Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to armchair expert experts on expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by a minute. Your mouse there. How you doing? I get how you do. It is really good. You know, one of our favorite episodes of Sam Harris. Ever right. Was him debating this man? This this mysterious man as reclined. We were introduced to him there, and we really just enjoyed him. I'm sparring with our our favorite person.

He's quick. Oh, he good. He really good. So Ezra Klein is an American journalist, a blogger and a political commentator. He cofounded box where he is currently editor at large. He also has a new book called Why We're Polarized. Please enjoy those Recline. And tomorrow, everybody is the premiere of Monica and just love Boys. I'm so excited. I hope everyone will check that out and support our most maximum miniature mouse. Happy Valentine's Day lovers. We are supported by Third Love. Now,

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I love that to me, too, because if someone just going hard, but they're not working hard, I'm what are now you're just a slacker. But if you work your ass off on a ship, which is hard business, yes, and then you go hard. I'm like thumbs up to you. Bravo is exploring unchartered territory and trading in motor sales with a brand new below deck. Siri's called below deck sailing yacht. Among the nine crew members that work and live together is one familiar face from the Blow Deck franchise. Good old chef Adam Glick, a brand new captain and even a yacht, a couple that have been together for six years now,

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know, part of it, honestly, was it? I like the Bay Area lot. I love California. Want to be close to my family after we had the baby, but in D. C. For 15 years, and it was in pretty to establish in our lives the idea that we could change things right. To not get so into one particular rhythm

or refined, though, if I'm correct and I'm just gonna be using some broad strokes. Stereotypes. I'm from Detroit. That's watercolor. Okay, My understanding of orange county and generals is kind of like a bass neon of the right in Southern California.

So traditionally, yeah. Although in 2018 it elected Irvine elected that district, its first Democratic member of Congress can order. Totally

awesome. Yes. This isn't the one that sent some tasteful photo that bumming because I sent money to her campaign. And I just don't care about those distasteful photos to Katy Hill. Katie? Hell, yeah. And I gotta check in the mail refunding my money that I had donated and I didn't want the AG that that struck me is in, like, a shame. Yeah,

you know, to get run out of Congress to revenge porn, it struck me is real bad. There's a great profile of her and actually Playboy. Recently, the chief staff for, uh, talked about sort of what she's doing next and how she's thought about it. And, among other things, made me feel like Congress lost a good person

and I I guess the bottom line that she may be crossed right was that they were employees or they were working in her campaign. That was that. Was that the inexcusable offense just just being.

I want to be careful on this one because we got the high did not look super deeply into this particular scandal. But it was not clear, though, if the employees had an issue with it and what the dynamics of that was, it's not almost entirely come from an ex husband out for revenge, a pretty different situation than in HR complaint.

It definitely didn't come from the employees that I do know. But then it was like this person works for her and that's bad. What one of the only consequence is that I disagree with, for the cracking down on these egregious misuse is of power imbalance, which I'm totally for The part of me is like you could still date and fuck people at work. If not, where the hell are you meeting people? I mean people just tender. I am too old to have used tender, thank goodness, because I would have the addict and me would just I would have asked. I would've I would've hated myself shortly. 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 persevere. They're our favorite couples. And then one of them was one another's boss, you know? All right, I'm a way of stopping. It's a tricky space having

I thought about it because I ran. I was the editor in chief of Box for the 1st 4 years, and we thought a lot about those policies in those questions. And I think it is something where you need to clear a high bar, right? 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. Yeah, the bad examples of people got fired. Yeah, the boss retaliated against them. 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. Yeah, sure, before you figure out the new version,

but but again, just to that point. So, um, I think we have this fear of just in general confrontation. Right? So if a employee is later fired because of this affair, now this is gonna be a grueling process to fix this or a menace. And so we'd rather just not deal with that by saying you can never happen so that we don't have to deal with it. But my point is like if someone fires someone cause I had an affair with them and they fired them wrongly, then they should suffer for

that. Yeah, but who makes him suffer right about About this power is a lot of who wins those fights. Yeah, I agree with you. In some ideal world, what we would do is have negotiations of equal sort of constantly. Ah, what if the negotiation is never equal? Right? Then what do you do? Like, how do you plan for that Inequality at the front end?

Yeah, well, what? This is circling in weird ways already in what I think we'll talk about at length here today is, you know, some often conflicting values that we have in this country. So I think as people have made their political leanings their identity. We forget that both sides are pursuing something kind of virtuous, right? So that the right in just in general is pursuing, like protection of individual rights. And the left is more generally pursuing the greater good of the masses. I'm gonna see if you're in so far, do you? Would you agree with that? I'm holding. I'm holding judgment.

Okay. 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. I think they've both value both, but I think it is a spectrum and you know, the pendulums pointing to one specific area. So quite often, both things like fighting for the right for people to fall in love at work is good and then fighting to make sure there's no abuse of 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 point possible. They're pursuing a virtue. We d'oh! You know your your book. Why we're polarized. Negative

right, it's got It's got the contraction. It's

work. Oh yeah, way.

Our sounds very formal.

You're right. And you were just rapping about politics. Very really A chair. It's somebody you'd say that reading reviews of the book this morning and I had typed in why we're polarized. And it said, Do you mean why were pool All right, so I've already been corrected one. And I'm already thank you, Mr Google. But anyways, one of my my my armchair opinions on it it's just that we really think the other side is like evil.

The two things I would say that that made me think about is one afternoon wish we had, um, or philosophically tethered debate in this country. In some stylized way. You're completely right. The right is supposed to be in protection of individual rights left in production of a quality in a more balanced society.

And I think that if

you begin picking through what is happening on both sides, you find a lot of variation in violation of fact. For instance, choices a question where you could really imagine a right that believed in a woman's right to choose, because that is an individual right, but it went in the direction and I'm not hard. I understand why people on both sides of that issue, but it's one that I think, um, flies a bit in the face of that. Uh, the other thing that I do think is interesting is a philosopher. I hope I'm not miss attributing this named Danielle Allen, who makes the argument that we have really aired in this country with this idea that liberty and equality are somehow intention with each other. The two truly have any kind of liberty. You need a fair amount of equality because deeply imbalanced power relationships are an enemy of liberty. 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. And so the question with a lot of issues of liberty is, Do we have the equality to exercise at liberty? Do we have the equality to goto our boss and say something has gone wrong here, or is there actually no liberty in that situation? Because there's not enough equality of power for the liberty to be exercised 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.

That's a situation which you don't have liberty. 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 air should somehow be understood his intention. I think a we should be working towards much more of a synthesis of them and some people to be fair. D'oh!

Yeah, well, I think there's that. 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 their kind of opposing there's, You know, you could you're gonna have some cognitive dissonance to pursue. Both right. I just I guess I wish everyone started recognizing. Yeah, it's gonna be a compromise. In its best case, we're aiming for a compromise. Yeah, to me, that just would be such a different framing for how we think about all these things. I think

this is a hard thing right now. One of the arguments of the book is that my background is a policy reporter. So I covered things in Washington like the Affordable Care Act fight in the financial crisis and climate change, that kind of thing. And I had the same experience over and over again, which is issue would start up right. Washington, in its hydraulic mechanisms, would decide We're gonna take on health care this year. And so I'd sit in these rooms where members of Congress from both sides of the aisle or think tank experts on both sides of the aisle began talking about What could we D'oh. What do we do that would make this better for everybody for the left, given its premises for the right, given their premises and you sit there and be a lot of compromise because policy in general zero sum. A lot of things were kind of screwed up for everybody, and there's a lot of ways you could make it better for everybody. And then by the end it would collapse down into Total War, right?

It would collapse down into a pure party line vote. Nobody could, you know, cross the lines. 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? Exactly. There's actually no compromise in that Michael Lind, who is a kind of interesting, center right unusual thinker. He talks about politics in terms of settlements, which I really like. It's a little bit related, teasing and compromise that we have this slightly lazy language of war. Right class wars,

war on drugs were on climate, like the partisan war, et cetera. He says, What politics is always and everywhere about settlements, right? You got to think about what is your settlement gonna be? And I think that's actually a good frame. Sometimes to

come at it from Yeah, like that. Yeah, it's almost like, you know, any business negotiation, any kind of negotiation. You recognize that? Oh, that The goal here, ultimately, beast. You know something? You didn't give up the thing that would have killed you, and they didn't Neither. And then somehow you know it all. It all works.

But I do wonder back to your point about when they were talking on the floor, basically private conversation in public conversation 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. And then when I start talking to people in real life, face to face time, finding it's not, it doesn't mirror it at all. I mean particularly, and I guess I'm probably uniquely in the middle of the meat to stuff as it pertains to Hollywood, right. They'll be like the's open statements. We would all given a red carpet. 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. And I'm just increasingly shocked by how different those private and public conversations aren't. I just wonder, is it because now everything is public.

So, like I have to imagine in the forties, those senators would chat or those Congress people would chat, and then they might come up, and then what they did wouldn't be a headline. They get kind of move in somewhat of more secrecy. Yeah,

I think this is completely true. So, Warren, I think, is the public dimension you're talking about. I have the experience, a lot of my podcast of all bring someone on who has been, you know, like attacking me on Twitter or what they write is really even if it is nothing to do with me very sharp edged. And then when they're in the room, it's actually sometimes hard, even

like I want a gauge

the dynamics of sitting here with someone, Yeah, it it pushes you so much towards conciliation on dhe. 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, Any of it real us, Right, Because sometimes I think there's an intuition that that thoughtful behind closed doors, et cetera, like that's who we really are, then, certainly in politics. Then we get down to the boat and it goes the other way, right? Well, actually,

was I getting fooled by the kind of nice social dynamics that we're playing in on? Then it turned out that what you really want to do is exercise power. So one, I think, and this is one of 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, that there are a lot of different identities. We can have it a lot of different versions of ourselves we can be. And depending on which context you've created for people, you get a very different version of them. But the other specific point you make, I really want to emphasize that. I think it's a tricky one.

