you there for work or do you love Oakland?

[36] You know, part of it, honestly, was it, I like the Bay Area a lot.

[37] I love California.

[38] We wanted to be closer to my family after we had.

[39] the baby.

[40] But I've been in D .C. for 15 years, and it was important to establish in our lives the idea that we could change things, right, to not get so into one particular rhythm.

[41] Irvine, though, if I'm correct, and I'm just going to be using some broad stroke stereotypes.

[42] Sure, yeah.

[43] I'm from Detroit.

[44] That's watercolor.

[45] Okay, good.

[46] My understanding of Orange County in general is kind of like a bastion of the right in Southern California.

[47] So traditionally, Yeah.

[48] Although in 2018, it elected, Irvine elected that district, its first Democratic member of Congress, Katie Porter, who was totally awesome.

[49] Yes.

[50] This isn't the one that sent some distasteful photo.

[51] That bummed me out because I sent money to her campaign.

[52] And I just don't care about those distasteful photos.

[53] Katie Hill.

[54] Katie Hill.

[55] Yeah.

[56] And I got a check in the mail refunding my money that I had donated.

[57] And I didn't want it.

[58] Yeah.

[59] That whole struck me as in like an absolute shame.

[60] Yeah, I know.

[61] Like, to get run out of Congress through revenge porn, it struck me as real bad.

[62] There's a great profile of her and actually Playboy recently that she sat for and talked about sort of what she's doing next and how she's thought about it.

[63] And among other things, made me feel like Congress lost a good person for no good reason.

[64] Yeah, and I guess the bottom line that she may be crossed, right, was that they were employees or they were working in her campaign.

[65] That was the, was that the inexcusable offense?

[66] Because just being.

[67] I want to be careful in this one because I did not.

[68] I did not look super deeply into this particular scandal, but it was not clear, though, if the employee had an issue with it and what the dynamics of that was.

[69] It seemed to almost entirely come from an ex -husband out for revenge.

[70] Yeah.

[71] And that's a pretty different situation than an HR complaint.

[72] It definitely didn't come from the employee that I do know.

[73] But then it was like, this person works for her and that's bad.

[74] Well, one of the only consequences that I disagree with for the cracking down on these egregious misuses of power and balance, which I'm totally for.

[75] Part of me is like, you can still date and fuck people at work.

[76] If not, where the hell are you meeting people?

[77] I mean, people...

[78] You don't use Tinder?

[79] I am too old to have used Tinder.

[80] Thank goodness, because I would have...

[81] Oh, you would have abused the hell out of that.

[82] I would have hated myself shortly.

[83] But at any rate, you know, this notion that you can't date a boss, there's so many great examples of couples that have made it and persevered, and they're our favorite couples, and one of them was one another's boss, you know?

[84] All right, I'm a way off topic.

[85] It's a tricky space.

[86] I thought about a lot, because I ran, I was the editor -in -chief of Vox for the first four years, and we thought a lot about those policies and those questions, and I think it is something where you need to clear a high bar, right?

[87] If you want to go to HR and talk it through and figure it out, but on the other hand, they're the good examples of people dated a boss, and it worked out great, and the bad examples of people got fired because the boss retaliated against them.

[88] And so the question I feel like we're in this era of like norms renegotiation, and it's very uncomfortable to be in the middle of it.

[89] Yeah, sure.

[90] Right?

[91] Before you figure out the new version.

[92] But, but again, just to that point, so I think we have this fear of just in general confrontation, right?

[93] So if an employee is later fired because of this affair, now this is going to be a grueling process to fix this or amend this.

[94] And so we'd rather just not deal with that by saying it can never happen so that we don't have to deal with it.

[95] But my point is, like, if someone fires someone because they had an affair with them and they fired them wrongly, then they should suffer for that.

[96] Yeah, but who makes them suffer, right?

[97] Exactly.

[98] The courts are bad about this.

[99] Powers a lot of who wins those fights.

[100] Yeah.

[101] I agree with you.

[102] In some ideal world, what we would do is have negotiations of equals sort of constantly.

[103] Uh -huh.

[104] But what if the negotiation is never equal?

[105] Right.

[106] And then what do you do?

[107] Like, how do you plan for that inequality at the front end?

[108] Yeah.

[109] Well, what this is circling in weird ways already and what?

[110] what I think we'll talk about at length here today is, you know, some often conflicting values that we have in this country.

[111] So I think as people have made their political leanings, their identity, we forget that both sides are pursuing something kind of virtuous, right?

[112] So the right and just in general is pursuing like protection of individual rights and the left is more generally pursuing the greater good of the masses.

[113] I've got to see if you're in so far.

[114] Do you, would you agree with that.

[115] I'm holding, I'm holding judgment.

[116] Okay, okay.

[117] And then I would argue, too, that we have two values in the Constitution, liberty and equality, and those two are often opposing, and the right seems to value liberty and the left seems to value equality.

[118] I think they both value both, but I think it is a spectrum and, you know, the pendulum's pointing to one specific area.

[119] So, quite often both things are like fighting for the right for people to fall in love at work is good and then fighting to make sure there's no abusive power is also good right so it's like i think quite often we want to just assume the other side is bad or evil or all this but it's quite possible they're pursuing a virtue we do agree with you know your your book why we are polarized do i get it right it's got it's got the contraction it's work oh well yeah why we are sounds very formal you're right we're just rapping about politics here very relatable it's pull up a chair it's so funny you'd say that because i was reading reviews of the book this morning and i had typed in why we are polarized, and it said, do you mean why we're polarized?

[120] So I've already been corrected once, and I've already forgotten.

[121] Thank you, Mr. Google.

[122] But anyways, one of my armchair opinions on it is just that we really think the other side is, like, evil.

[123] The two things I would say that that made me think about is one, I often wish we had a more philosophically tethered debate in this country.

[124] In some stylized way, you're completely right.

[125] The right is supposed to be in protection of individual rights, left in protection of equality and a more balanced society.

[126] And I think that if you begin picking through what is happening on both sides, you find a lot of variation and violation of that.

[127] For instance, choice is a question where you could really imagine a right that believed in a woman's right to choose because that is an individual right.

[128] But it went another direction.

[129] And I understand why people are on both sides of that issue, but it's one that I think flies a bit in the face of that.

[130] The other thing that I do think is interesting.

[131] There's a philosopher, I hope I am not misattributing this, named Danielle Allen, who makes the argument that we have really erred in this country with this idea that liberty and equality are somehow intention with each other, that to truly have any kind of liberty, you need a fair amount of equality because deeply imbalanced power relationships are an enemy of liberty.

[132] I mean, there's a great old line that the law in its majestic equality permits both the rich and the poor to sleep under a bridge, which is to say the rich never end up homeless sleeping under the bridge.

[133] And so the question with a lot of issues of liberty is, do we have the equality to exercise that liberty?

[134] Do we have the equality to go to our boss and say something has gone wrong here?

[135] Or is there actually no liberty in that situation because there's not enough equality of power for the liberty to be exercised?

[136] Or similarly, you know, if you want to quit your job and start a business, but you can't get health care, or you want to stand up to your boss, but your kid is sick and you would lose your health care.

[137] That's a situation which you don't have liberty.

[138] So I think something that has happened going way, way, way back in the American conversation is this idea that there is liberty and equality and these are, should somehow be understood as intention.

[139] I think we should be working towards much more of a synthesis of them and some people to be fair due.

[140] Yeah, well, I think there's, you just gave some examples where they seem kind of symbiotic in a way, but also there are some very obvious examples where they're just not.

[141] They're kind of opposing.

[142] There's, you You know, you're going to have some cognitive dissonance to pursue both, right?

[143] I just, I guess I wish everyone started recognizing, yeah, it's going to be a compromise.

[144] And it's best case we're aiming for a compromise.

[145] Yeah.

[146] To me, that just would be such a different framing for how we think about all these things.

[147] I think this is a hard thing right now.

[148] One of the arguments of the book is that my background is as a policy reporter.

[149] So I covered things in Washington like the Affordable Care Act fight and the financial crisis and climate.

[150] change that kind of thing.

[151] And I had this same experience over and over and again, which is a issue with startup, right?

[152] Washington, in its hydraulic mechanisms, would decide, we're going to take on health care this year.

[153] And so I'd sit in these rooms where members of Congress from both sides of the aisle or think tank experts from both sides of the aisle began talking about what could we do?

[154] What could we do that would make this better for everybody, for the left, given its premises, for the right, given their premises?

[155] And you'd sit there and there'd be a lot of compromise because policy in general, zero sum.

[156] A lot of things are kind of screwed up for everybody.

[157] And there's a lot of ways you can make it better for everybody.

[158] And then by the end, it would collapse down into total war, right?

[159] It would collapse down into a pure party line vote.

[160] Nobody could, you know, cross the lines.

[161] That's because when the question that American politics collapses down to, which is a reasonable question, the way we set up the rules, is who will win the next election?

[162] Exactly.

[163] There's actually no compromise in that.

[164] Michael Lind, who is a kind of interesting center -right unusual thinker, he talks about politics in terms of settlements, which I really like.

[165] It's a little bit related to what you're saying in compromise, that we have this slightly lazy language of war, right?

[166] Class wars, war on drugs, war on climate, like the partisan war, et cetera.

[167] And he says, like, politics is always and everywhere about settlements, right?

[168] You've got to think about what is your settlement going to be.

[169] And I think that's actually a good frame sometimes to come at it from.

[170] Yeah.

[171] Yeah, I like that.

[172] Yeah, it's almost like, you know, any business negotiation, any kind of negotiation you recognize that, oh, that the goal here will ultimately be, you know, you didn't give up the thing that would have killed you and they didn't either.

[173] And then somehow, you know, it all, it all works.

[174] But I do wonder, back to your point about when they were talking on the floor, basically private conversation and public conversation.

[175] And what I often find just even moving throughout my liberal silo is there are, there's almost like the party line in the news and on Twitter and in headlines.

[176] And then when I start talking to people in real life face to face, I'm finding it's not, it doesn't mirror it at all.

[177] I mean, particularly, and I guess I'm probably uniquely in the middle of the Me Too stuff as it pertains to Hollywood, right?

[178] There'll be like these open statements we would all give on a red carpet.

[179] And then we will have these way more nuanced conversations in real life because maybe one of us knows the person or whatever the case is.

[180] And I'm just increasingly shocked by how different those private and public conversations are.

[181] And I just wonder, is it because now everything is public?

[182] So, like I have to imagine in the 40s, those senators would chat or those Congresspeople would chat.

[183] And then they might come up.

[184] And then what they did wouldn't be a headline.

[185] They could kind of move in somewhat of more secrecy, yeah?

[186] Yep.

[187] I think this is completely true.

[188] So one, I think, is the public dimension you're talking about.

[189] I have the experience a lot on my podcast of all bring someone on who's been, you know, like attacking me on Twitter or what they write is really, even if there's nothing to do with me, very sharp edged.

[190] And then when they're in the room, it's actually sometimes hard to even like I want to engage.

[191] But the dynamics of sitting here with someone.

[192] Yeah.

[193] It pushes you so much towards conciliation.

[194] And one tricky thing, though, is, and I think about this a lot, because I think it's a hard question, is which one of us is the real us?

[195] And is any of it real us, right?

[196] Because sometimes, I think there's an intuition that that thoughtful, behind closed doors, et cetera, like, that's who we really are.

[197] But then certainly in politics, then we'd get down to the vote and it goes the other way.

[198] Right.

[199] Well, actually, was I getting fooled by the kind of nice social dynamics that we were playing in?

[200] And then it turned out that what you really wanted to do was exercise power.

[201] So one, I think, and this is one of the things about the book, the book is very much about how systems, technological systems, political systems, economic systems and social ones shape the way we act, right?

[202] That there are a lot of different identities we can inhabit, a lot of different versions of ourselves we can be.

[203] And depending on which context you've created for people, you get a very different version of them.

[204] But the other specific point you make, I really like want to emphasize because I think it's a tricky one.

[205] It's a tricky one to talk about, but I think it's true.

[206] People who study Congress will tell you that one of the reasons it works so badly is that there's too much transparency.

[207] It used to be possible to do a lot of behind -the -scenes deal -making, you didn't have cameras in every hearing.

[208] And that meant there was less performative grandstanding.

[209] There was more opportunity to compromise.

[210] But if everything everyone does is under the microscope of all partisan media at all times, then that work you have to do to get to the point where you say, hey, we're going to jump together.

[211] And also just the incentives in any given meeting, right?

[212] If you could go viral on Twitter that day versus there are no cameras in that room.

[213] So actually, the question of whether or not you've been influential and had a good day is, your colleagues think you are persuasive.

[214] That is very different.

[215] And people want more transparency.

[216] We believe transparency is a good thing.

[217] Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

[218] But sometimes, I mean, if you think about if you would want, I mean, you're a more open person than most.

[219] I was about to say if you would want every discussion with your partner, like, out.

[220] But when I was running a business, I used to think about in Congress how the meetings we had to figure out what we had to do next at Vox, if there were cameras in those, it'd be very hard to run.

[221] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[222] Like, it's not how we run other kinds of things.

[223] Yes, I'd say it'd be nearly impossible.

[224] And I think part of the dynamic, and you were just talking about with systems is, I think when we're most honest, we can admit that we as individuals are probably not as good as the systems we can create.

[225] That's kind of the beauty of systems.

[226] I just, as someone who loves reading history books, there's so much of these monumental, just to say, projects, right?

[227] like the Panama Canal, the Hoover Dam, the interstate system.

[228] So many of those things literally could have never gotten done with the level of transparency that we have today.