It's a tricky one to talk about, but I think it's true. People who study Congress will tell you that one of the reasons it works so badly is that there's too much transparency. It has to be possible to do a lot of behind the scenes deal making. You didn't have cameras in every hearing, and that meant there is less performative grandstanding. There's more opportunity to compromise. Yeah, 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 gonna jump together. And also just the incentives in any given meeting, Right? If you could go viral on Twitter that day, there are no cameras in that room.

So, actually, the question of whether you've been influential, how did today is Did your colleagues think you're persuasive? Yeah, that is very different. And people want more transparency. We believe transparency is a good thing. Somebody does the best disinfectant. But sometimes, I mean, if you think about if you would want I mean, you're a more open person than most us about to say that you would want every discussion with your partner like out. But I was running a business. I I used to think about in Congress how the meetings. We had to figure out what we had to do.

Next box. If there are cameras in, those would be very hard to run. Oh, yeah. It's not how we run other kinds

of things. Yes, I'd say it's trick. It would be nearly impossible. But 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. That's kind of the beauty of systems. I just as of someone who loves reading history books. And there's so much of these Monumental doesn't say projects, right, like, uh, the Panama Canal, the Hoover Dam, the interstate system. So many of those things literally could have never gotten done with the level of transparency that we have today, because sometimes there's some ugly underbelly of some of these bigger things that just need doing. And there doesn't seem to be any either appetite for that underbelly or acceptance

that it's part of it. I think that's right. The other thing I would just say is that the tricky thing is we can have systems that make us much worse than ourselves to go short. And one of 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 time, and not that I mean, that has been true At other times, right? We read the books and those were the great projects.

But I

also had the not great projects and we all said they're not great moments in our

social. His You don't like eugenics. It's not in my,

um, it didn't make the cut, but I actually give a, I think, a hard example that so there's a great piece, actually political, published a couple months ago and is about you guys ever go to Penn to Penn Station in New York, the train station. So when I was in D. C, I was up there all the time. And the thing about Penn Station is it's terrible.

It's just a terrible train station

like there's not nice stuff in it. Like waiting in there is unpleasant. It's very old technology. The whole thing is crazy. 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. And what happened in this guy's argument? Is that so? Robert Moses A kind of great

Oh, yeah. Also terrible Marine, the power broker. Right now it's an amazing Yeah, yeah, yeah,

That's an amazing book. People should read the power,

Brooke. I had no idea that one individual was so you'd changed the landscape

of that. A post motherless Brooklyn read for you. It is, It is, Yeah, yeah, I was super excited on Mother's Broken became also Robert Moses movie. That book. That's another topic. Yeah, anyway,

But again, he is a prime example of someone who's like itself. Went will run riot. Yet the ending result was pretty positive from New

York. So I want to be careful on that because Moses built amazing things in New York, right? He build the New York as we understand it. But as part of doing that, he destroyed communities of color. He ran freeways through them. He displaced huge numbers of people. And I mean, it was very clear who paid for that progress. He created this, and one of the reactions in progressivism was to say, We can't allow, like people of power to run roughshod over communities. And so what? We should create its structures within the decision making process where communities have like a really intense level of input. But the problem is that if you build that in too many places and the people who come out or not,

representative, right, because the people come out are really there in general to oppose new projects they don't want, the community's going to change. Eventually, you can't get anything done. 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 Vito points, which were built with all good intentions and mar in many ways. Good. 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 of 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

they just got me proceed is the immigrants that made it and then want to slam the door. So you know, I'm here and now it's good, and this museum is one of the

great failures of liberalism. What's NIMBYism not in my backyard? is, um oh, yeah. Like I want everything to be better and different. And let's build, like, not

work. I am? Yeah. Like

somebody it right? Like a bridge over there. Yeah. Yeah. So now this is like movement of the Indies. Yes, in my backyard, like this is, I think, in part, Ethan Kelly. It's like a big, important fight. Yes. So

I make it a point. Thio. Whenever I see something about the president that irritates me, I forced myself to imagine the exact same thing happen under Obama's tenure. Just gonna check my temperature from really that convicted about how bad it was. 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? How is it that Obama can't have a private conversation with a world leader and that we all know about it? That would just be my first needs anything but drops

that transcript optionally they did it. So while it's a wild part

of it, So I have friends and yeah, I was there was one of my good friends. Steven, Did you read the transcript? I go, Yeah, it's so obvious. Singles didn't know and I could see in that moment we both genuinely are reading to dramatically different things, even though it's the same thing. But always going to say is, uh, you know, obviously I'm on the left, so I do think that he was definitely saying investigating political rival. But with that said, I'm a little concerned that two presidents can't have a conversation. I feel like those conversations need to happen, and then they're never gonna hold up to the scrutiny of us four days later evaluating this conversation. That's good that

I don't think I'm with you on this part. I think I would buy into this principle, but I'm not sure. I think it applies here because in general he kind of those conversations they're not. But they chose to make this call record, which they also edited, by the way public conned. I think the

wasn't there, really. Wasn't there a whistle blower? Some someone said I was on that call

and a whistle blower who went to Congress. Yeah, I went to the Inspector General and then and then went to Congress and said, I've heard from people on these calls that something is going wrong here. They need to be investigated. And as there was political pressure building up tohave investigation, the White House said, You know what? We're gonna nip this in the bud. We're gonna release the transcript you're all gonna see. As in Donald Trump's words, the call is perfect. They release the transcript is like, Oh

my God, are you kidding me? But as you say, not everybody and what

I think it has always been very striking to me about that whole structure of that, and I haven't been putrid Podcasts. 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, Exactly right, like I should have done exactly what I did. 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. There's a great line that we we read or hear watch things as we are, not as they are. What we bring to something is very much what we take from it. And so people you know on the right have looked at this, and I think they are wrong in this particular case. But as you say,

Donald Trump clearly looked at this, and I think the way he understood it is Joe Biden and Hunter Biden are bad for the country. Donald Trump, whatever else he'll say about him is a true believer in these kinds of conspiracy theories that he ends up running down. He's like a genuine Fox News viewer in this way, 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. Yes, now I think that thing where populist leaders decide that there domestic opponents are enemies of the state and, like they need to use the state to stop that. We've seen that a lot in the world. It doesn't go super well long term.

But that is not to say it's not authentic. Right there had motivated by an

actual even concerned for the

country. Yeah, Well, so again, this is just like a little bit of good faith. I guess I extend a lot of people. I completely disagree with its. Like, I watch that Cheney documentary and I'm like, just 180 degree different opinion on everything. 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 world view, I do believe that I don't think he was an evil guy trying to harm the country. I just happen to disagree with every single opinion he has on what would make the country better. Yeah, I

I think in a way that we, for good and for bad, rely much too heavily on moralistic interpretations of people trying to understand their politics. Right? Like the question of is Dick Cheney under his own framework of how the world works. A good or bad person is actually not on important question, and it sets in a way, the bar way too low. I think sometimes I'll hear this argument people make, which is they think they're doing their best good. 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, they become totally heedless of the consequences. And in this way to be a little good placing about it, I'm I lean much more towards utilitarianism. Would you say that I have covered Washington for, you know, coming up on two decades?

Now I know a lot of these folks on the left and right. I believe almost all of them are working to create a better world as they understand it. And the way to judge them is, Are they creating a better world against some framework, right, not their framework. You Some framework, if you are in all sincerity, tryingto work day in and day out to take health care away from poor people. I do not question sincerity of your belief. That is maybe not the government's right to tax me to fund Medicaid so poor single mothers can have health care. But I think you're doing about thing in the world. It's important to be able to separate out the nature of people's motivations from their effect

on the world. Yeah, I agree. But I would just saw also say, Though it's a little defeat, it's just go like, Oh, they're evil. I'm good and virtuous their evil because there's no solution of that. What are you gonna have? Ah, exorcism or something? So to me, it's just a little lazy. It's kind of like a cz well, to just go like, Oh,

Hitler was evil. Granted, he waas, but Hitler was evil. Done thinking about that. Know what led to all the evilness and how do we prevent it from re occurring, like it is relevant to understand, you know, beyond just someone's evil, good

or bad? 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 book. So I'm a political journalist, and the way we tend to tell the stories for politics are through individuals. We write biographies who write profiles. We take you inside the meeting and the persons of the thing to the other person, and then, like they ran off. And if they hadn't said that, think that everything would be different. And if you read books like game Change or I mean it all kind of works like this, we where human beings, we think in terms of other human beings in their stories,

you know, we like heroes. We like heroes and villains. Yeah,

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, the range of free will we have. It's smaller than we like to think it is.

Yeah, well. And I think as someone who loved Obama was confused by some of his his decisions, at times I thought, Oh, this system is bigger than I think it is. 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. There's a lot of curiosities when people take that

job. I think about this right now with some of the left critiques of Obama because I spent a lot time talking people in administration when I covered them. 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 right now, much sometimes when the Obama station 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. And if it went wrong, too many people pay the price. And I remember there's a very particular conversation I had with somebody who was a senior policy maker there, and this was during on. If you guys remember the debt ceiling fights on disses during that and the way that ended, there was a lot of controversy over it. 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 and the person said to me, Look, maybe we should have done it. Maybe you're right, but the thing that you should always keep in mind, it's not like nobody in the room in this room of political and policy professionals thought of that. It's not like the reason things don't happen. It's almost never because nobody raised their hand. It's a this obvious idea. We should do that instead is that we looked at that and we thought that what would happen in the aftermath would be worse. Now. Maybe we were wrong, Yeah, but we were thinking that through, and I always try to keep that as a caution on myself. It's very easy to like LA by bombs from Yeah, from the outside,

Will You even said you just said that, You know, you have a utilitarian view of it, and I think like we interviewed Mayor Garcetti and one of things I loved, he said, It's like you enter that job with all kinds of ideologies, but then you're the person has to make the system though the whole city run. So you become a pragmatist. Really quick, stay tuned if you dare. We are supported by stitch fixed Monica. Describe your look in one word is a casual, sophisticated, playful, I think casual, casual. Well,

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That stitch fix dot com slash tax stitch fix dot com slash tax. We are supported by square, you know, square. They make that little white yes square reader that helps lots of businesses around your neighborhood take payments. Now, just minutes ago, Monica I was at my doctor, huh? And they're using square. Yes, and it's all wireless. She was able to just hand me the reader, and I stuck in my card. It's reading a chip, and I was like,

This is fantastic. I don't have to turn over my goods to her. Listen, here's the thing A lot of people don't know. They make so much more than the card reader because running and growing a business takes so much work. While square can't do all the work for you, it could help of a lot more than you think it can with things like point of sale for restaurants, retail salons and service is you name it online stores, full service payroll invoices you can send from anywhere And their payments are still the best in the business. No long term contracts And you always get your money fast. And when we sell merch with our square that money comes hot, right Wahba Wahba comes in hot and fast Super honfest See all the way square can take your business from square one to whatever's next at square dot com slash go slash dax that square dot com slash go slash dax. Okay, now, I really became aware of you because I listened to Sam Harris a smart cast. And I love Sam Harris.

They've had him on a couple. We've had him on a couple times. But of course you had this thing feud with him, which was spectacular from Not it was a debate. We talked about it for, like, two weeks. People have People

are very strong feelings

about this, but we did one podcast together. Oh, yeah, exactly. Like a class of No. I was handled beautifully, but I thought I think both of you It wasn't a fight. The lead up. Well, the leader was wonderful because prior to the debate that there was, like e mails that all I'm saying is, um is a moviegoer. I was, like, so interested in this hole. The hype was very well constructed.

Yes, like it was like Mayweather in Ah McGregor like the pre game was really spectacular. But I really only was made aware of you buy that whole thing. The thing that I related to Sam on Waas Oh, yeah, What happens if we do get some data that no one's gonna like? Do we have a system by which you can bring something that would be hugely unpopular and, you know, dangerous toe light? Now, I don't think it turns out that that man's work was that I think you should give a little car. Okay, You could probably coming up better than

me, So yeah, let me give you the quick version, but I recognize you get a little bit of my version, but I'll try to be as clear as possible as I can on it. So back in the nineties, E eighties

is an old look. The broker.

Although Murray's coming out like a like the bell curve to basically

doubling to belt, you, uh s O back

then you were the book. So the idea that different populations score different like you, This is not controversial. It simply true, right? Right. There's no doubt about it. Right? Um, and the Bell curve is a book that is not on Li about. That, though, is in part about that. But the kind of arc of Murray's work is he's, ah, sort of right wing think tank guy who 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. Things out of this book that is sort of part of this movie, which is saying that the reason you're seeing such different outcomes among different groups is like you differentials biological at least partially biological and thus immutable I Q differentials and very importantly, something that Murray says, is that no matter whether or not the differences are biological or environmental, they're basically immutable. We don't have policy interventions that can change them. I think at all levels the evidence proves him wrong on that. But that's a different thing. This is super controversial the time like it's like a huge blow up. It's like the way before my time in journalism. Then things like settle way down after that fast for decades.

Yeah, um, uh,

Murray gives a speech or is going to give a speech at Middleton Williams. Something like that. And there's basically, like a deep platforming riot. Get somewhat physical. Murray's chaperone is roughed up. He was giving a speech about the bell curve. It was about his other work. So, like, this is like a bad event. Yeah, Harris brings him on his podcast, which at that point, I'd listen to occasionally stuff on meditation. And I think something Harris always misunderstood was that he thought I was like, coming into this is his enemy.

And I just wasn't right. Escalate him from the beginning. I think he always like, kind of like was wrong footed on where on where I was. 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 in this one college shows that there is this terrible political correctness and the alienation that one loss to talk about things, and then he goes on as like this to our conversation, which I think is a very bad version of a conversation about the bell curve. It is a very bad job dealing with the extremely persuasive counter arguments to the idea that one racial differences are genetic, which I do not think we have the evidence to say, that that is true at any level and to their immutable, which over the past I think it's something like 40 years. The black white I Q. Gap has closed by more than it currently exists.

By now, we've been moving towards the quality in this country since what you want to call it the seventies. Basically, like a little bit, you're still quite far sure at every level. 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 job and so in any way I always a quite bad version of conversation. But that said I like, listen to it when it happened, didn't think that much of it. I was on vacation, and the organization I run box published a piece by three scientists basically debunking it, huh? I got back. I treated out the piece. Harris got very mad at me.

Charles, we debate so that we had this conversation. This is way more than anybody needs to know. This s o the thing that you have brought up the beginning, which is the persuasive point to you that he made is what if we had information come out. Do you actually

don't want to believe an example I would give now is that, uh I think we would both agree that most universities are pretty left leaning their bodies level. Yeah. Yeah. So if some science is some environmental scientists discover some data right now that prove climate change was, in fact, not really. I can't imagine how that person would get that data out there, or I would be fearful that it wouldn't be able to get out there.

I would not. I mean, it would be it's hard for me to imagine, because you'd have to overturn so much other data simultaneous. Yes, yes. Imagining that we had something

like that. Yeah,

let me say that. Let me take the broad version of this um I know people have this fear, Bond. I think it is. It is not unreasonable, but I think it is functionally unfounded. In some ways, I wish I had responded to this part of his argument, Maur because because it is not something I am so concerned about. I didn't like I didn't take it that seriously, but obviously be bought this fear. I think the place I come from on this is I work in politics. I have to believe seven things I hate about the world. Before breakfast, I wake up, I have to remember the president is I like, Look around.

I have to think about how politics works. Everything. In my book, I basically hate writing. Let me give you an example. It's for my own life, my entire life like career. So not my whole life. But my career is based on the idea that if I do and the people who work in my field do good reporting, we're going to get information out there. And that information is going to improve the world. Yes, and I think the evidence is overwhelming That persuasion. If people have decided not to believe you, is almost impossible thing that I talk about in the book called Identity Protective Cognition. If I go in to the doctor like my knee hurts and the doctor says, you know, you got to do surgery I don't want to believe that But I will, Yeah, I am open to being persuaded that something is wrong and I need to do something I don't even

like. But if your identity was, I have magic knees. Yes, now it's

a problem exactly more. My identity is a bit, you know, above all else I'm a liberal and

yes, yeah, very hard. So because you're protecting your concept of who you are,

your social relationships, all of yeah. That said, I don't think that within fundamentally true seeking institutions and given the very many identities people bring to the table and how many different spaces there are for people to be embraced, to find a group to find, ah, 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. And I think that for me and for a lot of people I know and a lot of people do this kind of work. I don't think it is easy to change your mind. But I think if you look around in our society, the idea that you might have to believe things that 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. I just don't think it's true

that we're all such snowflakes.

But the thing that's 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. And he himself feels like someone who's said provocative things and maybe wasn't allowed to or wasn't embrace for was excluded because of so naturally, anyone that he sees as another fisherman at sea. He's kind of gonna have a connection to, 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 with struggles that maybe I'm seeing that in this other person, and now I'm kind of supporting their cause. But maybe it's not even the cause. I believe him. But it's just this familiar mirror neuron feeling I have. I don't know if people are really kind of trying to take inventory of their own,

their own lens enough, and I have a tremendously and you have Well, Monica has it. We all have specifically Mom, I don't really have a computer,

so I think that we have mystifying this. I had this idea of identity and identity politics. 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 identity. Politics is something traditionally marginalized. Groups practice. So if you are, you know African Americans create a group like black lives matter to purchase police violence. Well, that's identity politics. If rural white gun owners come together for an expansive reading, the Second Amendment that's just politics. If CEOs want their taxes got, that's just politics, right? If we're arguing about what to do with Iran,

issues, politics, and identity is present. And not just all overs of politics, but the most powerful identities or majoritarian identities. And what happens when they're very powerful? Is it become more invisible? Nobody mentions them. You don't see that they're happening. One of the examples I've given the book is that there is a reason every politician ends their speeches with and God Bless America. It's not because they're all very God fearing and they go to church every weekend, or even that they're theistic. It's that that is part of the American identity. American flags are part of the American identity, so identity is something we all have, and we'll have many of them.

I am California. Ah, Father, Jewish. A journalist, a liberal like Except you go on. Like when I was a kid, I used to get so into arguments about Max versus Microsoft. Worry.

I know where you're at. Yeah, you were a Matt Guerrier. Yeah.

Warrior in the Makris might think about sports, right? I talk in the book about this list that fivethirtyeight put together of 50 some sports riots that had happened in the past. I forget exactly how long, actually love them happened when teams one. But we get so Oh, yeah, test that. That some people have no real stakes to them. I mean, people will go wherever they get the biggest contract and so on. But we care so much. Our identity is so connected to sports teams that we will burn the cities we live in and sometimes are. Our brothers and sisters will perish.

Yeah, because of a game,

huh? And we are as human beings, exquisite

me An anthropology are super tribal in rubout group.

Is it Lee tuned Descents Group? Yes, the quote. One of the questions in politics always is. What group are we sensing and feeling ourselves connected to at the moment? Ah, huge amount of elections is actually about which group identities gonna get activated. Or we can go to the polls feeling like workers who are oppressed. Or we can go toe polls feeling like Americans who are afraid of China.