[229] Because sometimes there's some ugly underbelly of some of these bigger things that just need doing.

[230] And there doesn't seem to be any either appetite for that underbelly or acceptance that it's part of it.

[231] I think that's right.

[232] The other thing I would just say is that the tricky thing is we can have systems that make us much worse than ourselves too.

[233] Oh, sure, sure.

[234] And one of the things I'm worried about, like, deeply worried about is that politics has become a system that brings out the worst in us, not the best.

[235] And not that has been true at other times, right?

[236] We read the books and those were the great projects.

[237] Right.

[238] We also had the not great projects and we also had the not great moments in our social history.

[239] You don't like eugenics?

[240] It's not in my top ten.

[241] It didn't make the cut.

[242] But I'll actually give a, I think, a hard example of this.

[243] So this is a great piece, actually, the Politico published a couple months ago.

[244] And it's about, do you guys ever go to Penn Station in New York, the train station?

[245] Yeah, sure.

[246] So when I was in D .C., I was up there all the time.

[247] And the thing about Penn Station is, it's terrible.

[248] Like, it's just a terrible train station.

[249] Like, there's not nice stuff in it.

[250] Like, waiting in there is unpleasant.

[251] It's very old technology.

[252] The whole thing is crazy.

[253] And this was like a very deep investigation to, they've been trying to make that into a train station worthy of New York for 30 or 40 years now.

[254] And what happened in this guy's argument is that, so Robert Moses is a kind of great and also terrible.

[255] I'm reading the power broker right now.

[256] That's an amazing book.

[257] Yeah.

[258] Oh, my God.

[259] That's an amazing book.

[260] People should read the power broker.

[261] Oh, I had no idea that one individual was so, you changed the landscape of.

[262] Is that a post motherless Brooklyn read for you?

[263] It is.

[264] It is.

[265] Yeah, yeah.

[266] I was super excited when Motherless Brooklyn became also a Robert Moses movie.

[267] I love that book.

[268] Anyway, that's another topic.

[269] Yeah, yeah.

[270] Anyway.

[271] But again, that's a prime example of someone who's like self -will run riot, yet the ending result was pretty positive from New York.

[272] So I want to be careful on that because Moses built amazing things in New York, right?

[273] He built in New York as we understand it.

[274] But as part of doing that, he destroyed communities of color.

[275] He ran freeways through them.

[276] He displaced huge numbers of people.

[277] And, I mean, it was very clear who paid for that progress.

[278] He created this.

[279] And one of the reactions in progressivism was to say, we can't allow, like, people of power to run roughshod over communities.

[280] And so what we should create is structures within the decision -making process where communities have, like, a really intense level of input.

[281] But the problem is that if you build that in too many places and the people who come out are not representative, right?

[282] because the people who come out are really there, in general, to oppose new projects they don't want the communities that aren't to change.

[283] Eventually, you can't get anything done.

[284] And one of the reasons it's really hard for us to build infrastructure in this country, the way we did in the mid -century American period when a lot of like our iconic bridges, freeways, you know, pieces of public works were built is because we have so many internal veto points, which are built with all good intentions and are in many ways good.

[285] But also at some point, if you can't get around California, right, if you can't drive somewhere or have good public transportation, or I'm up in the Bay Area now, if it's not affordable to buy a home as a middle class person, because they won't let you build anything because you have all these neighborhood councils, which are only about people who live there right now, saying, I don't want anything to change at all forever.

[286] Yeah, they just kind of proceed as the immigrants that made it and then wanted to slam the door.

[287] It's like, no, no, I'm here and now it's good and this should.

[288] Yeah, like, Nimbism is one of the great failures of liberalism.

[289] What's nimbism?

[290] Not in my backyardism.

[291] Oh.

[292] Yeah, like, I want everything to be better and different and let's build, but like not where I am.

[293] Yes.

[294] Like it's for somebody yet, right?

[295] Like, we'll make the bridge over there.

[296] Yeah.

[297] So now there's this like movement of yimbies, yes, in my backyard.

[298] It's like, this is, I think, particularly in California, like this is like a big, important fight.

[299] Yeah.

[300] So I make it a point to whenever I see something about the president that irritates me, I force myself to imagine the exact same thing happened under Obama's.

[301] tenure, just to kind of check my temperature, if I'm really that convicted about how I bet it was.

[302] So in this impeachment thing, as I ran this little experiment I do, I was like, you know, I bet my first reaction would be, why is a transcript of Obama talking to another president even in the public sphere?

[303] How is it that Obama can't have a private conversation with a world leader and that we all know about it.

[304] That would just be my first knee jig thing.

[305] But they release that transcript optionally.

[306] They did.

[307] It's a wild part of this.

[308] Oh, I have friends.

[309] And yeah, I was sitting there with one of my good friends, Steve.

[310] And he goes, did you read the transcript?

[311] I go, yeah.

[312] It's so obvious.

[313] And he goes, no. And I can see in that moment, we both genuinely are reading two dramatically different things, even though it's the same thing.

[314] But all I was going to say is, you know, obviously I'm on the left.

[315] So I do think that he was definitely saying, investigating my political rival, but with that said, I'm a little concerned that two presidents can't have a conversation.

[316] I feel like those conversations need to happen, and that they're never going to hold up to the scrutiny of us four days later evaluating this conversation.

[317] That's a good.

[318] I don't think I'm with you on this part.

[319] I think I would buy into this principle, but I'm not sure I think it applies here, because in general, he can have those conversations.

[320] They're not, they chose to make this call record, which they also edited, by the way, public.

[321] And I think the - Well, wasn't there a really quick, wasn't there a whistleblower?

[322] Someone said I was on that call.

[323] Yeah, so it was a whistleblower who went to Congress, went to the inspector general and then went to Congress and said, I've heard from people on these calls that something is going wrong here.

[324] They need to be investigated.

[325] And as there was political pressure building up to have investigation, the White House said, you know what, we're going to nip this in the bud.

[326] We're going to release a transcript.

[327] You're all going to see, as in Donald Trump's words, the call is perfect.

[328] Then they release a transcript.

[329] I was like, oh, my God.

[330] kidding me. But as you say, not everybody.

[331] And one of the things it has always been very striking to me about that whole structure of that.

[332] And I have an impeachment podcast.

[333] I've been thinking about this a lot is that Donald Trump and maybe some of the people around him, although we don't actually know that too well, looked at this and said, this call was great.

[334] Exactly.

[335] Yeah.

[336] Right?

[337] Like, I should have done exactly what I did.

[338] One of the chapters of the book is all about how we process information through a political lens, how people from different perspectives will look at the exact same thing.

[339] There's a great line that we read or hear, watch things as we are, not as they are.

[340] What we bring to something is very much what we take from it.

[341] And so people, you know, on the right have looked at this.

[342] And I think they are wrong in this particular case.

[343] But as you say, Donald Trump clearly looked at this.

[344] And I think the way he understood it is Joe Biden and Hunter Biden are bad for the country.

[345] Donald Trump, whatever else he will say about him is a true believer in these kinds of conspiracy theories that he ends up running.

[346] down.

[347] He's like a genuine box news viewer in this way.

[348] And the right thing for me to do as president is to try to stop them, to try to ferret out this kind of internal American corruption.

[349] Yes.

[350] Now, I think that thing where populist leaders decide that their domestic opponents are enemies of the state and like they need to use a state to stop that.

[351] We've seen that a lot in the world.

[352] It doesn't go super well long term.

[353] Yeah.

[354] But that is not to say it's not authentic.

[355] Right.

[356] Yeah.

[357] Yeah.

[358] In their head motivated by an actually even concern for the country.

[359] Yeah.

[360] Well, so again, this is just like a little bit of good faith.

[361] I guess I extend to a lot of people I completely disagree with.

[362] It's like I watched that Cheney documentary and I'm like just 180 degree different opinion on everything.

[363] But do I believe that in his heart he truly was fighting hourly to make this country the best place it could be in his worldview?

[364] I do believe that.

[365] I don't think he was an evil guy trying to harm the country.

[366] I just happened to disagree with every single opinion he had.

[367] as on what would make the country better.

[368] Yeah, I think in a way that we, for good and for bad, rely much too heavily on moralistic interpretations of people and trying to understand their politics.

[369] Right, right.

[370] Like, the question of is Dick Cheney under his own framework of how the world works, a good or bad person, is actually, like, not an important question.

[371] And it sets in a way the bar way too low.

[372] I think sometimes I'll hear this argument people make, which is they think they're doing their best.

[373] And that's good.

[374] But the problem is people who think they're doing good for the world, on the left and the right, can often do terrible harm because they're such true believers in what they're doing.

[375] Oh, yeah.

[376] They become totally heedless of the consequences.

[377] And in this way, to be a little good placey about it, I lean much more towards utilitarianism, which is to say that I have covered Washington for, you know, coming up on two decades now.

[378] I know a lot of these folks on the left and the right, I believe almost all of them are working to create a better world as they understand it.

[379] Yeah.

[380] And the way to judge them is are they creating a better world against some framework, right?

[381] Not their framework, but some framework.

[382] If you are in all sincerity trying to work day in and day out to take health care away from poor people, I do not question the sincerity of your belief that is maybe not the government's right to tax me to fund Medicaid.

[383] so poor single mothers can have health care.

[384] But I think you're doing a bad thing in the world.

[385] And I think it's important to be able to separate out the nature of people's motivations from their effect on the world.

[386] Yeah, I agree.

[387] But I would just also say, though, it's a little defeatist to just go like, oh, they're evil.

[388] I'm good and virtuous.

[389] They're evil.

[390] Because there's no solution to that.

[391] What are you going to have, exorcism or something?

[392] So to me, it's just a little lazy.

[393] It's kind of like as well to just go like, oh, Hitler was evil.

[394] granted he was but Hitler was evil done thinking about that no what led to all the evilness and how do we prevent it from reoccurring like it is relevant to understand you know beyond just someone's evil good or bad oh yeah but that's what I mean a bit that I think we overly personalized politics is maybe a different way of putting that and it's something it's something I argue at the beginning of the books I'm a political journalist and the way we tend to tell the stories of politics are through individuals.

[395] We write biographies.

[396] We write profiles.

[397] We take you inside the meeting and the person said the thing to the other person and then like they ran off and if they hadn't said that thing, maybe everything would be different.

[398] And if you read books like game change or, I mean, it all kind of works like this.

[399] We're human beings.

[400] We think in terms of other human beings and their stories.

[401] Yeah, we like heroes.

[402] We like villains too.

[403] Yeah.

[404] Yeah.

[405] And it's why I think it's important to think in terms of systems because one of the things I've really come to deeply believe about politics is for the most part, if you put different people in the same positions, they would end up doing similar things because people responding to their incentives.

[406] The range of free will we have is smaller than we like to think it is.

[407] Yeah.

[408] Well, and I think as someone who loved Obama was confused by some of his decisions at times, I thought, oh, this system is bigger than I think it is.

[409] They tell them something that they're not telling me, which caused him to now do something that I wouldn't have predicted he would have done.

[410] There's a lot of curiosities when people take that job.

[411] I think about this right now with some of the left critiques of Obama because I spent a lot of time talking to people in the administration when I covered them.

[412] And in retrospect, I think people sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly, but in general, in a overly simplifying way, they underestimate how much caution presidents need to operate with.

[413] Right.

[414] How much sometimes when the Obama administration did not make the other decision or the more ambitious decision or the decision people wish they had made now, they didn't make it because they thought it had a good chance of going wrong.

[415] And if it went wrong, too many people would pay the price.

[416] And I remember there's a very particular conversation I had with somebody who was a senior policymaker there.

[417] And this was during, and if you guys remember, the debt ceiling fights.

[418] And this was during that.

[419] And the way that ended, there was a lot of controversy over it.

[420] And I was, you know, making the argument in some ways for, why don't you do this other thing that people like me thought would have been better?

[421] And the person said to me, look, Maybe we should have done it.

[422] Maybe you're right.

[423] But the thing that you should always like keep in mind is it's not like nobody in the room, in this room of political and policy professionals, thought of that.

[424] It's not like the reason things don't happen is almost never because nobody raised their hand.

[425] It's this obvious idea we should do that instead.

[426] It's that we looked at that and we thought that what would happen in the aftermath would be worse.

[427] Now, maybe we were wrong.

[428] Yeah.

[429] But we were thinking that through.

[430] And I always try to keep that as a caution on myself.

[431] It's very easy to, like, lob my bombs from the outside of it.

[432] Well, you even said, you just said that, you know, you have a utilitarian view of it.

[433] And I think, like, we interviewed Mayor Garcetti.

[434] And one of the things I loved he said is, like, you enter that job with all kinds of ideologies.

[435] But then you're the person who has to make the whole city run.

[436] So you become a pragmatist really quick.

[437] Yeah.

[438] Stay tuned from the armchair, Pittsburgh.

[439] If you dare.

[440] What's up, guys, this is your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

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[457] Okay, now, I really became aware of you because I listened to Sam Harris' podcast, and I love Sam Harris We've had him on a couple We've had him on a couple times But of course you had this This feud with him Which was spectacular From I called a debate Not a feud It was a debate We talked about it for like two weeks after Oh we did People have People have very strong feelings about this But we did one podcast together Oh yeah Exactly It wasn't like a clash of No it was handled beautifully But I think both of you It wasn't a fight The lead up Well the lead of was wonderful because prior to the debate, though, there was like emails that were read a lot.

[458] All I'm saying is as a movie goer, I was like so interested in this whole thing.

[459] The hype was very well constructed.

[460] Yes, like it was like Mayweather and McGregor.

[461] Like the pregame was really spectacular.

[462] But I really only was made aware of you by that whole thing.

[463] The thing that I related to Sam on was, oh yeah, what happens if we do get some.

[464] data that no one's going to like.

[465] Do we have a system by which you can bring something that would be hugely unpopular and, you know, dangerous to light?

[466] Now, I don't think it turns out that that man's work was that.

[467] I think you should give a little context.

[468] Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[469] You could probably sum it up better than me. So yeah, let me give you the quick version, but recognize you'll get a little bit of my version, but I'll try to be as clear as possible as I can on it.

[470] So back in the 90s, the 80s, this is an old book, the bone curve.

[471] Although Murray's coming out, the like a like the bell curve two basically oh he's doubling down yeah two to two bell two curve um so back back then he wrote a book so the idea that different populations score differently on IQ test is not controversial it's simply true right right there's no doubt about it right um and the bell curve is a book uh that is not only about that though is in part about that but the kind of arc of murray's work is he's a sort of right wing think tank guy who we initially became famous for a book called losing ground which was about why the war on poverty failed, which I think he's wrong and it didn't fail, but that's a different argument.

[472] Then comes out with this book that is sort of part of this Oof, which is saying that the reason you are seeing such different outcomes among different groups is IQ differentials, biological, at least partially biological, and thus immutable IQ differentials.

[473] And very importantly, something that Murray says is that no matter whether or not the IQ differences are biological or environmental, they are basically immutable.

[474] We don't have policy interventions that can change them.

[475] I think at all levels, the evidence proves him wrong on that, but that's a different thing.

[476] This is super controversial at the time.

[477] It's like a huge blow up.

[478] It's like, but way before my time in journalism, then things like settle way down after that.

[479] Fast forward decades.

[480] Yeah, yeah.

[481] Murray gives a speech or is going to give a speech at Middleton, William, something like that.

[482] And there's basically like a de -platforming riot.

[483] Like, get somewhat physical.

[484] Murray's chaperone is roughed up.

[485] He wasn't even giving a speech about the Belkin.

[486] curve.

[487] It was about his other work.

[488] So, like, this is like a bad event.

[489] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[490] Harris brings him on to his podcast, which at that point, I listened to occasionally.

[491] I like this stuff on meditation and whatever.

[492] I think something Harris always misunderstood was that he thought I was like coming into this as his enemy and I just wasn't.

[493] I tried to de -escalate him from the beginning.

[494] And I think he always kind of like was wrong -footed on where I was.

[495] But anyway, he brings on Murray and he basically has a conversation of which the framing is, we need to have this conversation because what happened at this one college shows that there is this terrible political correctness pandemic discrimination that won't allow us to talk about things.

[496] And then he goes on as like this two and a half hour conversation, which I think is a very bad version of a conversation about the bell curve and does a very bad job dealing with the extremely persuasive counter arguments to the idea that one, racial IQ differences are genetic, which I do not think we have the evidence to say that that is true at any level.

[497] And two, they're immutable, which over the past, I think it's something like 40 years, the black -white IQ gap has closed by more than it currently exists by now.

[498] We've been moving towards equality in this country since, what do you want to call it?

[499] The 70s, basically, like a little bit, and we're still quite far at every level.

[500] And so the idea that we somehow know what the effect of like everything we have done in this country to enslave and oppress and lock people out of good jobs and so on.

[501] Anyway, I thought it was a quite bad version in that conversation.

[502] But that said, I, like, listened to it when it happened, didn't think that much of it.

[503] I was on vacation and the organization I run, Vox, published a piece by three IQ scientists, basically debunking it.

[504] I got back.

[505] I tweeted out the piece.

[506] Harris got very mad at me, challenged me to abate.

[507] So then we had this conversation.

[508] This is way more than anybody needs to know about this.

[509] So the thing that you had brought up at the beginning, which is the persuasive point to you that he made is what if we had information, out.

[510] You actually don't want to believe.

[511] An example I would give now is that I think we would both agree that most universities are pretty left -leaning.

[512] They're pretty liberal.

[513] Yeah, yeah.

[514] So if some scientists, some environmental scientists was to discover some data right now that prove climate change was in fact not real, I can't imagine how that person would get that data out there.

[515] Or I would be fearful that it wouldn't be able to get out there.

[516] I would not.

[517] I mean, it would be, it's hard for me to imagine because we would have to overturn so much other data simultaneously.

[518] Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[519] But imagining that we had something like that.

[520] Let me take the broad version of this.

[521] I know people have this fear.

[522] And I think it is, it is not unreasonable, but I think it is functionally unfounded.

[523] In some ways, I wish I had responded to this part of his argument more.

[524] Yeah.

[525] Because it is not something I am so concerned about, I didn't, like, I didn't take it that seriously.

[526] But obviously, people have this fear.

[527] I think the place I come from on this is I work in politics.

[528] I have to believe seven things I hate about the world before breakfast.

[529] I wake up.

[530] I have to remember who the president it is.

[531] I look around.

[532] I have to think about how politics works.

[533] Everything in my book, I basically hate writing.

[534] Let me give you an example of this for my own life.

[535] Yeah.

[536] My entire life, like career, so not my whole life.

[537] But my career is based on the idea that if I do and the people who work, in my field do good reporting.

[538] We are going to get information out there.

[539] And that information is going to improve the world.

[540] Yes.

[541] And I think the evidence is overwhelming that persuasion if people have decided not to believe you is almost impossible.

[542] There's a thing that I talk about in the book called identity protective cognition.

[543] If I go in to the doctor and like my knee hurts and the doctor says, you know, you got to do surgery.

[544] Well, I don't want to believe that, but I will.

[545] Yeah.

[546] I am open to being persuaded that something is wrong and I need to do something.

[547] I don't even like.

[548] But if your identity was, I have magic knees.

[549] Yes.

[550] Now it's a problem.

[551] Exactly.

[552] Or my identity is that, you know, above all else, I'm a liberal and.

[553] Yes.

[554] Yes.

[555] And it is very hard.

[556] So, because you're protecting your concept of who you are.

[557] Your social relationships, all of me. Yeah.

[558] That said, I don't think that within fundamentally true seeking institutions and given the very many identities these people bring to the table and how many different spaces there are for people to be embraced, to find a group, to find a collision, that in fact, I think a lot of people are very willing to be the bearer of hard and unpleasant and very difficult truths.

[559] And I think that for me and for a lot of people I know and a lot of people who do this kind of work, I don't think it is easy to change your mind.

[560] But I think if you look around at our society, the idea that you might have to believe things you don't like and that scare you and that make the world a worse place to you, look at what we have to believe every day.

[561] I just don't think it's true that we're all such snowflakes.

[562] But the point you made in there, which I loved, which is you were urging Sam to recognize why that story even appealed to him, which is just take a little inventory of your own battles in your life.

[563] And he himself feels like someone who said provocative things and maybe wasn't allowed to or wasn't embraced for or was excluded because of.

[564] So naturally, anyone that he sees as another fisherman, at sea, he's kind of going to have a connection to.

[565] And I just, I thought that was the best point of the whole thing, which is like, when you care so passionately about something, it's, it's worthwhile to take five minutes and go, oh, what in my own life do I think I've, I've dealt with what challenges, what struggles, that maybe I'm seeing that in this other person.

[566] And now I'm kind of supporting their cause.

[567] Maybe it's not even the cause I believe him, but it's just this familiar mirror neuron feeling I have.

[568] I don't know if people are really kind of trying to take inventory of their own lens enough.

[569] And I have it tremendously.

[570] And you have it.

[571] And Monica has it.

[572] We all have it.

[573] Specifically, Monica has it.

[574] I don't really have it.

[575] She's an objective computer.

[576] So I think that we have mystified this idea, this idea of identity and identity politics.

[577] I think the way it is used in some of these communities and oftentimes in politics more broadly is that identity is something traditionally marginalized groups have.

[578] Identity politics is something traditionally marginalized groups practice.

[579] So if you are, you know, African Americans create a group like Black Lives Matter to protest police violence, well, that's identity politics.

[580] Okay.

[581] If rural white gun owners come together for an expansive reading of the Second Amendment, that's just politics.

[582] If CEOs want their taxes, that's just politics.

[583] Right.

[584] If we're arguing about what to do with Iran, that's just politics.

[585] And identity is present and not just all levels of politics, but the most powerful identities are majoritarian identity.

[586] identities.

[587] And what happens when they're very powerful is it become more invisible.

[588] Nobody mentions them.

[589] You don't see that they're happening.

[590] One of the examples I give in the book is that there is a reason every politician ends their speeches and God bless America.

[591] And it's not because they're all very God -fearing and that they go to church every weekend or even that they're theistic.

[592] It's that that is part of the American identity.

[593] American flags are part of the American identity.

[594] So identity is something we all have, and we all have many of them.

[595] I am Californian, a father, Jewish, a journalist, a liberal, like, etc. You can go on, like, when I was a kid, I used to get so into arguments about Macs versus Microsoft.

[596] I was like, such a warrior.

[597] I know where you were at.

[598] Yeah, you were a Mac guy.

[599] Yeah, of course.

[600] Obviously.

[601] Duh, yeah.

[602] Such a warrior in the Mac versus Microsoft.

[603] I think about sports, right?

[604] I talk in the book about this list that 538 put together of 50 -some sports.

[605] riots that had happened in the past, I forget exactly how long.

[606] Actually, a lot of them happened when teams won.

[607] But we get so into these contests that at some level have no real stakes to them.

[608] I mean, the people will go wherever they get the biggest contract and so on.

[609] But we care so much.

[610] Our identity is so connected to sports teams that we will burn the cities we live in.

[611] And sometimes our brothers and sisters will perish because of a game.

[612] And we are as human beings exquisite.

[613] I mean, you're an anthropology.

[614] Yeah, yeah.

[615] We're super tribal, in group, out group.

[616] We're resolutely tuned to sense group.

[617] Yes, yes.

[618] And one of the questions in politics always is what group are we sensing and feeling ourselves connected to at that moment?

[619] A huge amount of elections is actually about which group identity is going to get activated.

[620] Are we going to go to the polls feeling like workers who are oppressed?

[621] Or are we going to go to the polls feeling like Americans who are afraid of China.

[622] Right.

[623] You know, it's a lot about identity.

[624] Oh, can I tell you that, again, I'm going to try to stay neutral and apolitical.

[625] But I felt it.

[626] I experienced it last week, which was with all this Soleimani assassination stuff.

[627] You know, it starts with me just going, oh, yeah, yeah, this is, you know, just, but at a certain point, I felt myself going, well, if it's us against Iran, I'm with us.

[628] I felt myself sliding into, I didn't, I don't agree with this, but if it's fucking go time, I know where I stand.

[629] And I was like, oh, that's so fascinating because I'm critical of the whole thing yet.

[630] I can feel these identity in -group things being activated.

[631] I think it's really important what you just said, though.

[632] One of the things I talk about at the end of the book is having identity mindfulness.

[633] So the reason I think it's a really bad thing that we have narrowed our understanding of how identity works in politics to only groups that have traditionally not been that politically powerful is it blinds us to it in ourselves, but also it binds us to it as a layer on which politics is always operating.

[634] And something that's really important is to have identity mindfulness, right?

[635] To ask yourself, what is happening in me right now?

[636] What is being triggered?

[637] Did I want that triggered or did somebody do it to me without me even noticing?

[638] Did somebody structure a headline or structure a choice such that now I'm acting as a besieged American as opposed to a voter?

[639] I'll just relay to a conversation I think about a lot.

[640] I remember reporting this was back in the Obama administration with their national security team.

[641] And this was shortly after one of the terror -related shootings in Europe.

[642] And they were talking to me about how they put so much resources into trying to prevent these lone wolf attacks, not because these lone wolf attacks were at a casualty level.

[643] The biggest thing you could possibly imagine, the number of people dying from traffic accidents was orders and orders of magnitude or cigarette smoke.

[644] It's probably not even 1 ,000th on the list.

[645] But that if you imagined something like five mass shooter incidents that could be tracked back to Islamic terrorism and the kind of a reaction that would create in the American population for escalation, which is exactly what terrorists always want, by the way, right?

[646] They're always trying to disproportionately get a reaction to what they've done.

[647] But if that happened, right, that feeling that you had around Soleimani would have been, I mean, so much bigger, right?

[648] Oh, yeah.

[649] Like, we have to do something.

[650] That's how we ended up in the Iraq war, which had nothing really to do with 9 -11, which is in some putative way its cause.

[651] And so, trying to keep that from happening, that kind of identity activation that you can't stop once it gets out of control, it's a real political challenge.

[652] And a lot of politics, and this is something the book is very fundamentally about, a lot of politics is a conspiracy now to activate and inflame and aggravate some of our most intense and central identities and use them to basically shut down higher orders of cognition.

[653] Drill in a little bit to that specific example, talking to the Obama administration about the lone wolf shooters and trying specifically and mindfully to prevent this as being labeled as Islamic terrorism, right?

[654] Yes.

[655] There was always this fight over whether you would call it radical Islamic extreme that you would call the whole thing.

[656] Because individual things were clearly coming from particular groups, but yes, you didn't want to attribute it to the religion.

[657] They were mostly trying to keep Islam out of the title.

[658] Well, let's just say that.

[659] And I remember, you know, talking with my wife.

[660] time, I was just like, I can empathize with the right going, how are we going to defeat an enemy that you're pretending isn't an enemy?

[661] Like, you're not even going to label it what it is, which is radical jihadists.