All right, You

know, it's a lot

about a dented. Can I tell you that again? I'm gonna try to stay neutral in a political, but I felt it. I experienced it last week, which was with all this soul Amani assassination stuff, you know, it starts with me just going. Oh, 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. 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. And I was like, Oh, that's so fascinating because I'm critical of the whole thing. Yet I can feel these identity in group things being activated. I

think it's really important what you just said, though one of things I talked about it. The end of the book is having identity mindfulness. So the reason I think it's a really bad thing that we have narrowed our understanding of how identity works in politics toe on Lee. Groups that have traditionally not been a politically powerful is it blinds it r us to it in our cells. But also it binds us to it as a layer on which politics is always operating on something that's really important. It is. Have identity mindfulness, right? Then ask yourself what is happening in me right now. What is being triggered? Yeah. Did I want that triggered? Or did somebody do it to me without me even noticing that somebody structure a headline or structure a choice? Such a Now I'm acting as a besieged American as opposed to a voter. I'll just relate. Ah,

conversation. I think about a lot. I remember reporting this was back in the Obama administration with their national security team, and this was shortly after one of the terror related shootings in Europe, and they were talking to me about how they put so much resource is into trying to prevent these lone wolf attacks, not because he's a little off attacks were at a casualty level. The biggest thing you could possibly imagine. The number of people dying from traffic accidents, orders and orders of magnitude or cigarettes

may it's probably not even 1000

on the list, but that if you imagine something like five mass shooter incidents that could be tracked back to Islamic terrorism and the kind of reaction that would create in the American population for escalation, which is exactly what terrorists always want. Yeah, they're always trying to disproportionately get a reaction to what they have done. But if that happened, right, that feeling that you had her on Souleymane e would have been I mean, so much bigger, right? Oh, yeah, we have to do something. That's how we ended up in the Iraq war, which had nothing really to do with 9 11 which is in some punitive way, its cause, 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 riel political challenge and a lot of politics, and this is something the book is very fundamentally about. Ah, lot of politics is a conspiracy now, too. Activate and inflame and aggravate some of our most intense and central identities and use them to basically shut down higher orders of cognition

grilling a little bit too. That that specific example talking to the Obama administration about the lone wolf shooters and trying specifically and mindfully too prevent this is being labeled as Islamic terrorism,

right? Yes, There's always despite over whether you call radical Islamic extreme that you yet whole thing one because individual things were clearly coming from particular groups. But yes,

you didn't want to attribute it to the religion. They were mostly trying to keep Islam out of the title. But let's just say that. And I remember, you know, talking with my wife. But at the time, I was just like I I can empathize with right going. How are we going to defeat an enemy that you're pretending isn't an enemy like you're not even gonna label it what it is, which is radical jihadists like, if you're not willing to even say that I don't feel safe now because you're not even labeling the enemy, and that makes me feel scared. And yet now, when I see their goal, that also makes perfect sense. And it's just an unfortunate yeah situation. Some of these choices were just bad. They're bad, yes,

but with the Islamic extremism thing, what they're trying to do even separately, which always that was a really important thing. Is it this same identity question? It operates in the other direction, too. Islam is a very big religion. 1,000,000 maybe more. I don't know the number off hand, but it's huge. It's think, the second most popular region in the world. 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're in a war against them, right? And by the way, a lot of the we in America

are Muslims. Let's just agree that most bad decisions start with

fear. So it's like excision. Start with fear. So you're trying to sever what the terrorist actually wanted to d'oh, which is make their brand of radical jihadism somehow conflated with Islam. Right? Say that you need to stand behind us because we're fighting for you like when they want to do is cut those people off in the same way that like their shootings, like all over this country all the time and we don't want we don't want to blow it up into something where it's all of a certain kind of people.

Yeah, I just wonder, Is there no 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. We're going to spend $3 trillion that that's the plan we can if you want to defeat them. That involves not playing into that plan. I don't know why this is not detailed.

I want to answer. But my eye, I just had this thing happen in my head. I'm like, one of my rules is that whenever somebody says, Why don't they say this thing giving a speech? They always have said it, and we in the press didn't cover it. Oh, nobody does watch presidential speeches.

They don't

know. They watch like the state of the Union sometimes and mainly people who tune in our very polarized right. It's like you're doing because you're into it and then But the rest of them, right? I remember one thing Donald Trump understands is how to get covered and you get covered by being outrageous. But the problem is, most presidents, they don't want to be outrageous. What they want to be a sober right. They want to, like, keep the temperature down. For all the reasons we're talking about, when they do that, nobody

covers. It is boring, boring, But we had this debate. We headed on a fact check a long time ago, Yeah, and and I was saying, Well, you can't say Islamic extremists and then not say white guys school shooters, huh? I mean, if you want to make everything about the very specific group, then that's a choice. But you can't pick it 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. I think the challenge of it is in its the limitation of humans empathy, Which is Ah,

most those whites. Shooters. Look in Group Two Americans like now, if they all wore top hats, you could really easily isolates. I go, these top hat guys, I don't know what the fuck is going on. You know, it's got bacon challenge. I agree. I agree, Um, 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 you're in Group is what an out group is. Why were you know, we're drawn to members of our in group and what not, and just some acknowledgement of that is kind of a control, but I want to talk because it's in your book. This is more of a new phenomena. The demographics of the parties has changed drastically, right?

Yeah, 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. 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. This is

influence may describe very different things. So if you go back to the fifties, the sixties, America's functionally a four party political system we have, Democrats says we think about them now. Say, Hubert Humphrey, We have Dixiecrats who operate in the Democratic Party, but they are a conservative Southern and function and racist block so strong. Thurman was the second most conservative member of the U. S. Senate. He was a Democrat at that time. They later became a Republican. He's whole thing was protecting white supremacy in the South. But he was a Democrat, right?

He voted as a Democrat voted for the Democratic majority leader, Leonid Liberal Republicans in the Northeast. Liberal Republicans George Romney, Mitt Romney's father. It's a very liberal governor, much more liberal, foetal heart of actual liberals today.

And Romney was quite liberal. And

in Massachusetts, yes, very moderate. And then you had conservative Republicans as well. And the thing that that gets it in is that the parties also were not very split by ideology, and I have a ton of quotes in the book off people like Richard Nixon, R F K.

For Richard Nixon

was e P a. Did he cleared the You create a P A. E almost creates or at least proposes, a universal health care system. He talks about doing a universal basic income. At one point. There's a lot of his domestic policy that is very, very liberal, even by today's standards. And so, in addition to that, you have a lot of African American Republicans, right? The Republican Party is the party of Lincoln is part of what you, the Dixiecrats Republicans of the party that invaded the American South you have. There's actually not that big of a split long religion. Geography doesn't split the parties,

and then over the past 50 years, and race is a thing that ends up changing this right. The Civil Rights Act for the Democratic Party becomes more. The party of racial equality in the Republican Party becomes more of a party of white backlash to that as that changes. So the Dixiecrats become Republicans. Another Republican party is the Conservative party. The Democratic Party is of the Liberal Party. Everything else begins to shift to. So now the Democratic Party. Ah, I think this is, Ah, measure of voting in 2016 but I think it's 44% nonwhite. The Republican Party's more than 90% white, really

quick. Let's just I want to give people a second to digest that. That's what it is now, the Republican Party's 90%

way and more than ending where the party's about half nonwhite. Yeah, that's, um, that's profound. And that is true religion. So their problem parties overwhelmingly a Christian party, the single largest group in the Democratic Party is a religiously unaffiliated mom, but also it's like the Democratic Party of liberal Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, atheists, agnostics. But if you go back to say the 92 Democratic Party platform and you look at the immigration plank, it reads like Donald Trump today, e things were very different. Density is another one.

It used to be that how dense and area was City world didn't tell you much about its politics. There is no city in America that is denser than 900 people per square mile. Now that is Republican Ling. Once you get over a certain density level, no place in America votes Republican.

Do you have an arm chairs here and why that

is? Yeah, there's actually great piece on this to people and look it up by a guy named Wil, Wilkin said called the Density Divide. And basically the argument is that people are attracted two cities for or rural areas for psychological reasons. If you're a person who likes a lot of change, a lot of tumbled, a lot of muscle, you like a lot of diversity around you. What psychologists would call you at John Height on here, openness to experience, which correlates with liberalism. You go to cities 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,

so that makes a ton of sense. But I would also imagine a CZ Well, if you are living in a city of a 1,000,000 people you're overtly aware of that were a big, massive 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. It's just gonna heighten your sense of community I have to imagine versus living on 100 acre farm, and you pretty much see your wife all day. And then that's that. I could see where you're more aware of the individual's rights at that point because you're just not immersed

in. I think that might be right. All these things are very the connect to each other and very complicated ways. What comes first, our psychologies. 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, a New York Times saying a couple years ago that showed how popular different television shows were among different political groups and Duck Dynasty unbelievably conservative. Sure,

where you know a lot of the shows that I like. I like a good place. Good place, probably Madman was pretty a hanging. It connects among liberals. And so all these things end up creating what the political scientists really an amazing calls, mega identities. And it's super interesting here. So one of the arguments here is that we like to think politics is about policy, and it's very heavily about identity and one away, she shows that is that there are a lot of people who are Democrats. But if you ask him about policy, the closer to the Republicans, not people. Republicans have estimable policy. They're closer to Democrats now.

How much does being close to the other side on policy restrain your hatred of the other side? It helps somewhat. Uh huh. But if you have a bunch of identities that connected 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 agree with them on policy. You could be a liberal on everything else, But if your identities connect, yeah, then you're going to be calmer about what will happen if the other side wins Power. Yeah. And so as this has happened, it's created this really feeling of threat from the other side there more different than us. Because, as you're 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 now? Yeah. Who the fuck,

really? And when the politics were happening in your higher order cognition, you got to do some work there. Yeah, it's like they don't look like me or feel like me or talking me. And I don't think they even like me

a big

thing. I don't feel they like me, which is a problem that drives a lot of political conflict.