[662] Like, if you're not willing to even say that, I don't feel safe now because you're not even labeling the enemy.

[663] And that makes me feel scared.

[664] And yet now when I see their goal, that also makes perfect sense.

[665] And it's just an unfortunate situation.

[666] Some of these choices are just bad.

[667] They're bad, yes.

[668] But with the Islamic extremism thing, what they're trying to do even separately, which I always thought was a really important thing, is that this same identity question, it operates in the other direction, too.

[669] Islam is a very big religion, billion people, maybe more.

[670] I don't know the number offhand, but it's huge.

[671] It's, I think, the second most popular origin in the world.

[672] You do not want every member of that religion to listen to the American president and feel that what is being said is that we are in a war against them.

[673] Right?

[674] And by the way, a lot of the we in America are Muslims.

[675] Let's just agree that most bad decisions start with fear.

[676] So it's like, you're trying to sever what the terrorists actually wanted to do, which is make their brand of radical jihadism somehow conflate it with Islam, right?

[677] Say that you need to stand behind us because we are fighting for you.

[678] Like what they always want to do is like cut those people off in the same way that um like there's shootings like all over this country all the time and we don't want to we don't want to blow it up into something where it's all of a certain kind of people yeah yeah i just wonder is there not room for them to come out and kind of explain in a presidential address which people seem to watch like what the goal of terrorism is that they're trying to bait us into some lopsided response where we're going to spend three trillion dollars and that that's the plan and we can't if you want to defeat them that involves not playing into that plan.

[679] I don't know why this is not detailed.

[680] I want to answer, but my, I just had this thing happen in my head where I'm like, one of my rules is that whenever somebody says, why don't they say this thing that they believe in a speech, they always have said it, and we in the press didn't cover it.

[681] Almost always.

[682] Nobody does watch presidential speeches.

[683] Oh, they don't.

[684] No. They watch like the state of the union sometimes, and mainly the people who tune in are very polarized, right?

[685] It's like you tune in because you're into it.

[686] And then, but the rest of them, right?

[687] I remember one thing Donald Trump understands is how to get covered and you get covered by being outrageous.

[688] But the problem is most presidents, they don't want to be outrageous, but they want to be as sober, right?

[689] They want to like keep the temperature down for all the reasons we're talking about.

[690] But when they do that, nobody covers it.

[691] Yeah, it's boring.

[692] Yeah, it's boring.

[693] But we had this debate.

[694] We had it on a fact check a long time ago.

[695] You and I. Yeah.

[696] Yeah.

[697] And I was saying, well, you can't say Islamic extremists and then not say white guy school shooters.

[698] Uh -huh.

[699] I mean, if you want to make everything about the very specific group, then that's a choice.

[700] But you can't pick, it's sort of in keeping with the minority identity politics thing, where you hear that so much louder, but no one's taking into consideration all the other identities that are associated with these other things.

[701] I think the challenge of it is, and it's the limitation of humans' empathy, which is most those white shooters look in group to Americans.

[702] Like, now, if they all wore top hats, you could really.

[703] easily isolate.

[704] It's like, oh, these top hack guys, and I don't know what the fuck is going on.

[705] You know, right, but I think that's ignorance.

[706] It's got a baked in challenge.

[707] I agree.

[708] I agree.

[709] But again, it's just, it falls in line with all these, what you're saying is, is some identity awareness, which is, it requires you to have some awareness of what your in group is, what an outgroup is, why we're, you know, we're drawn to members of our in group and whatnot.

[710] And just some acknowledgement of that is kind of a control.

[711] But I want to talk, because it's in your book, this is more of a new phenomena.

[712] The demographics of the parties has changed drastically, right?

[713] Yeah.

[714] The big story, the big macro story of the book, but I would argue of American politics, is that over the past 50 years, we've had this convergence of a bunch of identities around our political identities.

[715] So one of the things it is misleading about our politics is that we've had the same names for the political parties for a long time.

[716] Oh, this infuriates me. But they describe very different things.

[717] So if you go back to the 50s, the 60s, America's functionally a four -party political system.

[718] We have Democrats, as we think about them now, say Hubert Humphrey.

[719] We have Dixiecrats who operate in the Democratic Party, but they are a conservative southern and racist bloc.

[720] So Strom Thurmond was the second most conservative member of the U .S. Senate.

[721] He was a Democrat at that time, they later became a Republican.

[722] His whole thing was protecting white supremacy in the South, but he was a Democrat, right?

[723] He voted as a Democrat.

[724] He voted for the Democratic majority leader.

[725] You had liberal Republicans in the Northeast.

[726] Like actually liberal Republicans, George Romney, Mitt Romney's father.

[727] It's a very liberal governor, much more liberal than a lot of actual liberals today.

[728] Yeah, and Romney was quite liberal.

[729] In Massachusetts.

[730] Yeah, or at least very moderate.

[731] And then you had conservative Republicans as well.

[732] And the thing that that gets at in is that the parties also were not very split by ideology.

[733] And I have a ton of quotes in the book of people like Richard Nixon, RFK.

[734] Well, Richard Nixon was EPA?

[735] Did he create the EPA?

[736] He almost creates or at least proposes a universal health care system.

[737] He talks about doing a universal basic income at one point.

[738] There's a lot of his domestic policy that is very, very liberal, even by today's standards.

[739] And so in addition to that, you have a lot of African American Republicans, right?

[740] The Republican Party is the party of Lincoln.

[741] That's part of why the Dixie Kratz.

[742] Republicans are the party that invaded the American South.

[743] You have, there's actually not that big of a split along release.

[744] religion, geography doesn't split the parties.

[745] And then over the past 50 years and race is a thing that ends up changing this, right?

[746] The Civil Rights Act, but the Democratic Party becomes more of the party of racial equality and the Republican Party becomes more of a party of white backlash to that.

[747] As that changes, so the Dixie Crats become Republicans.

[748] Now the Republican Party is the conservative party, the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party, I think this is a measure of voting in 2016, but I think it was 44 % non -white.

[749] The Republican Party's more than 90 % white.

[750] Really quick.

[751] Let's just, I want to give people a second to digest that.

[752] That's what it is now.

[753] The Republican Party's 90 % white.

[754] More than, and Democratic Party is about half non -white.

[755] Yeah, that's, that's profound.

[756] And that is true on religion.

[757] So the Republican Party is overwhelmingly a Christian party.

[758] The single largest group in the Democratic Party is religiously unaffiliated.

[759] But also it's like the Democratic Party of liberal Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, atheists, agnostics.

[760] But if you go back to say the 92 Democratic Party platform and you look at the immigration plank.

[761] It reads like Donald Trump today.

[762] I mean, things were very different.

[763] So density is another one.

[764] It used to be that how dense an area was, city, rural, didn't tell you much about its politics.

[765] There is no city in America that is denser than 900 people per square mile now that is Republican.

[766] Once you get over a certain density level, no place in America votes Republican.

[767] Do you have an armchair theory on why that is?

[768] Yeah, there's actually a great piece on this that people want to look it up by a guy named Will Wilkins said called the density divide.

[769] And basically the argument is that people are attracted to cities or rural areas for psychological reasons.

[770] If you're a person who likes a lot of change, a lot of tumult, a lot of bustle, you like a lot of diversity around you, what psychologists would call you at John Hyde on here openness to experience, which correlates with liberalism, you go to cities.

[771] If you want more tradition, things to move a bit slower, to be connected to like big family networks, you tend to be in rural areas and that connects to conservatism.

[772] So that makes a ton of sense, but I would also imagine as well, if you are living in a city of a million people, you're overtly aware of that we are a big mass of people and that there is a collective and that you're going to deal with all these people as you walk down the street and everything.

[773] It's just going to heighten your sense of community.

[774] I have to imagine versus living on a hundred acre farm and you pretty much see your wife all day and then that's that.

[775] I can see where you're more aware of the individual's rights at that point because you're just not immersed and I think that might be right all these things are very they connect to each other in very complicated ways right what comes first our psychologists or our politics is actually a super hard question sure I don't have a good way of answering but what basically ends up happening is that all of these things are very powerful identities like where do I live what is my skin color what is my religion how much money do I make what is my age like what culture do I consume there was this New York Times thing a couple years ago that showed how popular different television shows were among different political groups.

[776] And Duck Dynasty was the one that's unbelievably conservative.

[777] Sure.

[778] Where, you know, a lot of the shows that like I like.

[779] Good place.

[780] Good place.

[781] Probably Mad Men was pretty, you know, that kind of thing.

[782] It connects among liberals.

[783] And so all these things end up creating what the political scientist, Lillianne Mason, calls mega identities.

[784] And it's super interesting here.

[785] So one of the arguments here is that we like to think politics is about policy and it's very heavily about identity.

[786] And one of the the way she shows that is that there are a lot of people who are Democrats, but if you ask them about policy, they're closer to the Republicans.

[787] A lot of people are Republicans.

[788] If you ask them about policy, they're closer to Democrats.

[789] Now, how much does being close to the other side on policy restrain your hatred of the other side?

[790] It helps somewhat.

[791] But if you have a bunch of identities that connect to the other side, if you're a Democrat, but you are in a right, a white, rural area, you're an evangelical Christian, that will do a lot more to restrain your enmity towards Republicans than simply agreeing with them on policy.

[792] You can be a liberal on everything else, but if your identities connect, then you're going to be calmer about what will happen if the other side wins power.

[793] Yeah.

[794] And so as this has happened, it's created this real feeling of threat from the other side.

[795] They're more different than us because, as you were saying earlier, we are as a species a hell of a lot more finely attuned to in -group out -group than what do I think should happen with health care policy in this country.

[796] Yeah, who the fuck really understands?

[797] When the politics are happening in your higher order cognition, you've got to do some work there.

[798] But when it's like, they don't look like me or feel like me or talk like me, and I don't think they even like me, which is a big thing.

[799] I don't feel they like me, which is a problem.

[800] That drives a lot of political conflict.

[801] Stay tuned for more armchair.

[802] expert if you dare well let me let me hit you with this and you can weigh in because this is kind of a longstanding debate with monica and i'm not sure i actually want to get in the middle of it oh you do you'll be on my side i in general i i don't love that people are using their political opinions as a cornerstone of their identity i think i think people are what they do not what what theories they subscribe to in general i just don't feel like it's the most substantive thing to hang your identity on, but there was a two -year period where every fucking conversation at every single dinner was about politics.

[803] And I was like, guys, what are you actually doing other than voting every two years?

[804] You know, even if you're super civically engaged, you're still talking about maybe eight activities over the course of four years.

[805] Yet 90 % of your thought and conversations are about this.

[806] That's troubling to me. And Monica points out, which is good, which is the stakes are quite high.

[807] There's kids at the border in cages.

[808] But that to me, seems to always be the counter argument to me going, we don't need to talk about this all the time.

[809] Yes, the stakes are high, but I don't think that requires all of us to talk about it nonstop and fight about it nonstop and think about it.

[810] It's like, go vote for the person who wants to get rid of cages.

[811] Well, yeah, but in order to know who you're voting for, you have to have conversations.

[812] I mean, I don't think we should be talking about it all the time, but I don't think we should not be talking about it.

[813] I mean, these are things happening in the world.

[814] And I mean, generally, I agree that we shouldn't be making our party, our identity.

[815] But currently, it feels like we're at some extremes that make it important to talk about it and figure out who doesn't want kids in cages, who does want kids in cages.

[816] Because if you do want kids in cages, maybe I don't really want to be hanging out with you.

[817] And like that, I don't really like saying that out loud, but that's the truth.

[818] I don't know that I want to be, you know, at coffee or choosing to spend my limited time with someone who's for that.

[819] And also, I disagree with you that convincing is impossible.

[820] Right.

[821] I think conversation, respectful conversation, can lead to an opening of ideas and thoughts.

[822] And I don't know.

[823] I'm not as pessimistic in that way.

[824] So, Ezra, those are the two sides.

[825] What are your thoughts?

[826] Why choose?

[827] So, two things.

[828] So one.

[829] The most important fact about our identities is that they are plural.

[830] We have a lot of them.

[831] And they activate when threatened, when intrigued, when talked about, when the fact that you and I could relate as dads and you and I could, in another context, argue from different political perspectives, potentially, or you and I could argue as, you know, people who like different sports teams.

[832] Those facts aren't contradictory about each other.

[833] It's about what is at the forefront when.

[834] So that's, I think, a genuinely important thing about identity that people don't give enough credence to.

[835] The other thing, though, you guys both actually made super interesting points about how politics actually work.

[836] So one, Monica, what you were saying, I think people underestimate the degree.

[837] Persuasion is not impossible, but it happens in the context of people feeling that they're in the circle together.

[838] It happens in the context of not just respectful exchange of ideas.

[839] That gets you somewhere.

[840] But it's pretty important that people feel they share identities.

[841] So actually, if you're trying to convince somebody of something, if you're trying to convince them that there shouldn't be kids in cages, which there should not be kids.

[842] I just want to say.

[843] My kids occasionally deserve to be in a cage, but that's not there.

[844] Well, I mean, temporary.

[845] But if you're talking to somebody who thinks, well, look, immigration, like we have these people who are streaming over the border and, you know, they're doing it illegally, which is actually not true.

[846] they're coming legally and asking for refugee status, but nevertheless, if you say, look, that's just straight bigotry and you are dehumanizing these people and cruel to these children, you're not going to get very far.

[847] But if you're like, look, like, think about this as a father.

[848] Like, that's a, so trying to choose and actually being conscious of which identity you're operating in and calling forth in other people is, I think, important for persuasion.