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and nearly all of them claim to be the best. But now the people have spoken the 2020 product of the year award winners have been revealed and C b d M d products one in two CBD categories. CBD PM took home the award for best CBD Sleep Aid. Now let me taste. Um, I was on it last night. Slept like a little tiny baby bear hibernating. So if you're curious about CBD, if you're on the fence if you're drowning and misinformation, these products are the perfect place to start. And to make it even easier to give CBD MDs award winning products to try their offering armed Cherries 25% off your next order at c b d MD dot com. When you use the promo code ax at, check out once again that C B D MD dot com promo code ax for 25% off your purchase of superior CBD oil products from CBD, MD. Well, let me let me hit you with this, and you can weigh in because this is kind of a long standing debate with Monica

and I know what I actually want to get in the middle of

it. You'll be on my side. I in general A 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, every single dinner, was about politics. And I was like, Guys, what are you actually doing other than voting every two years? You know, even if you're super civically engaged is still talking about maybe eight activities over the course of four years. Yet 90% of your thought on conversations are about this. That's troubling to me. And,

Monica points out, which is good, which is The stakes are quite high. There's kids at the border in cages, 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. Yes, the stakes are high, but I don't think that requires all of us to talk about it nonstop and fight about it. Non stop and think about it. It's like go vote for the person who wants to get rid of cages. Well, yeah,

but then order to know who you're voting for. You have to have conversations. I mean, I don't think we should be talking about all the time, but I don't think we should not be talking about it. I mean, these are things happening in the world, and I mean, generally, I agree that we shouldn't be making our party our identity, 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 doesn't want kids in cages. Because if you do want kids in cages, maybe I don't really want to be hanging out with you and like that, I don't really like saying that out loud, but that's the truth. 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. And also I'm I disagree with you that convincing is impossible, right? I think conversation, respectful conversation can lead to an opening of ideas and thoughts, and I don't know, I'm not as pessimistic in that way. So as were, those were the two sides. What are your

thoughts? Shoes? So two things. So one. The most important fact about identities is it. They're plural. We have a lot of them and they activate when threatened when intrigued when talked about when the fact that you and I could relate his dad's and you and I could, in another context, argue from different political perspective eventually, or you and I could argue, As you know, people who like different sports teams, those facts aren't contradictory about each other. It's about what is at the forefront when So that's, I think, a genuinely important thing about identity that people don't give enough credence to. The other thing,

though, you guys both actually need super interesting points about how politics actually work. So one Monica, what you're saying? I think people underestimate the degree. Persuasion is not impossible, but it happens in the context of people feeling that they're in the circle together. It happens in the context of not just respectful exchange of ideas that gets you somewhere but it's pretty important that people feel they share identity. 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 just say my kids occasionally deserves to be in a cage with that. But

if you're talking to somebody who thinks will 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 there 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 gonna get very far. But look like think about this is a father like that's a so trying to choose and actually being conscious of which identity you're operating in and calling forth and other people eyes. Nothing important persuaded,

connect and go. Hey, we have this shared identity and now we're in in group. Now let's talk about But then

the other thing that you bring up is, and this is like an argument against interest for me is somebody who is a political journalist and, like we give way too much of our attention to national politics against state and local and national politics is highly polarized. The way the identities work is often very difficult for persuasion and sitting around like being on Twitter. Being pissed off is bad. It's what the political scientist Eitan Hersh, has. A new book out, which I think is worth reading and thinking about very hard, he calls it political hobby is, um, 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. Yeah, 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 P T. A, which is, in its way a very political act, right? You're part of the civic structure of your community and being on Twitter, tweeting things that are basically saying and I say so. Somebody on Twitter saying like I'm good in the people. I disagree with her bad. Yeah, and I'm not even saying you shouldn't do that. Fair enough. Fine, but don't confuse what you're doing there with actually practicing politics. That's my liking with people who agree with. I think dinner party about about Trump is you're not doing anything political there.

And I think most people are hobbyists and they think they're somehow holding

position. One of the things I really argue that I think is an actionable thing for individuals. They got all my systemic things and getting rid of the filibuster and multiparty democracy, and we can talk about it all 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. I don't know what is happening, like, how many people does listening to this. Kaname kun. Probably name your senator off your state, beginning in the state senator. Any name your state representative? No City Council person. But they would meet with you. I mean, they would kill to meet with you.

You city

here, which is a thing, and he's a really impressive guy.

I fell, so

he's fantastic. 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. You represent states not just parties and districts, not just parties. And and so you would have situations where, yeah, like your 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. Well, and like being from Oklahoma matters more than being a Republican. But we got rid of earmarks. We think about kind of thing is dirty. Transactional is, um,

and, like that's made politics much more polarized, made it much harder to find compromise. And part of it is because so much media has nationalized so many state and local media has folded, and we've lost what used to be these very powerful state and local political identities.

Yeah, you're so right, 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. It's like there's no one on the left or right. That's like, Oh, this is working. This is great. Let's figure out how to, you know, make this sustainable. It's like, you know, and there's a great example. It's like something that's in your backyard and that you're seen regularly. You can easily bond

with someone in L. A. So Garcetti and L. A. And to give full credit here. And I'm some from orange kind of grew up reading the only times like I care a lot about politics. You know, my family's involved in it. L a past 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 conduct 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 several NIMBYism. And so they've had a lot less action, even having God in money for it. Then they should have on five interview Garcetti about this could cover this issue a bit, and that's the kind of thing we're making that better like that's really practicing politics.

Yeah, 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 like there's so anti building's height regulations. All these different things to prevent the all these areas from getting built up when you know that's a huge aspect of the problem is that there's just an inventory issue.

If you if your hip quality, where people cannot afford a house like you and you think of yourself as progressive, you are failing, the progressivism cannot make it possible for people to afford a place to live on. Be able to get from Point A to point B in a reasonable fashion. 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, et cetera. It's one of the great failures of progressive governance of our age. This is like California can't get around. You get, get a house that's not

working. Yeah, now again, to bring it back to Robert Moses. It's like Ken, this stuff get done. I mean, people are gonna have to be displaced. You can't build anything without displacing some people, and then it becomes a simple market answer, right, Which is air. You gonna try toe Reimburse all the owners in Beverly Hills for their houses? Are you gonna, you know, reimburse the residents in South Central and then you have this insane market force that you know. So I don't know. There's no appetite for anyone to go like ants. It's gonna get gnarly for

a minute. And then then there you also displacing the people in Beverly Hills is an important question there, right? Are all Bakersfield. Uh huh. Right. That's part of the key. Like is everybody's sharing. Is there some one of the great and beautiful ideals of the left, which is not always put into practice, but is his idea of solidarity right, that we're in this together and we are all that we all have to share in both the winds and the losses on. 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? Beginning about power, is it? It sounds like great.

We're all gonna have to give a little bit. But in fact, it's the people who don't have the power organize that the City Council who end up giving. And so the question is, how can you make that equitable? And that is something that requires those liberals who, around the dinner table with you, like talking about Donald Trump it actually

throw in on. Do you think if we were taking from Bakersfield and taking from Beverly Hills, some equality really started getting put into place? Do you think we lose a bunch of Democrats like truly Oh, definitely, like a bunch of privileges starts exciting. Yeah, of politics is

hard and one of things that I always I think that there is 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 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. 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. It was more than any other president had been able to dio, but it was grueling and grinding, and the public option got traded away and the deductibles were too high and the premium sucked. And there's a lot wrong. I mean, I covered it. There's a lot you don't want. You have to build on it. But the problem in our system with a filibuster and divided government,

all the rest of it, is it. Even if you win, it feels a bit like losing. Yeah, 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 just be able to remain attached to it through that people want people want sort of glorious victory in politics, and you almost never get it.

Also, there seems to be like no tolerance for growing pains to your point like you need to start with that affordable health care act and then you got improve, improve, improve it. It's gonna fuck. Who knows? Maybe have took in 20 years. But, you know, you got a you have to start somewhere and I just feel like everyone's now expecting things to start. Perfect. I don't know if we've been rewired because by God, when they do release a new product, it is perfect for the most part, you know, more than products ever were perfect. I just we have now an expectation of that or something. I think social media probably has an impact on the level of a media see that we are accustomed to having at all times. You know, you're our attention spans are so

tiny Guy name William Davies. In just one book called Nervous States, I was reading an interview with him, and I just I read this line. I just loved it. He says. Populace seize the opportunity of promise immediate action. Well, liberalism only offers mediated action via law, political representatives, editorial, peer review and so on. And all this comes to be experienced as intolerably slow and self interested in the age of the platform. Yeah, a lot of how we've improved society. It's slow and it's hard work and it's generational. And we want it to happen now because shouldn't we be able to download the app to make everything better?

Ranks? Yeah, Well, when we were talking about private versus public, it was just interesting that your experience with journalist I felt like was

a journalist. So I started out as a blogger. That's how I got into all

of this. And

one of the nice things about blogging, at least at that time, was you could throw Bad idea is up against the wall. And the idea was that blogging was the beginning of the conversation. Yeah, then being your comments to be like, That's wrong or other people write a block post and

teach you and hopefully with some good faith, like, Oh, that part's good. But this part.

But now what will happen if it had context? Right, people, 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 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 toe podcasting because it's still I still feel some capacity to be wrong in public broadcasting, as I often have on my podcast, because I think people understand when they can hear me. Yeah, I'm going to work this out, that I'm not just a symbol off a media. You're supposed to be infallible, but in fact isn't.

Oh, by the way, you have been wrong on here 1000 times I've had in the last two years of change, complete positions on things. And yeah, I almost feel like I don't feel any cause to this Other than not many people are learning riel time. And that's what I want to be an example of like it's fine. The learn real time. Yes, and it's important. Dealer. Yeah, I mean, this is

a place where I do not like. I really wish we had called cancel culture criticism culture People very rarely actually get cancelled. Not has never happened, but what we do have is a culture. I think of voracious criticism,

bond.

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. It's all right, and they're a lot of ideas that are, you know, maybe 70% wrong and 30% right or 70% right and 30% wrong. 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 doesn't mean the fears that they will get cancelled and driven out of society forever. Most people don't do that and plenty of ones who probably should and that making great livings as provocateurs and controversy artists. But for like normal, decent people, the fear of just being attacked, which is something that human beings do not like, is very real.

And I think that I've mentioned Daniel Allen earlier. This philosopher and I did a pie customers. This is stuck in my head forever. She's a Harvard philosopher and political theorist, talks a lot about democracy, and she talks about democracy, she says. always require sacrifice if it's working. We are often giving up a little bit for other people to get Maura, and then they have to give something up for us to get Maura and on and on. And she says the only way that works over the long term is if we approach each other with an ethic of political friendship, I think a lot about Are you embodying or violating an ethic of political friendship?

Well, I think Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the ultimate example of this. The fact that I was like, Well, I'm just gonna say the fact that she was like best friends was Scully and now is says she likes Cavanaugh. I'm like, Oh, here's a woman who could be all think she can be a warrior for the left And she could be a human who likes people, you know? I just I find her is hugely inspirational in the antidote to a lot of what is going on. Oh, but you said I won't get the quote right. But you were talking about having majored in Poly Sign than finding your way to journalism and saying that in your mind, the fourth Estate is as powerful as any branch of the government, basically in shaping the world. And I think that is incredibly true. And I have to imagine, in the current climate, there's at least a NatElec TTE to erode the trust in that fourth estate. And what what price we would pay if people stopped believing in its utility

and somebody already have s o. I have a big media chapter in the book, and I think about this question a lot, 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 were simply a mirror held up to the world, particularly in choosing what to cover. We change the world. If we give Donald Trump around the clock coverage, as we did in 2016 way before the polls merited the amount he got, we help Donald Trump got elected. And if we spend all our time on Hillary Clinton's emails, we you know, and you you and you can take this in a lot of different directions, right? Everybody's gonna have their own view of what is newsworthy and and and what the media should cover. But a riel 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 the mirrors and an actor. The mirror just reflects what comes in front of it. But as we were talking about earlier, we don't cover most things the president says, including Donald Trump. Either we cover the outrageous things, 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 like they

and nobody cared. Yeah, well, I think the thing we would all like you guys to acknowledges that you're susceptible to market forces is anyone else.

You would like this chapter of the book. Okay, let me say like we are right. It's all about click. It's all about. It's not about clicks. I think people get a little too.

I mean, come on, it's a

lot about it can't be about. But I think that people can get a little, too. It's all one thing versus another. Knowing if I lived with tabloid coverage of May,

I might feel differently about this question. I'm looking up here. It would you get that on? And 72% said no. It appears I might have been like Trump, though, like seven. It looked like 70% would say no, but in practice, really 50% only popular vote in your favor

you want in the electrodes in the media. After this book, I tell the story of how the media's, Among other things, business structure has changed from being reliant at the television and newspaper, and even to some radio levels on monopolies. Right? There are only three networks using public airwaves. Um, newspapers, you know, there was the L. A times of the

news, and you didn't have

access to everything constantly. One of the reasons Headlines gets so amped up now is there, in this war of attention of all against all, you know, you're competing with The New York Times and the L. A. Times and The Washington Post. And like Lamond in France but also with everything it's worth illustrating

for folks that were born in the nineties that in the eighties you walked outside and you might have had your choice. Between the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, there was your composition.

I read the L A Times I listen to K C o W. But I couldn't listen to Pod Save America

and read The New York Times and go on to Drudge Report yellow onto all these. This is things. You Yeah, crazy, huh? I knew it is. You

are competing. We are, on the one hand trying to adjust to it, but also it it does force a kind of attentional one upsmanship from us and so one of the

oh, you'll go out of business. There's like a fact no one wants to know. And so

one of the things that I do think that demands of us differently than it used to I don't think that what has changed is that we were just ah, true mirror of the world before, and we're not now. I mean, I have a lot of critiques about how media worked in that age. But one thing that has changed is that the media then was based on having a captured audience that they had to not offend. 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. I think the media had a very hard time sometimes telling the truth because they're worried if the truth was offensive to somebody, right, so that had its own set of problems in the media.

But but but but in practice, that almost led to what a compromise would

have been. I think that I think there's something to that again for a certain person's kind of compromise, right that media could ignore. I mean, one of things I say in the book is that a lot of deep polarized America in the 20th century relied on suppressing conflict, and sometimes that's good. But like we permitted, the South remain like a segregated horror show for a very long time. Southern Democrats blocked anti lynching laws in the media, oftentimes bottled a lot of things up that needed to come out. Now the flip side is that we do not have a system where we're good at resolving conflict, other systems with what you win power than you can govern our system. It doesn't work that way, right? So that create some other problems anyway. But on the media point, we have to admit and take responsibility for the role we play in the world.

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. People understand what we really cover in some ways better than we even do ourselves.

Well, my complaint and maybe I'm wrong, but I have to imagine when they're 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 spectrum. You know, I think they were probably de amplifying the fringes of both parties. I think

that's not quite right. So I think that some of the stuff you find in that period is one. The media was way too friendly to power 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. So the media was one to open toe the narratives of people already in power. And the other version of this is the narratives of already dominant majorities. Right? And that's again away, sort of this identical status quo. Yeah, it's very status quo.

It feels like it just completely won 80. And now the furthest 5% of both parties, air driving, all the dialogue 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. I really just believe that it's not

that it's centrist exactly, But it's also not this. And one of the problems here is the great hack in the media. Is it ever everybody's already talking about something? Well, then, isn't it newsworthy by definition? So what's happened is that the way social media works, is it it's selects four communication that creates the most intense emotional response. Usually, they're not always a negative emotional response. Yeah, and so then the media is attaching itself to the stories you create the most intense negative response. One of the examples that using the book is Do you guys remember the furor over the cove ain't in Catholic high school kids on the National Mall. Oh, yeah, yes, these kids came out. They were in some sort of nonviolent but insulting confrontation

with the Native Americans. Anywhere make America had Yeah. Then

it came out that, like maybe they had been harassed earlier anyway, it was I came back from an offline vacation and, like, this was the only thing anybody was talking about. And it actively, objectively didn't matter. Running died. Every other story happening in the was more important, but it had attached to people's identities very intensively, right? Young kids at a religious high school in Maga hats, Native American elder drumming a political protest.

It's like a Disney cartoon is, like, so perfectly archetype.

And that's bad, right? That we let Twitter become an assignment editor in that way is really bad. The other thing we did was we would both sides stories where sometimes there was truth right? And so, like the famous example that we used to do a lot is, well, climate change. Some people think it's riel. This weirdo does not on, like, Momo sides, who can who can debate. And, you know, as people would point out, it was like a 98% scientific consensus.

And so the other problem is that in trying to be inoffensive, we would sometimes be untrue. Now, sometimes now, in trying to get attention, we will be untrue. It's not that we, like fixed all of our problems is just that we have moved into a system with different problems. And I don't think we've come up with good answers

for you. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. First of all, I just enjoyed talking to you. Can I just throw that out there and I'm gonna go around? Whatever. I'm gonna wrap this up with the question I bring it to you because I'm not sure where I'm at on it. I'm still in the incubation face, but when I originally heard, first let me start at the beginning. I think everyone agrees that automation is going to increase dramatically over time. And there's this great fear of that. You know, ultimately, I think you've all Harari calls it the,

uh uh, some class. I forget the name he gave it, but that people will be largely unemployed. Right in that automation, we doing 80% of jobs, and this is all ahead for us. And so Andrew Yang famously now has a standard universal income, right, basic universal income. And when I first heard that I was like, Well, that's a great idea because I see the writing on the wall there. Correct. And then I start with that premise and then can I watch a lot of historical stuff? So all of a sudden Kristen are watching TV,

and I'm like they thought that with steam power, they thought that when the steam shovel came around, so many people were employed doing this manual labor. It was going to get rid of the workforce that did not come to pass. Then the assembly line got rid of a drastic amount of employees that didn't come to pass the computer revolution in the nineties. That was gonna happen. We have a 3.9 unemployment rate or something around that that's the lowest since the sixties. Part of me thinks the universal basic income is just completely defeatist and something we kind of succumb to on the left in that were a little bit just cowardly. Like it just assumes that, like somehow we won't figure it out like we always have. Like, now is the time we've decided. Now is the time to say Nope, we're giving up on. We should start

paying people. So I'm laughing because my wife literally wrote the book on this. It's kind of people money. Andrew Yang recommends it as his favorite book on university. Eh? So I'm at the center of a lot of you are near a lot of universal basic income talk and let me agree with 75% of what you said and then diverge in one part. Okay, so the question of a eyes really interesting really complicated one, I think in the near term. And I'm talking here 25 50 years, and I've done least enough work on this to feel reasonably confident this. I do not think we're facing the automation apocalypse. I just don't rhyme. You made the point about unemployment numbers, but the other number I would bring in years productivity, so probably is who don't realize with the same amount of people in the economy and productivity is the driver of increases in human welfare and of what we were seeing even over this period we're talking about is a sharp rise in automation, a sharp rise in robots doing jobs that fused to take human so we can do more stuff with fewer people.