[849] Yeah, like step one, we connect and go, hey, we have this shared identity.

[850] And now we're in group, but now let's talk about this thing.

[851] And the other thing that you bring up is, and this is like an argument against interest for me as somebody who is a political journalist and like, we give way too much of our attention to national politics against state and local.

[852] And national politics is highly polarized.

[853] The way the identities work is often very difficult for persuasion.

[854] And sitting around, like being on Twitter, being pissed off is bad.

[855] It's what the political scientist, Zatahn Hirsch, has a new book out, which I think is worth reading and thinking about very hard.

[856] He calls it political hobbyism.

[857] There's a very big difference between practicing politics in a way that's trying to make the world better and being engaged in politics as a hobby.

[858] Yeah.

[859] And so it's really different being out in your community working on making housing more affordable or supporting a candidate or, you know, being part of even the local PTA, which is in its way a very political act, right?

[860] You're part of the civic structure of your community.

[861] And being on Twitter, tweeting things that are basically saying, and I say this is somebody on Twitter, saying like, I am good and the people I disagree with are bad.

[862] And I'm not even saying you shouldn't do that.

[863] Fair enough, fine.

[864] But don't confuse what you're doing there with actually practicing politics.

[865] That's my complaint.

[866] Talking with people who agree with you at a dinner party about how bad Trump is.

[867] You're not doing anything political there.

[868] And I think most people are hobbyists and they think they're somehow holding a position in government.

[869] And so one of the things I really argue that I think is an actionable thing for individuals.

[870] I got all my systemic things and getting rid of the filibuster and multi -party democracy and we can talk about it all.

[871] But at an individual level, like, I really urge people to try to consciously rebuild state and local political identities that try to make more of your consumption of news, state and local political news, try to know what is happening.

[872] Like, how many people just listening to this can name, can probably name your senator of your state.

[873] But can you name your state senator?

[874] Right.

[875] Can you name your state representative, your city council person?

[876] But they would meet with you.

[877] I mean, they would kill to meet with you.

[878] And you had Eric Garcetti here, though, which is a good thing.

[879] And he's a really impressive guy.

[880] I felt so in love with him.

[881] It's great.

[882] He's fantastic.

[883] But the point is that one of the things that is heavily polarized politics is one of the restraints on how polarized politics got at other points in American political history was how much of our politics tends to be rooted in place.

[884] You represent states, not just parties, districts, not just parties.

[885] And so you would have situations where, yeah, like, you're a Republican from Oklahoma, and that's a democratic bill, but they're willing to give you, like, help to rebuild a bridge in your district.

[886] And, like, being from Oklahoma matters more than being a Republican.

[887] But we got rid of earmarks.

[888] We think of that kind of thing as dirty transactionalism.

[889] And, like, that's made politics much more polarized, made it much harder to find compromise.

[890] And part of it is because so much media has nationalized, so many state and local media has folded.

[891] And we've lost what used to be these very powerful state and local political identities.

[892] Yeah.

[893] You're so right.

[894] Because if you talk to your average Angelino at this point, whether they were on the left or right, I think 100 % of us are like, oh, we have a major homeless crisis that really transcends any party.

[895] It's like there's no one on the left or right that's like, oh, this is working.

[896] This is great.

[897] Let's figure out to, you know, make this sustainable.

[898] It's like, you know, and there's a great example.

[899] It's like something that's in your backyard and that you're seen regularly.

[900] you can easily bond with someone.

[901] And L .A. So Garcetti and L .A. and to give full credit here, and I'm from Orange County, I grew up reading the L .A. Times, like I care a lot about L .A. politics.

[902] You know, my family's involved in it.

[903] L .A. passed a proposition to create a lot more money to work on the homelessness problem, and they can't get the shelters in housing built because people who in every other context will have these, like, signs in their window that everybody is welcome here and, like, nobody is illegal, do not want the shelter anywhere near their home, like liberal nimbism.

[904] And so they've had a lot less action, even having gotten money for it, than they should have.

[905] And I've interviewed Garcetti about this because I cover this issue a bit.

[906] And that's the kind of thing.

[907] We're making that better.

[908] Like, that's really practicing politics.

[909] Yeah.

[910] Well, yeah, Dan Savage, when we talked to him, he made a great point that just the entire system here in California is to basically promote no expansion.

[911] Like they're so anti -buildings, height regulations, all these different things to prevent all these areas from getting built up.

[912] when, you know, that's a huge aspect of the problem is that there's just an inventory issue.

[913] If you, if you're a polity where people cannot afford a house, like you, and you think of yourself as progressive, you are failing.

[914] Yeah.

[915] And progressivism cannot make it possible for people to afford a place to live and be able to get from point A to point B in a reasonable fashion.

[916] I think the failure of California's high speed rail, which came for at least some of the reasons we've been talking about, how hard it was to build in a straight line, etc. Yeah.

[917] Like, it's one of the great failures of progress.

[918] of governance of our age.

[919] Mm -hmm.

[920] Just it is.

[921] Like, California, you can't get around.

[922] You can't get a house.

[923] Like, that's not working.

[924] Yeah.

[925] Now, again, to bring it back to Robert Moses, it's like, can this stuff get done?

[926] I mean, people are going to have to be displaced.

[927] You can't build anything without displacing some people.

[928] And then it becomes a simple market answer, right?

[929] Which is, are you going to try to reimburse all the owners in Beverly Hills for their houses?

[930] Are you going to, you know, reimburse the residence in South Central?

[931] And then you have this insane market force that's, you know, so I don't know, there's no appetite for anyone to go like, yeah, it's going to get gnarly for a minute and then.

[932] And are you also displacing the people in Beverly Hills is an important question there, right?

[933] Or is in all Bakersfield?

[934] Uh -huh.

[935] Right?

[936] That's part of the key.

[937] Like, is everybody sharing?

[938] Is there some, like, one of the great and beautiful ideals of the left, which is not always put into practice, but is this idea of solidarity, right?

[939] that we are in this together, that we all have to share in both the wins and the losses.

[940] And I think one of the places where people get their backs up about that kind of building is the idea that the way it plays out in some ways this goes back to the conversation we're having right at the beginning about power is that it sounds like, great, we're all going to have to give a little bit.

[941] But in fact, it's a people who don't have the power to organize at the city council who end up giving.

[942] And so the question is, how can you make that equitable?

[943] And that is something that requires those liberals who are around that dinner table with you, like talking about Donald Trump, to actually throw in on.

[944] Do you think if we were taking from Bakersfield and taking from Beverly Hills, some equality really started getting put into place?

[945] Do you think we'd lose a bunch of Democrats, like truly?

[946] Oh, definitely.

[947] Like a bunch of people would just start deciding.

[948] Yeah.

[949] Politics is hard.

[950] And one of the things that I always, I think that there is.

[951] Hard problems do not always have good answers and I think it's like something to appreciate about the world that it's there's an old Max Weber quote that politics is a slow boring of hard boards And that to be really involved in it in a deep way over long periods of time You have to be open to getting a bit at a time and it often feels bad.

[952] I think all the time about how bad the affordable care act felt to people when it passed right this was the single largest expansion of health insurance since the great society since Lynn Johnson Johnson.

[953] It was more than any other president had been able to do.

[954] But it was grueling and grinding and the public option got traded away and the deductibles were too high and the premium sucked.

[955] And there's a lot wrong.

[956] I mean, I covered it.

[957] There's a lot you don't want.

[958] You have to build on it.

[959] But the problem in our system with the filibuster and divided government and all the rest of it is that even if you win, it feels a bit like losing.

[960] And you really have to be connected to the fact that you're making people's lives better and not be overly attached to the symbolic levels of politics to even.

[961] even just be able to remain attached to it through that.

[962] But people want sort of glorious victory in politics and you almost never get it.

[963] Also, there seems to be like no tolerance for growing pains.

[964] To your point, like you need to start with that affordable health care act.

[965] And then you got to improve it and prove it and prove it.

[966] And it's going to tell.

[967] Fuck, who knows, maybe it took in 20 years.

[968] But, you know, you got to, you have to start somewhere.

[969] And I just feel like everyone's now expecting things to start perfect.

[970] I don't know if we've been rewired because by God, when they do release.

[971] least a new product.

[972] It is perfect for the most part, you know, more than products ever were perfect.

[973] I just, we have now an expectation of that or something.

[974] I think social media probably has an impact on the level of immediacy that we are accustomed to having at all times, you know, our attention spans are so tiny.

[975] This guy named William Davies, he knows what a book called Nervous States.

[976] I was reading an interview with him and I just, I read this line, I just loved it.

[977] He says, populace sees the opportunity to promise immediate action while liberalism, only offers mediated action via law, political representatives, editorial peer review, and so on.

[978] And all this comes to be experienced as intolerably slow and self -interested in the age of the platform.

[979] I think there's something to that that a lot of how we've improved society is slow and it's hard work and it's generational.

[980] And we want it to happen now because like shouldn't we be able to download the app to make everything better?

[981] Right.

[982] Yeah.

[983] Well, when we were talking about private versus public, it was just interesting that your experience with Journalist, I felt like was...

[984] Journalist.

[985] So I started out as a blogger.

[986] That's how I got into all of this.

[987] And one of the nice things about blogging, at least at that time, was you could throw bad ideas up against the wall.

[988] And the idea was that blogging was at the beginning of the conversation.

[989] Yeah.

[990] That then people would be in your comments and be like, that's wrong, or other people to write a blog post and teach you.

[991] And hopefully with some good faith, like, oh, that part's good, but this part.

[992] But now what will happen, it had context, right?

[993] people at some context for you and but now what happens is people screenshot something somebody said rip it out of context send it to a group of people who are never going to know what the person originally meant or never hear the the afterthoughts or it's very hard to learn in public and i think it's one reason a lot of people across a bunch of professions i mean in yours and mine have moved to podcasting because it's still i still feel some capacity to be wrong in public in podcasting as I often am on my podcast because I think people understand when they can hear me that I'm trying to work this out, that I'm not just a symbol of a media that is supposed to be infallible, but in fact isn't.

[994] Oh, by the way, yeah, I've been wrong on here a thousand times.

[995] I've had in the last two years I've changed complete positions on things.

[996] And yeah, I almost feel like I don't feel any cause to this other than not many people are learning real time and that's what I want to be an example of like it's fine to learn real time yes and it's important to learn yeah I mean this is a place where I do not like I really wish we had called cancel culture criticism culture because people very rarely actually get canceled it's not has never happened right but what we do have is a culture I think of voracious criticism and that's very hard for people to bear and I think that there is a pressure to say around some of these controversial topics it's all wrong or it's all right.

[997] And there are a lot of ideas that are, you know, maybe 70 % wrong and 30 % right or 70 % right and 30 % wrong.

[998] And I think about that a lot in that debate where I do think people are afraid, certainly on social media, to be a little bit wrong in public.

[999] Doesn't mean the fears that they will get canceled and driven out of society forever.

[1000] Most people don't do that.

[1001] And plenty of the ones who probably should end up making great livings as provocateurs and controversy artists.

[1002] But for like normal, decent people, the fear of just being attacked, which is something that human beings do not like, is very real.

[1003] And I think that I mentioned Danielle Allen earlier, this philosopher, and I did a podcast where I was just struck in my head forever.

[1004] She's a Harvard philosopher and political theorist and talks a lot about democracy.

[1005] And she talks about democracy, she says, always requires sacrifice.

[1006] If it's working, we are often giving up a little bit for other people to get more and then they have to give something up for us to get more and on and on.

[1007] And she says the only way that that works over the long term is if we approach each other with an ethic of political friendship.

[1008] I think a lot about are you embodying or violating an ethic of political friendship?

[1009] Well, I think Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the ultimate example of this.

[1010] The fact that she was like Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

[1011] Well, I'm just going to say the fact that she was like best friends was Scalia.

[1012] And now says she likes Kavanaugh.

[1013] I'm like, oh, here's a woman who can be all things.

[1014] She can be a warrior for the left and she can be a human who likes people.

[1015] you know, I just, I find her as hugely inspirational and the antidote to a lot of what is going on.

[1016] Oh, but you said, I won't get the quote right, but you were talking about having, you know, majored in Polysai and then finding your way to journalism and saying that in your mind, the fourth estate is as powerful as any branch of the government, basically, and in shaping the world.

[1017] And I think that is incredibly true.

[1018] And I have to imagine in the current climate, there's a, at least an attempt to erode the trust in that fourth estate and what price we would pay if people stopped believing in its utility.

[1019] And to some degree, already have.

[1020] So I have a big media chapter in the book and I think about this question a lot.

[1021] And I do think to be self -critical in the media for a minute, one of the great mistakes we made is to pretend both externally and internally that we are simply a mirror held up to the world, particularly in choosing what to cover, we change the world.

[1022] If we give Donald Trump round -the -clock coverage, as we did in 2016, way before the polls merited the amount he got, we helped Donald Trump get elected.

[1023] If we spend all over time on Hillary Clinton's emails, we, you know, and you can take this in a lot of different directions, right?

[1024] Everybody's going to have their own view of what is newsworthy and what the media should cover.

[1025] But a real problem, I think, is that we do not want to admit that we are as powerful an actor as we are because to do so would violate this self -conception of us as an objective mirror.

[1026] The mirror isn't an actor.

[1027] The mirror just reflects what comes in front of it.

[1028] But as we were talking about earlier, we don't cover most things the president says, including Donald Trump, by the way, we cover the outrageous things.

[1029] Donald Trump says, I remember back in the Bush and Obama administrations how much they would beg coverage of they would have these careful speeches on manufacturing policy that they were staging in an Ohio steel mill that had been like taken back from China.

[1030] Like they, and nobody cared.

[1031] Yeah.

[1032] Well, I think the thing we would all like you guys to acknowledge is that you're as susceptible to market forces as anyone else.

[1033] You will like this chapter of the book.

[1034] Okay.

[1035] Yeah.

[1036] Because, and let me say like we are.

[1037] Right.

[1038] It's all about click.

[1039] It's all about the headline.

[1040] It's not all about clicks.

[1041] I think people get a little too.

[1042] It can be about it.

[1043] It's all one thing versus another.

[1044] No, to be fair, if I lived with tabloid coverage of me, I might feel differently about this question.

[1045] I'm looking up here at would you date Dax?

[1046] And 72 % said no, it appears.

[1047] I might have been like Trump, though.

[1048] Like, it looked like 72 % would say no, but in practice, really 50 % only said that.

[1049] The popular vote was in your favor.

[1050] Yeah, you won in the electoral college.

[1051] That's what I'm saying.

[1052] So in the media chapter of this book, I tell the story of how the media is, among other things, business structure has changed from being reliant at the television and newspaper and even to some degree radio levels on monopolies, right?

[1053] There are only three networks using public airwaves.

[1054] newspapers, you know, there was the LA Times or the new, and you didn't have access to everything constantly.

[1055] One of the reasons headlines get so amped up now is you're in this war of attention of all against all.

[1056] You know, you're competing with the New York Times and the LA Times and the Washington Post and like LeMond in France, but also with everything.

[1057] It's worth illustrating for folks that were born in the 90s that in the 80s, you walked outside and you might have had your choice between the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News.

[1058] There was your competition.

[1059] I read the L .A. Times.

[1060] I listened to KCRW, but I couldn't listen to Pod Save America and read the New York Times.

[1061] Go on to drudge report.

[1062] Go on to all these different things.

[1063] This is new.

[1064] It's crazy how new it is.

[1065] You weren't competing.

[1066] We are on the one hand trying to adjust to it, but also it does force a kind of intentional one -upsmanship from us.

[1067] And so one of the - Or you'll go out of business.

[1068] There's like a fact no one wants to.

[1069] And so one of the things, though, that I do think that demands of us differently than it used to.

[1070] I don't think that what has changed is that we were just a true mirror of the world before and we're not now.

[1071] I mean, I have a lot of critiques about how media worked in that age.

[1072] But one thing that has changed is that the media then was based on having a captured audience that they had to not offend.

[1073] If you're a monopoly, what you want is that everybody who might go to a department store in Detroit will read your newspaper because that is how the business works.

[1074] I think the media had a very hard time sometimes telling the truth because they're worried if the truth was offensive to somebody.

[1075] And so that had its own set of problems, and the media can be very narrow.

[1076] But in practice, that almost led to what a compromise would have been.

[1077] I think there's something to that, again, for a certain person's kind of compromise, right?

[1078] That media could ignore.

[1079] I mean, one of the things I say in the book is that a lot of depolarized America in the 20th century relied on suppressing conflict.

[1080] And sometimes that's good, but like we permitted the South to remain like a segregated horror show for a very long time.

[1081] Southern Democrats blocked anti -lynching laws.

[1082] and the media oftentimes bottled a lot of things up that needed to come out.

[1083] Now, the flip side is that we do not have a system where we're good at resolving conflict.

[1084] Other systems, by the way, you win power, then you can govern.

[1085] In our system, it doesn't work that way.

[1086] Right, right.

[1087] So that creates some other problems.

[1088] Anyway, but on the media point, we have to admit and take responsibility for the role we play in the world.

[1089] And that means, I think, defining what newsworthiness means to us so that it can't be hijacked by people just being outrageous, offensive, whatever.

[1090] or people who understand what we really cover in some ways better than we even do ourselves.

[1091] Well, my complaint, and maybe I'm wrong, but I have to imagine when these monoliths, these media companies, what they were probably doing to not offend or get rid of customers was just lobbing off the farthest left 5 % of the spectrum and the farthest right 5 % of the spectrum.

[1092] You know, I think they were probably de -amplifying the fringes of both parties.

[1093] I think that's not quite right.

[1094] So I think that some of the stuff you find in that, period is one, the media was way too friendly to power.

[1095] Because one of the ways you can keep people from being offended and certainly keep anybody from turning on you is it, well, whoever's in power kind of like commands some amount of public allegiance.

[1096] So the media was one too open to the narratives of people already in power.

[1097] And the other version of this is the narratives of already dominant majorities, right?

[1098] And that's, again, a way sort of this identity.

[1099] Like a status quo.

[1100] Yeah, it's very status quo oriented.

[1101] It feels like it just completely one -80ed, and now the furthest five percent on both parties are driving all the dialogue.

[1102] And that, to me, that's my biggest sense of frustration is I have to believe that still the majority of the country is semi -centrist.

[1103] I really just believe that.

[1104] It's not that it's centrist exactly, but it's also not this.

[1105] And one of the problems here is the great hack in the media, is it everybody's already talking about something?

[1106] Well, then isn't it newsworthy by definition?

[1107] And so what's happened is that the way social media works is that it selects for communication that creates the most intense emotional response, usually, though not always a negative emotional response.

[1108] And so then the media is attaching itself to the stories that create the most intense negative response.

[1109] One of the examples I use in the book is do you guys remember the furor over the Covington Catholic high school kids on the National Mall?

[1110] Oh, yeah, yeah, yes.

[1111] These kids came out.

[1112] they were in some sort of non -violent but insulting confrontation with a Native American guy.

[1113] They were in Make America head.

[1114] Then it came out that like maybe they'd been harassed earlier.

[1115] Anyway, I came back from an offline vacation and like this was the only thing anybody was talking about.

[1116] And it actively, objectively didn't matter.

[1117] Nobody was hurt.

[1118] Nobody died.

[1119] Every other story happening was more important.

[1120] But it had attached to people's identities very intensively, right?

[1121] young kids that are religious high school in Maga Hats, Native American elder drumming, a political protest.

[1122] It's like a Disney cartoon.

[1123] It's like so perfectly archetyped.

[1124] And that's bad, right?

[1125] That we let Twitter become an assignment editor in that way is really bad.

[1126] The other thing we did was we would both side stories where sometimes there was truth, right?

[1127] And so like the famous example that we used to do a lot is, well, climate change.

[1128] Some people think it's real.

[1129] This weirdo does not.

[1130] And like, well, both sides, who can, who can debate?

[1131] And, you know, as people would point out, it was like a 98 % scientific consensus.

[1132] And so the other problem is that in trying to be inoffensive, we would sometimes be untrue.

[1133] Now, sometimes now, in trying to get attention, we'll be untrue.

[1134] It's not that we've, like, fixed all of our problems.

[1135] It's just that we have moved into a system with different problems that I don't think we've come up with good answers for you.

[1136] Yeah, yeah.

[1137] Okay.

[1138] First of all, I just enjoy talking to you so much.

[1139] Can I just throw that out there?

[1140] I'm going to around whenever.

[1141] I'm going to wrap this up with a question.

[1142] I bring it to you because I'm not sure where I'm at on it.

[1143] I'm still in the incubation phase.

[1144] But when I originally heard, first, let me start at the beginning.

[1145] I think everyone agrees that automation is going to increase dramatically over time.

[1146] And there's this great fear of that, you know, ultimately, I think Yuval Harari calls it the, some class, I forget the name he gave it.

[1147] But the people will be largely unemployed, right, in that automation will be doing 80 % of the jobs.

[1148] and this is all ahead for us.

[1149] And so Andrew Yang famously now has a standard universal income, right, basic universal income.

[1150] And when I first heard that, I was like, well, that's a great idea because I see the writing on the wall.

[1151] They're correct.

[1152] And then I start with that premise.

[1153] And then, again, I watch a lot of historical stuff.

[1154] So all of a sudden, Chris and I are watching TV and I'm like, they thought that with steam power.

[1155] They thought that when the steam shovel came around, so many people were employed doing this.

[1156] manual labor.

[1157] It was going to get rid of the workforce.

[1158] That did not come to pass.

[1159] Then the assembly line got rid of a drastic amount of employees.

[1160] That didn't come to pass.

[1161] The computer revolution in the 90s, that was going to happen.

[1162] We have a 3 .9 unemployment rate or something around that.

[1163] That's the lowest since the 60s.

[1164] Part of me thinks the universal basic income is just completely defeatist and something we kind of succumb to on the left in that we're a little bit just cowardly.

[1165] Like it just assumes that like somehow we won't figure it out like we always have.

[1166] Like, now's the time.

[1167] We've decided now is the time to say, nope, we're giving up and we should just start paying people.

[1168] So I'm laughing because my wife literally wrote the book on this.

[1169] It's going to give people money.

[1170] Andrew Yang recommends it as his favorite book on universal basic income.

[1171] So I'm at the center of a lot of you are near a lot of universal basic income talk.

[1172] And let me agree with 75 % of what you said and then diverge in one part.

[1173] Okay.

[1174] So the question of AI is a really interesting, really complicated one.

[1175] I think in the near term, and I'm talking here 25, 50 years, and I've done at least enough work on this to feel reasonably confident in this.

[1176] I do not think we are facing the automation apocalypse.

[1177] I just don't.

[1178] You made the point about unemployment numbers, but the other number I would bring in here is productivity.

[1179] So productivity is how much can we create with the same amount of people in the economy.

[1180] And productivity is the driver of increases in human welfare.

[1181] And of what we were seeing, even over this period we're talking about, is a sharp rise in automation, a sharp.

[1182] A sharp sharp rise in robots doing jobs that fused to take humans so we can do more stuff with fewer people.

[1183] What you would be seeing is a sharp rise in productivity numbers.

[1184] What we have seen is a fall in productivity growth.

[1185] And that's a huge problem in our economy, but in some ways the problem in our economy is that we are not getting enough robots, at least fast enough.

[1186] Now, Andrew or Sam or Yuval or others will tell you, well, look, it may not have happened yet, but that doesn't mean it won't.

[1187] Might be right.

[1188] I think the point you make is really well taken.

[1189] And I agree And I've actually had this debate with you all, Noah Harari, on my podcast, which is human beings are good at nothing so much as they are inventing things to free value.

[1190] And so it used to be that I don't have this number off the top of my head, but I want to say it's something like 40 % of Americans were employed in some way in agricultural labor.

[1191] Now, I think it's less than 2%, but we create more agricultural product than we ever did before in our history and certainly than we did then.

[1192] And I just want to, I don't want to slow you down, but I do want to add for people who don't know, our manufacturing, that's another illusion.

[1193] People aren't aware of it.

[1194] It's actually, we manufacture more stuff.

[1195] We just do it with far less people.

[1196] So it's not a complete argument to say we've lost all of our manufacturing.

[1197] We absolutely have not.

[1198] And we've, in fact, as you say, we manufacture more.

[1199] We do not have a lower employment rate than we have at these other times.

[1200] In fact, we've created other jobs that didn't exist in those times and primarily service sector jobs, care jobs.

[1201] I mean, we now, I think the number is we have more yoga instructors and we have coal miners.

[1202] We don't talk about that, but it's actually true.

[1203] And so you can actually have a job podcasting.

[1204] And so what you Paul says, and a place I actually just disagree with him, is that people will become sort of irrelevant.

[1205] You're going to have this useless class of people.

[1206] Useless class, that's what I mean.

[1207] It is not, I think, untrue that for some people, as has been true at many points in history, you will have people who are underemployed and don't feel like they have dignity in the society.

[1208] And that's a huge, genuine, real problem.

[1209] But I don't think we're at a world where it's going to be 20 or 50%.

[1210] Yeah.

[1211] And so we have already attached a lot more value in our society to jobs that I think would look completely bizarre and useless to people from another age that, like, made real things with their hands.

[1212] If you told people how much societal cachet management consultants and lawyers and high frequency traders have, it would look strange.

[1213] But we did that.

[1214] We attach status to jobs by giving them money as functionally what we do in our society for sometimes for better and oftentimes for worse.

[1215] And I don't see any reason to think we're going to stop being able to invent jobs.

[1216] There's no reason we need on some level.

[1217] I'm super sorry yoga teachers.

[1218] I'm about to weigh in on your behalf.

[1219] But you could go on YouTube and watch yoga that way.

[1220] People don't do that because they actually like being involved with human beings.

[1221] So I just don't think that's going away.

[1222] That said, all that said, I think the worst case for UBI is the automation case, in part because it's not true.

[1223] And then in part, even if it is true, right?

[1224] Even if I'm wrong about everything I just said, let's say, let's use the near term case that we are going to get self -driving trucks.

[1225] So all the team stories who drive trucks, which is one of the most common jobs in America will be out of work.

[1226] Andrew Yang is offering then, and I say this somebody I've known Andrew a long time, but I think he's great actually.

[1227] He's offering them a thousand bucks a month when they had a $75 ,000 a year job with full benefits.

[1228] That's not going to do it.

[1229] My colleague Dylan Matthews says a great line on this where he says that UBI as a solution to automation is simultaneously too much and too little.

[1230] It gives money to people who are not getting automated away and it gives too little money the people who are getting automated away.

[1231] That all said, I have become more and more friendly to the idea of, to the arguments for UBI as a utopian policy, which is to say, if you think that maybe the way we have constructed our idea of society is just sort of wrong, that maybe you shouldn't have to work a job you don't like to have enough money to buy bread.

[1232] Or you want to make sure, among other things, that a lot of the work that we do is uncompensated, right, people caring for children, for their parents.