What you would be seeing is a sharp rise in productivity numbers. What we have seen is a fall in productivity growth, and that's a huge problem in our economy. But in some ways the problem in our economy is that we're not getting enough robots at least fast enough now, Andrew or Sam or you've all or others will tell you will. Look, It may not have happened yet, but that doesn't mean it won't might be right. I think the point you make is really well taken like and I agree with, and I've actually had this debate with you all know hurry on my podcast, which is human beings are good at nothing so much as they are inventing things to do value in. So I 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. Now I think it's less than 2% but we create Maur agricultural product than we ever did before in our history and certainly than we did then

and I just want I don't want to lay down. But I do want to add for people who don't know our manufacturing, that's another illusion people aren't aware of. It's actually we manufacture more stuff. We just do it with far less people. So it's not a complete argument to say we've lost all of our main. In fact,

we obviously have No and we've in fact manufacture. As you say, we manufacture Maur. We do not have a lower employment rate than we have at these other times. In fact, we've created other jobs that didn't exist in those times and primarily service sector jobs, care jobs. I mean, we now I think the number is we have more yoga instructors and we have coal miners. We don't talk about that, but it's actually Chung on so they can actually have a job, podcasting and what you Paul says and ah place I actually disagree with him is it, people will become sort of irrelevant. You're gonna have this useless class of people. Useless class. That's what it is not, I think untrue that for said that some people,

as has been true many points in history. You will have people are underemployed and don't feel like they have dignity in this study. And it's a huge, genuine, real problem. But I don't think we're at a world where it's gonna be 20 or 50%. Yeah, 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. If you told people how much societal cachet management consultants and lawyers and, um, high frequency traders have, it would look strange. But we did that. We attach status to jobs by giving them money is essentially what we do in our society for sometimes for better,

on oftentimes, for worse. And I don't see any reason to think we're going to stop being able to invent jobs. No reason we need. On some level, I'm super sorry. Yoga teachers. I'm about to weigh in on your behalf. But you could go on YouTube and watch yoga that way. Yeah, people don't do that because they actually like being involved with human beings. So I just don't think that's going away. That said, all that said, I think the worst case for you, B.

I is the automation case in Parker's It's not true. And then in part, even if it is true, right? 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 So all the Teamsters who drive trucks, which is one of the most common jobs in America, will be out of work. Andrew Yang is offering then and I and I say that somebody I've known Andrew a long time. I think he's I think he's great, actually suffering them 1000 bucks a month when they had a $75,000 a year job with full benefits. That's not going to do it. My colleague Dillon Matthews is great line on this where he says that you be I as a solution. Automation is simultaneously too much into little. It gives money to people who are not getting automated away and gives too little money to people who are getting automated away.

Right? Pastoral said. I have become more and more friendly to the idea to the arguments for you b i 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. 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. We don't pay for that. Maybe on somebody C b. I would create a floor. I could very much imagine an argument and have people made these like Rutger Bregman, but also my wife. Any Larry's book has some of this in it, at least like limbs. These arguments and looks at them that the reason before or against U. B I is that you think that the ability to live above the poverty line should be untethered from whether or not you're working and I think that it's become a rich society. I'm very friendly of that. I think the big question for it is what is a dude immigration policy and like, how do you think about that? Those two interacting Cause I care a lot about immigration,

right? Like when people arrive, they start getting

the Yeah, Yeah. How do you do that and does it, you know, So they're hard questions in how you do that. How you pay for those are all really things. But I think the worst case for you, B. I is a fear based automation case. In the best case for you, B I is it,

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 do art or care for your Children or whatever it is and we should make that a more possible thing for people to do and said a societal floor in a society as rich as ours is. So that's kind of where I come down on you, be I Well, you've been net out the money, But, you know, in theory, over time, you could

just Well, I appreciate getting your perspective on that in all your perspectives. And it's been a damn pleasure to sit with you. And why we're polarized comes out, what? January 2800. And I think it it must go without saying you desire like I do. Ah, less polarized society.

Is that or their desire? A country that is more governable amidst conditions of polarization? This is also a way to think about that. Okay, I think it's gonna be very hard to de polarize, but we could make it possible for governance toe work better even in these conditions. And I think we should at least think about that. It's an interim measure.

Yeah, you're right. Okay. Well, Ezra, what a pleasure. I hope you'll come back. When? Next time you write a book or whatever else you're pedaling, I'll be happy to help sell with you. Thank you both. And now my favorite part of the show. The fact check with my soul mate, Monica Badman. I love your white slacks. Why, thank you.

You know what I like about his makes the brown skin pop. It makes it really poppy. The calves are exposed and it's just a beautiful caramel that we're all envious. Very generous because they're very ashes. I always think that No, they are really are. They're kind of blending into the white pants. Oh, that. You think that the white pants are making the ash pop, but I think the opposite. I think it's making the melon and pop. Wow. Well, thank you. Um and then what color are those shoes?

Would you say we call these? Oh, my God. I've never even heard that word before. I call this say Punkin Tan Tan. Okay. With a bit of peach in. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, well, you teach peachy. Okay, great. Well, I just want to let everyone know,

since there's no photos from the fact check what they're missing, I guess not a nice thing to do, like Oh, wow. Bobs in. Ah, Speedo today no more. Great. Now I don't get to see it and fuck you. Well, we make sure we took a picture of that. I would love to take a picture of Wabi Joab in a Speedo. Next fact check. I guess so. Oh, well,

one day he said it and that means he has to do it. Said it on air. Are you gonna prep your dong at all while we want? Because when I've had to do those underwear scenes and shows and movies, I, uh you know, I want to be I want to show up. I'm gonna put my best foot forward. So what do you D'oh! You know, you're smacking around a little bit tug on it, you know, just try to wake it up, basically like, Hey, we're on camera.

But I see, uh, at attention at attention. We'll walk while we walked through that before the pictures. I feel like that's a sexual harassment suit. Yeah, um, as a client, what a smarty pain. I'm so there. We got to have him on. He has been on my list for quite a while, I think since we heard him on Sam here were like, Boy, we'd like to talk to that guy. He was a good adversary for Sam.

He was outside. I'll say what it was specifically I loved about it is that let's say Ezra's a CZ well, is normally intelligent or analytically intelligent. He's very emotionally intelligence. It was fun to hear because I think most people argue with Sam and I certainly would do this to is you kind of just leave the emotional aspect out of the conversation. And he was very much infusing the debate with emotional intelligence. That was interest. I like that, and I think it's because the emotions are there. As important as the science in, a lot of these conversations are as important as the facts because it's what drives us. It is more than the fax it is. More more behavior on this planet is explained by the emotions. The person was having priority enacting behavior than in the science behind. I think, yeah,

I think so, too. So it's kind of hard to have debates that are on Lee Logic based because there's this whole sector of life that you're just muting. But it's a factor. Yeah, I agree. So Ezra does a good job of weaving boat. You have a high e. Q and I Q. Thank you So d'oh! Oh, thank you. I actually don't know what my I Q is. We can only hope that it's high. It's high time. It's north of 1 30 is when I'm going to say it's north of one.

Okay, I guess North. I think it was fairly high when whoever I got tested Mel is a tiny baby, baby. Yeah, just the one years old. So, uh, they tested me when I was just one years old. Well, sometimes I'm so Monica and I have, ah tradition of we will text each other emojis, but they're in a pattern. So you gotta you gotta be able to predict what the next one is. So those air mini I Q test. Well,

for a while, we were just doing the same, but then But then it turned into a guessing game. I I really enjoyed that. Yeah, I incorporated one that it involved. Like some math. I know, but oh, no. So I didn't get it right. But I blame you a little bit for us. Oh, great. Well, only because because yours involved negatives.

It wanted to negative numbers. But there's no differentiation on the emoji because you can't, like, change the color or something. You got confused by the nomenclature by like me adding the negative signs like it wasn't obvious to you have same negative apples. Oh, I didn't see any negative signs at all. Yeah. Yeah, I was adding some negative dash. You'll never find it. That's what 11,000 texts later, Um, and I had pinned your tax. You could do that? Yeah,

My phone. You can pin a text at the top, so it just stays there, no matter how long will you read it? Oh, yeah. Samsung girl. I don't t suna didn't Oh, I got you know, me and my high horse. I'll get on about Apple. Samsung came out with Cordless charging a long time before Apple did. Sure, I will grant you that. They also came out with, um,

water resistant phones long before Apple did. And their camera was way better long before Apple's was great. And Kristen now has a fucking phone that folds in half. The screen folds like a piece of paper and you can you It's a function, but it is a marvel. It's a It's a scientific breakthrough. It is a quite an impressive piece of technology ISS, 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 he saw there'd be fucking a 1,000,000,000 commercials, and I'm like, you know, it is the power of branding a little bit. It is? Yeah. So Eric and I were talking last night,

were working out together, and, um, he brought up the fact that this corona viruses is really whether they contain the virus or not. It is gonna have some lasting impact on industry because there's all these regions of China that can't export seven. He was saying that there is potentially gonna be some apple supply chain issues. I don't know if that's the case. Don't sue me, Apple. This is what Eric told me where. It doesn't know. But I said, boy, they better not have the soap supply chain down so long that people have to look at some other phones because they're gonna start realizing these other phones are pretty fucking good. You can pin the text, okay?

I am not being paid by Samsung. I just It's been a almost a decade since I waas. Well, that's, um, pinning and texts. Pretty cool, I guess. But every time I try to use that phone of hers, I'm paralyzed. Yeah, it is a confusing see, and I feel So listen, I have an apple Aipac's Hey, Kay and I had I not just love. I mean,

like having emotional relationship. Remember this. I know, I know. Oh, my God. You prove you immediately. You had an apple product for five minutes and you grew to actually have feelings too. I think it's my son and the screen broke. I sat on it in my chair at work, and I fucking corrected in the feeling I had. I can only compare to the time that map res little dog was was nearly drowning in the pool. And I and I rescued it. I felt like that. I was like, this good little boy is so good to me.

And every time I wanna watch some TV or something at lunch, it works. It's just works great. And under my fucking tutelage it I broke a parent. What are you gonna are you gonna accidentally like poop on our p baby or something? I'm a little record with your sons and you know, well, maybe hope but RP baby's a girl. It says only have a good track record with girls of bad tracker with sons. Because the AIPAC's is my son, and so is Mac is my solo. Right? But Aaron's your son and you treat him well. Um, I do treat him well. I do think Aaron's gonna be swinging through here today.

No, just soon. Oh, great. Yeah. There's been some life developments, and I think it's gonna bring him out here, and I think it'll be a really wonderful time to interview. Great. Yeah, I'd love that. Um, back do you want to tell people that story cause Okay, so, um right when Bree and I broke up, she got this dog.