[1233] We don't pay you for that.

[1234] Maybe on some at least UBI would create a floor.

[1235] I could very much imagine an argument and have people made these like Rucker Bregman, but also my wife Annie Lowry's book, has some of this in it, at least like limbs these arguments and looks at them.

[1236] That the reason of before or against UBI is that you think that the ability to live above the poverty line should be untethered from whether or not you are working.

[1237] And I think that it's become a rich society.

[1238] I'm very friendly of that.

[1239] I'm very friendly of that.

[1240] think the big question for it is what does it do to immigration policy and like how do you think about that those two interacting because I care a lot about immigration right like when people arrive they start getting the yeah yeah like how do you do that and does it you know so there are hard questions in how you do that how you pay for it those are all real things but I think the worst case for ubi is a fear based automation case and the best case for ubi is that you know maybe we should just say that it's actually okay if you don't want to do paid labor if you want to um do art or care for your children or whatever it is, and we should make that a more possible thing for people to do instead a societal floor in a society as rich as ours is.

[1241] So that's kind of where I come down on UBI.

[1242] You have to net out the money, but, you know, in theory, over time, you could.

[1243] Interesting.

[1244] Well, I appreciate getting your perspective on there in all your perspectives.

[1245] And it's been a damn pleasure to sit with you.

[1246] And why we're polarized comes out, what, January 28th.

[1247] And I think it must go without saying you desire like I do.

[1248] a less polarized society?

[1249] Is that fair to say?

[1250] Or a country that is more governable amidst conditions of polarization, which is also a way to think about that.

[1251] Okay.

[1252] I think it's going to be very hard to depolarize, but we can make it possible for governance to work better even in these conditions.

[1253] And I think we should at least think about that as an interim measure.

[1254] Yeah, you're right.

[1255] Okay, well, Ezra, what a pleasure.

[1256] I hope you'll come back next time you write a book or whatever else you're pedaling.

[1257] I'll be happy to help sell with you.

[1258] Thank you both so much.

[1259] Thank you.

[1260] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1261] I love your white slacks.

[1262] Why, thank you.

[1263] You know what I like about is makes the brown skin pop.

[1264] It makes it real poppy.

[1265] The calves are exposed, and it's just a beautiful caramel that we're all envious.

[1266] You're very generous because they're very ashy right now.

[1267] Oh, you always think that.

[1268] No, they are.

[1269] They really are.

[1270] And they're kind of blending into the white.

[1271] pants because of the ashyness.

[1272] You think that the white pants are making the ash pop.

[1273] But I think the opposite.

[1274] I think it's making the, the melanin pop.

[1275] Wow.

[1276] Well, thank you.

[1277] Yeah.

[1278] And then what color of those shoes would you say?

[1279] Oh, we'd call these a, oh my God, I've never even heard that word before.

[1280] I'd call this a pumpkin, tan.

[1281] Tan, okay.

[1282] But with a bit of peach in them.

[1283] Yeah, Yeah, you're right.

[1284] Yeah, it's a little pumpkiny, little peachy.

[1285] Okay.

[1286] Great.

[1287] Well, I just wanted to let everyone know since there's no photos from the fact check what they're missing.

[1288] I guess it's not a nice thing to do.

[1289] Like, oh, wabiwob's in a speedo today.

[1290] Yeah.

[1291] Well, great.

[1292] Now I don't get to see it and fuck you.

[1293] Well, we'd make sure we took a picture of that.

[1294] I would love to take a picture of wabiwob and a speedo.

[1295] Next fact check, I guess.

[1296] Oh, all right.

[1297] Well, wouldn't that be great?

[1298] He said it and that means he has to do it.

[1299] He set it on air.

[1300] Are you going to prep your dong at all, Wobby Wob?

[1301] Because when I've had to do those underwear scenes and shows and movies, I, you know, I want to be, I want to show up.

[1302] I want to put my best foot forward.

[1303] So what do you do?

[1304] You know, you're smacking around a little bit, tug on it.

[1305] You know, just try to wake it up, basically.

[1306] Like, hey, we're on camera, bud.

[1307] I see.

[1308] Add attention.

[1309] Add attention.

[1310] I'll walk Wobby Wobb through that before the pictures.

[1311] I feel like.

[1312] That's a sexual harassment suit way of having.

[1313] Yeah, yeah.

[1314] Um, Ezra Klein.

[1315] Yeah, what a smarty pants.

[1316] I'm so glad we got to have him on.

[1317] He has been on my list for quite a while.

[1318] I think since we heard him on Sam Harris's episode.

[1319] Yeah, we're like, boy, we'd like to talk to that guy.

[1320] He was a good adversary for Sam.

[1321] He was.

[1322] I'll say what specifically I loved about it is that I'd say Ezra's as well as normally intelligent or analytically intelligent.

[1323] He's just very emotionally intelligent.

[1324] So it was fun to hear because I think when most people argue with Sam, and I certainly would do this too, is you kind of just leave the emotion.

[1325] aspect out of the conversation, and he was very much infusing the debate with emotional intelligence, which I thought was interesting.

[1326] I like that.

[1327] And I think it's because emotions are, they're as important as the science in a lot of these conversations.

[1328] They're as important as the facts because it's what drives us.

[1329] It is.

[1330] More than the facts.

[1331] It is.

[1332] More behavior on this planet is explained by the emotions the person was having prior to enacting the behavior than the science behind it.

[1333] I think.

[1334] Yeah, I think so, too.

[1335] So it's kind of hard to have debates that are only logic -based because there's this whole sector of life that you're just muting, but it's a factor.

[1336] Yeah, I agree.

[1337] So Ezra does a good job of weaving both.

[1338] You have a high EQ and IQ.

[1339] Thank you.

[1340] So do you.

[1341] Oh, thank you.

[1342] I actually don't know what my IQ is.

[1343] We can only hope that it's high.

[1344] It's high.

[1345] It's high.

[1346] It's high.

[1347] It's high.

[1348] It's high.

[1349] It's north of 130 is what I'm going to say.

[1350] It's north of 130.

[1351] Okay.

[1352] I guess?

[1353] North.

[1354] I think it was fairly high whenever I got tested when I was a tiny baby.

[1355] A baby.

[1356] Yeah, just a one year old.

[1357] They tested me when I was just a one years old.

[1358] Well, sometimes, so Monica and I have a tradition of we will text each other emojis, but they're in a pattern.

[1359] So you've got to be able to predict what the next one is.

[1360] So those are mini IQ tests.

[1361] Well, for a while, we were just doing the same, but then it turned into a guessing game, and I really enjoyed that.

[1362] Yeah, I incorporated one that it involved, like, some math.

[1363] I know, but, oh.

[1364] So I didn't get it right, but I blame you a little bit for it.

[1365] Oh, great.

[1366] As you should.

[1367] Well, only because yours involved negatives.

[1368] It went into negative numbers, but there's no differentiation on the emoji because you can't, like, change the color or something.

[1369] You got confused by the nomenclature by like me adding the negative signs.

[1370] Like it wasn't obvious to you.

[1371] I was saying negative apples.

[1372] Oh, I didn't see any negative signs at all.

[1373] Yeah, yeah.

[1374] I was adding negative, a dash.

[1375] You'll never find it.

[1376] That's what 11 ,000 texts later.

[1377] And I had pinned your text.

[1378] You can do that?

[1379] Yeah, on my phone, you can pin a text at the top.

[1380] So it just stays there no matter how long ago you read it.

[1381] Oh.

[1382] Yeah, Samsung girl.

[1383] Oh, boy.

[1384] Okay, I don't want to get into a fight.

[1385] Samsung.

[1386] I didn't know.

[1387] Oh, I got, you know me and my high horse I'll get on about Apple.

[1388] Samsung came out with cordless charging a long time before Apple did.

[1389] Sure, I will grant you that.

[1390] They also came out with water resistant phones long before Apple did.

[1391] And their camera was way better long before Apple's was great.

[1392] And Kristen now has a fucking phone that folds in half.

[1393] The screen folds like a piece of paper.

[1394] and you can use it's a functional but it is a marvel it's a it's a scientific breakthrough it is quite an impressive piece of technology it is and you have to imagine if that was on a billboard with the little apple sign it would be the talk of the town i guarantee you'd be on the news every time you saw there'd be fucking a billion commercials and i'm like you know it is the power of branding a little bit yeah yeah so eric and i were talking last night we were working out together and um he brought up the fact that this coronavirus is really, whether they contain the virus or not, it is going to have some lasting impact on industry because there's all these regions of China that can't export.

[1395] And he was saying that there's potentially going to be some Apple supply chain issues.

[1396] I don't know if that's the case.

[1397] Don't sue me Apple.

[1398] This is what Eric told me. Eric doesn't know.

[1399] But I said, boy, they better not have the supply chain down so long that people have to look at some other phones because they're going to start realizing these other phones are pretty fucking good you can pin a text okay well i am not being paid by samsung i just want to say that it's been almost a decade since i was well that's an exaggeration five years um pinning a text pretty cool i guess um but every time i try to use that phone of her i'm paralyzed yeah it is a confusing phone see and i feel like listen i have an apple i packs aka an ipad i love i'm not just love i'm like have an emotional relationship.

[1400] I know.

[1401] I know.

[1402] Oh, my God.

[1403] You proved it immediately.

[1404] You had an Apple product for five minutes and you grew to actually have feelings towards it.

[1405] I think it's my son.

[1406] And the screen broke.

[1407] I sat on it in my chair at work and I fucking corrected it.

[1408] And the feeling I had, I can only compare to the time that Macbury's little dog was nearly drowning in the pool and I rescued it.

[1409] I felt like that.

[1410] That's the feeling?

[1411] Oh, my God.

[1412] I was like, this good little boy is.

[1413] so good to me and every time I want to watch some TV or something at lunch it works it's just works great and I under my fucking tutelage it broke oh my god what a bad parent what are you gonna are you gonna accidentally like poop on our P baby or something I'm a little nervous your track record with your sons and stuff I know well maybe just well but RP baby is a girl so it's only I have a good track record with girls I have a bad tracker with sons because the I packs is my son And so is Mac is my son.

[1414] Oh, right.

[1415] But Aaron's your son and you treat him well.

[1416] I do treat him well.

[1417] I do think Aaron's going to be swinging through here.

[1418] Today?

[1419] No. Just soon.

[1420] Oh, great.

[1421] Yeah, there's been some life developments and I think it's going to bring him out here.

[1422] And I think it'll be a really wonderful time to interview him.

[1423] Yeah.

[1424] I'd love that.

[1425] Mac Mac Mac.

[1426] Do you want to tell people that story?

[1427] Because it's a sweet story.

[1428] Okay.

[1429] So right when Brie and I broke up, she got this dog.

[1430] It's a Brussels Gryphon.

[1431] It's the cutest dog.

[1432] It looks just like the dog in as good as it gets, if anyone remembers that.

[1433] I think his name was Trudell in that movie or something.

[1434] Wow, you're right.

[1435] Oh, my God.

[1436] What an interesting thing you kept in your memory.

[1437] I love Mack.

[1438] He's maybe the first dog I loved.

[1439] He's just such a good boy.

[1440] He doesn't do one thing wrong.

[1441] He's only there to smile at you or sit on your lap.

[1442] It never gets into trouble.

[1443] Really cute the way you love that.

[1444] I really do love them.

[1445] And so I was sitting on the patio and it crossed my mind like, oh, it's been a while since I saw Mac, but then I didn't, you know, whatever.

[1446] I don't know what a dog's interested in.

[1447] Anyways.

[1448] This was after you and Bree broke up.

[1449] Yes.

[1450] And I lived by myself in the house we currently live in.

[1451] I was laying in a hammock.

[1452] I had a hammock back in.

[1453] When I was a bachelor, my life ruled, I had a urinal in the house and I had a hammock in the backyard.

[1454] So I thought, um, I thought, um, I'm going to go look for him.

[1455] It had been a minute or so.

[1456] And then I decided to look for him.

[1457] And then I went in the backyard.

[1458] And I went down to the pool.

[1459] And he was in the deep end of the pool, paddling his heart out.

[1460] And he was trying to get up on the edge.

[1461] And he's just too tiny.

[1462] He's so small.

[1463] And he was very scared.

[1464] I could see in his little face.

[1465] He was so scared.

[1466] And I pulled him out.

[1467] And he was soaking wet.

[1468] And he had this scared look in his face.

[1469] And I was holding him and petting him.

[1470] And that was the moment.

[1471] I had my first two human tears fell out of my eyes.

[1472] And it had been a couple decades.

[1473] And I was just staring at his little face.

[1474] And he was so grateful that I got there.

[1475] But he should have been mad at me for like sleeping on the job.

[1476] No, it's not.

[1477] You are false?

[1478] The last thing I think is this dog's going to go for a death.

[1479] Yeah, that's not your fault.

[1480] You didn't know.

[1481] Well, I felt terrible.

[1482] And then for the next like two hours, I just stared at him.

[1483] And he was long, he was like already recovered from it.

[1484] And I still wasn't.

[1485] Well, you're still shedding one or two tears per hour.

[1486] Yeah.

[1487] And then what's fun is that Mac still does vacation at our house.

[1488] Kristen and all of her generosity and benevolence has always had a very open door policy with Mac whenever they've traveled.

[1489] We had them for a couple months once when they went.

[1490] I think to Australia.

[1491] Yeah.

[1492] Oh, he's such a little guy.

[1493] And then he'll sleep under the covers by your feet.

[1494] And I'm so nervous he's going to suffocate down there.

[1495] But he's just fine.

[1496] He doesn't need a lot of oxygen, I don't think.

[1497] Turns out.

[1498] He, you know what?

[1499] He probably got trained.

[1500] in that pool you're right you probably learned to subsist off it was for the best you did him a favor all training i put them through basically navy seal training oh man i can't leave you cried over that oh god broke my heart anyways i felt similarly with my ipacks because the ipex didn't do anything wrong a lot of my thing is about whether some deserves some shittiness or not wow like when bad stuff happens to me i'm like yeah like my ship gets stolen i'm like you damn right it should get stolen.

[1501] I was a rascal for a long time and I deserve some karma.

[1502] But Mac doesn't deserve a lick of karma.

[1503] Neither does my eye packs.

[1504] Okay.

[1505] Okay, Ezra.

[1506] So, we talked a little bit about, we just touched on Katie Hill.

[1507] We were a little unclear about how murky her sexual escapade was.

[1508] Right.

[1509] So let me read, I'm leaving because of a misogynistic culture that gleefully consumed my naked pictures, capitalized on my sexuality, and enabled my abusive X to continue that abuse, this time with the entire country watching.

[1510] That was her quote.

[1511] Ms. Hill's case is not clear cut.

[1512] She was accused of having an affair with her congressional legislative director, a violation of House rules put in place in the wake of Me Too, which she has denied, but she did admit to having a separate sexual relationship with a staffer on her election campaign, which is not barred by House rules.

[1513] I know that even a consensual relationship with a subordinate is inappropriate, but I still allowed it to happen despite my better judgment.

[1514] She wrote a letter to her constituents, but it wasn't illegal or anything.

[1515] Most people would agree having a sexual relationship with the staffer clearly puts Ms. Hill 32.

[1516] She's my age.

[1517] Jesus.

[1518] In the wrong.

[1519] Though, of course, there are many male politicians who have done it and remained in office.

[1520] But the manner in which the affair was exposed, the publication of sensitive photos and texts, which she blamed on her estranged husband, arguably makes her a victim as well.

[1521] So I have zero issue with what she did that she hooked up with people she works with.

[1522] You know, I'm not, I don't really care about that.

[1523] Yeah.

[1524] But if it were a, let's just do it as an exercise, it was a Republican man who had some pictures come out of him fucking one of his staff members, a young girl.

[1525] But he was not married or anything.

[1526] I don't think it would go anywhere.

[1527] You don't.

[1528] I mean, you don't.

[1529] I'm asking you, would you not be like, he can't do that?

[1530] Oh, I see.

[1531] There is a tiny bit of a double standard happening, that's all I'm pointing out.

[1532] I mean, yes and no. Like when it's a guy, you go, oh, he's a predator.

[1533] But when it's a woman, you don't do that.

[1534] I don't do that.

[1535] Because I'm not bothered by it at all.

[1536] Right.

[1537] The Katie Hill issue.

[1538] Mm -hmm.

[1539] I mean, she also got punished.

[1540] She left office.

[1541] Oh, yeah, which I don't think she should have.

[1542] Yeah.

[1543] But if I'm going to make a case for why I don't think she should have, I think it's, incumbent upon me to just run through the analysis of what I say the same thing about fucking who's the Senate Majority Leader that I don't love Mitch McConnell.

[1544] Mitch McConnell's fucking some staffer.

[1545] Do I give him the same leeway?

[1546] I mean, I guess part of it is, I don't know, there's all these like tiny little factors.

[1547] Like is the person of age?

[1548] Like does that person want to be in the relationship, which in this case I think she did?

[1549] Like the person and never said, yeah, I was taking advantage of yes, this, this and this.

[1550] And I guess if it's, if it's a man and he's having sex with someone he works with and that person is like, yeah, I want to have sex with that person.

[1551] Yeah.

[1552] Then I don't think it'd be an issue.

[1553] And I don't think I personally, if it's like a young man, another person of age and they both want to be doing that, I don't see a problem with that.

[1554] Yeah.

[1555] Well, that's what's so tricky about it is that I don't, a lot of the.

[1556] current reaction doesn't leave a lot of room for simply that.

[1557] Both people want to fuck.

[1558] And we live in America.

[1559] And if you want to fuck, there's no law against it.

[1560] Why is, you know, why people going down?

[1561] Well, the ones we're talking about.

[1562] But whenever it's a man, it's an abuse of power.

[1563] Well, Katie definitely had power over her, her staffers.

[1564] You know, she sort of says that.

[1565] She says, I know even a consensual relationship with a subordinate is inappropriate.

[1566] She's owning that.

[1567] But she's just owning that because she has to here.

[1568] But in these Me Too moments, they're not consensual.

[1569] The girls are not saying, yes, no, it was fine.

[1570] So in that case, it is an abuse of power.

[1571] It's not an abusive power if the girls are, yeah, I wanted to, and I like that person, and I like to having sex with them.

[1572] None of them are saying that.

[1573] In these cases, I'm sure it's happening every day all the time, in a lot of the circumstances, everyone knows what they're getting into and they like it, and it's fine.

[1574] Yeah, but yes, you're I agree with you 100%, but there is currently this assumption that a young adult woman can't possibly be evaluating that if their male boss has all this power.

[1575] There seems to be a little bit of movement where it's like, well, she couldn't consent.

[1576] The power dynamic is so lopsided that you can't actually believe her saying it's consensual, which I don't like.

[1577] Yeah, I understand that.

[1578] I understand not liking that.

[1579] I don't think in any of these like canceled cases, that's been the case.

[1580] Now, the one thing I'll concede that the reason it should be avoided is so often when people are fucking at work and then they stop fucking at work, now there's big problems.

[1581] And generally the person who's more valuable to the company is the one that's going to weather that storm.

[1582] So that that is an implicit issue, I think, that is very troublesome.

[1583] Like, are they going to fire Matt Lauer's assistant or Matt Lauer?

[1584] Exactly.

[1585] Yeah.

[1586] have you gotten to the part with them there is someone on that show to people having an affair uh -huh not an affair they're they're having a relationship but in secret oh i'm not there yet what episode are you on yeah four oh you know the weatherman nope nope we're not there yet it's early on i think anyway there's an example on the on the morning show which is what we're referring to yeah there's an example of a weatherman who's having a relationship with a PA.

[1587] Okay.

[1588] They're having it in secret.

[1589] Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[1590] And she got really offended when he brought up the notion that it was lopsided.

[1591] Right.

[1592] Yeah, she's like, I'm doing you're a favor.

[1593] Yeah, you're right.

[1594] She's like, I'm doing you a favor.

[1595] She's like, I want to do this.

[1596] And that, and that is an example of something that's going on that's fine.

[1597] So that would be the same.

[1598] Sometimes when the headline comes out, we're not privy to that scene.

[1599] And you're not going to read the headline of consensual stuff because why would anyone even write that?

[1600] Well, because people have political enemies or work enemies and they could expose an affair like Monica Lewinsky and Clinton.

[1601] That was not brought out because Monica Lewinsky was saying, I feel scorned.

[1602] It was brought out by a Republican grand conspiracy to get him to lie under oath.

[1603] Like in that situation, neither person was complaining.

[1604] Right.

[1605] Yet he, you know, went down.

[1606] Well, not for that.

[1607] Well, he got impeached over it.

[1608] Not for an abuse of power over her.

[1609] No, for lying under oath.

[1610] I'm saying that was in the 90s when Me Too wasn't a thing.

[1611] And so it wasn't like the headline was Bill Clinton sexually harasses Monica Lewinsky.

[1612] That was not ever a headline.

[1613] And only now some people are looking back on that and saying like, huh, he was the president.

[1614] And she was an intern.

[1615] Yeah.

[1616] But the reason he was in trouble had nothing to do with his abuse of power.

[1617] Oh, right, right, right, right.

[1618] Yes, yes.

[1619] In the 90s.

[1620] In the 90s, it wasn't a thing.

[1621] Yeah.

[1622] So, yeah.

[1623] Hezers said that there was a philosopher who made an argument that we can have liberty and equality at the same time.

[1624] And he wasn't exactly sure if he was getting the name right, Danielle Allen.

[1625] And yes, it was her.

[1626] course he got it right.

[1627] I know.

[1628] When did the bell curve come out?

[1629] 1994.

[1630] September of 1994.

[1631] Oh, that weirdly is more recent than I thought it was.

[1632] I know.

[1633] I thought it was like a 70s book.

[1634] Yeah, I thought it was 80s.

[1635] Yeah, me too.

[1636] Yeah, we all thought it was 80s.

[1637] It doesn't seem like the kind of study that would even be done in the 90s.

[1638] Like, I could see that being done in the 70s, but not the 90s.

[1639] I know.

[1640] I mean, it could happen now.

[1641] a study like that could come out.

[1642] I mean, we're not impervious to racism.

[1643] Where was Charles Murray giving the speech?

[1644] Middlebury College.

[1645] How many people currently practice Islam?

[1646] He said he thinks it was second most popular religion in the world.

[1647] It is.

[1648] It says in 2018, more than 24 .1 % of the world's population is Muslim.

[1649] The current estimate concludes that the number of Muslims in the world is around 1 .8 billion.

[1650] Mm -hmm.

[1651] Mm -hmm.

[1652] Christianity first.

[1653] Sure.

[1654] Well, let me guess third.

[1655] Okay.

[1656] Oof.

[1657] It'll be hard.

[1658] It is hard, actually.

[1659] Yeah.

[1660] I'm going to say Hinduism.

[1661] So, okay, so third is actually irreligious affiliation.

[1662] What?

[1663] Arialia's visualization.

[1664] But fourth is Hinduism.

[1665] Oh, what's the third?

[1666] it again?

[1667] Irreligious affiliation.

[1668] That just means you're religious but you're not saying which one.

[1669] I think so.

[1670] Okay.

[1671] Or does it mean you're not religious?

[1672] I don't know.

[1673] I don't know, but the third is strange.

[1674] Hindu, Hindu.

[1675] And then I would go Buddhism.

[1676] Yeah.

[1677] Okay.

[1678] And then after Buddhism, I would go, I'd go Jewish.

[1679] Actually, folk religions Oh, come on.

[1680] No, it is.

[1681] Like worshiping a deer or something?

[1682] 5 .9%.

[1683] Are folk religions?

[1684] What does that even mean?

[1685] They love Bob Dylan?

[1686] I don't know.

[1687] But Judaism is only 0 .2%.

[1688] Sure.

[1689] That's extremely low considering.

[1690] Too low.

[1691] We got to get those numbers up.

[1692] Yeah.

[1693] The hard thing is you have to be, the mom has to be Jewish.

[1694] Yeah.

[1695] And also the Jewish folks have never spread Judaism under the sword the way that the other two religions of the book have in the past spread by way of the sword.

[1696] Well, they also, Judaism likes keeping it insular.

[1697] Like, they don't want you in.

[1698] Their catchphrase should be, we good.

[1699] Yeah.

[1700] You know what I'm saying?

[1701] They're kind of like a A2, not a program of promotion, but rather of attraction.

[1702] That's in the bylaws.

[1703] So you can go and fucking promote a. Even though you do.

[1704] I tell you my experience with A .A. And then if you think that sounds groovy, then you drop your Slacks.

[1705] Hindu book in your Judaism book and your all those books.

[1706] You're not allowed to be those things?

[1707] No, of course you can.

[1708] Everyone's welcome.

[1709] Can you be an irreligious affiliated religion?

[1710] Yeah, that's me. We don't know what it is.

[1711] So RBG, you said she's best friends with Scalia and she likes Kavanaugh.

[1712] This is what she said about Kavanaugh.

[1713] Okay.

[1714] Justice Kavanaugh made history by bringing on board an all -female law clerk, Ginsburg noted, in reference to a promise Kavanaugh made during his tumultuous confirmation.

[1715] Thanks to his selections, the court has this term for the first time ever more women than men serving as law clerks.

[1716] Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg came to the defense of her more conservative colleagues on the bench.

[1717] I can say that my two newest colleagues, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, are very decent and very smart individuals.

[1718] She said Wednesday at an event in Washington, D .C. Could you reread the whole thing and do an impersonation of her?

[1719] What does she sound like?

[1720] I don't know.

[1721] Justice Kavanaugh.

[1722] Oh, really good.

[1723] I think she has a high voice.

[1724] Uh -huh.

[1725] She's very tiny.

[1726] Actually, I have her - She's strong and tiny.

[1727] She's a miniature mouse for sure.

[1728] She is.

[1729] Okay, you said we have a 3 .9 unemployment rate.

[1730] Unemployment rate is 3 .5%.

[1731] Mm, 3 .5.

[1732] Well, UCLA was the difference between cum laude and, you know, Summa cum laude.

[1733] I was suma.

[1734] I'm at a lesser school, but yeah.

[1735] No, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1736] Nope, I was summa, I got always, except one, 189 .2 or something.

[1737] Female teacher?

[1738] Yeah.

[1739] She wouldn't do it.

[1740] Sorry.

[1741] I begged her.

[1742] Yeah.

[1743] I knew it.

[1744] Girls don't be giving girls breaks.

[1745] So rude.

[1746] I'm going to give girls breaks.

[1747] Break their back.

[1748] Whoa.

[1749] Oh, my goodness.

[1750] All right, that's all.

[1751] That was it.

[1752] Yeah.

[1753] All right.

[1754] Well, he was delightful.

[1755] And he was on Bill Maher last week and made a great showing.

[1756] Oh, I'll check it out.

[1757] Check it out.

[1758] Love you.

[1759] Love you.

[1760] Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcast.

[1761] You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus.

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