It's a Brussels griffon. It's the cute dog. Looks just like the dog. And as good as it gets. If anyone remembers that, I think his name was true. Del, in that movie or something. You're right. Oh, my God. What is interesting? I think I just remember I love Mac. You may be the first dog I loved. He's just such a good boy. Doesn't do one thing wrong.

He's only there to smile at you or sit on your lap. Never gets into trouble. Really cute. The way you love. I really do love him. And so I was sitting on the patio and it across my mind Like, uh uh, It's been a while since I saw Mac, but then I didn't, you know, whatever. I don't know what a dog's interested in. Anyways, this is after you. Embry broke up. Yes,

and I live by myself in the house we currently live in. I was laying in a hammock. I had a hammock back when I was a bachelor, My life ruled I had a urinal in the house and I had a hammock in the backyard. So, um, I thought I'm gonna go look for might have been a minute or so And then I decided to like, look for him. And then I went in the backyard and I went down to the pool and he was in the deep end of the pool paddling as hard out, and he was trying to get up on the edge. Andy Cohen is just two tiny on, and he was very scared. I could see in his little face. He was so scared. And I pulled him out and he was soaking wet. Me and this scared look in his face,

and I was holding him and petting him and That was the moment I had my 1st 2 human tears fell out of my eyes and it had been a couple of decades and I was just staring at his little face and he was so grateful that I got there. But he should have been mad at me for, like, sleeping on the job. The last thing I think is this dog's gonna go for a day like you didn't know. Well, I felt terrible. And then for the next, like, two hours, I just stared at him and he was long. He was, like, already recovered from and that I still wasn't. You're still shedding one or two tears per hour. Yeah,

on then, what's fun is that Max still does vacation at our house. Um, Kristen and all of her generosity and benevolence has always had a very open door policy with Mac whenever they've traveled. We had him for a couple months once when they went, Yeah, I think to Australia. Yeah, such a little guy. And then I'll sleep under the covers by your feet, and I'm so nervous he's gonna suffocate down there. But he's just fine. He doesn't need a lot of oxygen. I don't Turns out you know what he probably got trained in that pool. You're right, right?

Learned Thio subsist off. It was for the best favor. All training I put him through basically Navy seal training. Oh, Manicure. Have you cried over, though? God broke my heart anyways, I felt similarly with my eye packs His ibex didn't do anything wrong. A lot of my thing is about whether some deserves some shitting this or not. But one best stuff happens to me. I'm like, Yeah, like my ship gets stolen like you Damn right it should get stolen. I was a a rascal for a long time, and I deserve some karma.

The mag doesn't deserve a lick a car. Neither does my AIPAC's. Okay, Okay, as well. So we talked a little bit about Just touched on Katy Hill. Mm. We were a little unclear about how murky her sexual escapade was. Right. 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 ex to continue that abuse this time with the entire country watching That was her quote. Ms. Hill's case is not clear cut. 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,

to 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. I know that even a consensual relationship with a subordinate is inappropriate, but I still allowed it to happen despite my better judgment. She wrote a letter to her constituents but wasn't illegal or anything. Most people would agree. Having a sexual relationship with a staffer clearly puts Miss Hill, 32 She's my age. Jesus in the wrong, though, of course, there are many male politicians who have done it and remained in office. But the manner in which the affair was exposed, the public, the publication of sensitive photos and text,

which she blamed on her estranged husband, arguably makes her a victim as well. Mmm. Um, So I have zero issue with what she did. Yeah, that she hooked up with people. She works with you. No, I'm not. I don't really care about that. Yeah, 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. But he was not married or anything.

I don't think it would go anywhere, you know? I mean, you don't. I'm asking you, would you not be like he can't do that? Oh, I see. Um, there's a tiny bit of a double standard happening this all in pointing. I mean, yes and no. When you want a guy, you go. Oh, he's a predator.

A woman's a woman. You don't do that. I don't do that cause I'm not bothered by it at all. TV Hill, the Katie he'll issue. I mean, she also got punished. She left office. Oh, yeah, Which I don't think she should've. Yeah, so but if I'm gonna make a case for why, I don't think she should of I think it's incumbent upon me to just run through the analysis of what I say the same thing about, um fucking who's the Senate majority leader that I don't love Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell's fucking some staffer.

Do I give him the same. I mean, it was Part of it is I don't know, there's all these, like tiny little factors, like Is the person of age like it? Does that person want to be in the relationship, which in this case, I think she did like that? The person and never said, Yeah, I was taken advantage of, Yes, this this and this. Angus. 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 Then I don't think it be an issue. 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. Yeah, well, that's what's so tricky about it is that I don't a lot of the current reaction, doesn't leave a lot of room for simply that. Both people want to fuck, and we live in America. If you want to fuck, there's no law against it. Why it was You know why people going down the ones, but whenever it's a man, it's an abuse of power will Katie.

Definitely a power over her. Her staffers what you know, she sort of says that, she says. I know even a consensual relationship with a subordinate is inappropriate. She's owning that, but she's just owning that cause she has to hear. But in these me two moments, they're not consensual, that the girls are not saying yes. No, it was fine. So it, in that case, it is an abuse of power. It's not an abuse of power.

If the girls are. Yeah, I wanted to, and I like that person and I like to having sex with them. Then none of them are saying that 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, Yeah, but yes, you're right. I agree with you 100%. But there is currently this assumption that a young adult woman can't possibly be evaluating that if they're male,

Boss has all this power. There seems to be a little bit of movement where it's like she couldn't consent. The power dynamic is so lopsided that you can't actually believe her saying It's consensual, which I I don't like. Yeah, I I understand that. I understand not liking that. I don't think in any of these, like, canceled cases. That's been the case 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. And generally the person who is more valuable to the company is the one that's gonna weather that storm. So that that is an implicit issue. I think that is very troublesome.

Like they're gonna fire Matt Lauer's assistant or Matt Lauer? Exactly. Yeah. Have you gotten to the part with the There? Is someone on that show? Two people having an affair? Uh, not an affair there. They're having a relationship. But in secret. I know I'm not there. Yeah, whatever's there you want for for weather, man? No, no,

we're not there yet anyway. There's an example on the on the morning show, which is what we're referring to. Here's an example of ah, weatherman who's having a relationship with a P A. Okay, They're having it in secret. Oh, yes, yes, Yes, yes, And she got really offended when he brought up the notion that it was lopsided, right? It's like I'm doing Europe. Yeah,

you're right. It's like I'm doing you a favor. He's like, I want to do this and that, and that is an example of something that's going on. That's fine. So that would be just weren't. Sometimes when the headline comes out, we're not privy to that singing and you're not gonna read the headline of consensual stuff. Because why would anyone even write that? Well, because people have political enemies or work enemies and they could expose an affair like, uh, Monica Lewinsky and Clinton. That was not brought out because Monica Lewinsky was saying, I feel scorn brought out by a Republican grand conspiracy to get him to lie under oath.

Like in that situation. Neither person was complaining right yet he, you know, went down well, Not for that. Well, you got impeached over it. Not for an abuse of power of over her. No, for lying. I'm saying that was in the nineties when me, too, wasn't a thing. And so it wasn't like the headline was Bill Clinton sexually harasses Monica Lewinsky That was not ever a headline. And only now some people are looking back on that and saying like, Huh,

he was the president turn. Yeah, but the reason he was in trouble had nothing to do with his abuse of power. Oh, right, right, right, right. Yes. Yes. So in the nineties, in the nineties, I wasn't a thing, so yeah. Heh. Zara's said that there was a philosopher who main argument that we can have liberty and equality at the same time.

And he wasn't exactly sure if he was getting the name right. Daniella, Alan. And, yes, it was her. Of course he got it right. I know. Ah, when did the bell curve come out? 1994. September of 1994. That, weirdly, is more recent than I thought it was. I thought it was like a seventies book.

Yeah, I thought it was a tease to eighties way. It doesn't seem like the kind of study that would even be done in the nineties. Like I could see that being done in the seventies, but not the nineties. I know. I mean, it could happen now at a study like that. Could come out and you're not impervious to races. Ah, Where was Charles Murray giving the speech? Middlebury College. How many people currently practice Islam? He said he thinks the second most popular religion in the world. It is. It says in 2018 more than 24.1% of the world's population is Muslim.

The current estimate concludes that the number of Muslims in the world is around 1.8 billion Christian e first. Sure, sure. Well, let me guess. Third. Okay. Hoof for me. Hard. It is hard, actually. Yeah, I'm going to say Ah, Hinduism. So Okay, so third is actually a religious affiliation.

What? Aereo Lius official ation, but forthis Hinduism. Oh, what's the third saying you have a religious affiliation. That just means you're religious. But you're not same with long. So okay or doesn't mean you're not religion. I don't know. I don't know, but the third is slain. Do Hindu and then I want to go Buddhism. Okay. And then after Buddhism, I would do I go Jewish, actually.

Folk religions. Okay. Eyes being a deer 0.9% are folk religions. Was that even mean They loved Bob Dylan I don't know, but Judaism is only 0.2%. Sure that's extremely low. Consider too low. We got to get those numbers up. Yeah, The hard thing is, you have to be. The mom has to be Jewish. Yeah. 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. So well, they also Judaism likes keeping it insular like they don't want you in their catch phrase. Should be way good. Yeah, You know, they're kind of like a to a not a program of promotion, but rather of attraction. That's in the by laws. So you can go fuckin promote a even though you d'oh! I don't tell you my experience with a and then And then if you think that sounds groovy, then you drop your slacks Hindu book in your Judaism book and you're all those books. You're not allowed to be those Of course you can. Everyone's welcome. Can you be an irreligious affiliated? Yeah,

that's me if you don't know what it is. Well, okay, so RBG, you said she's best friends with Scalia, and she likes Cabinet. This is what she said about capital justice. Cavanaugh made history by bringing on board an all female law clerk, Ginsburg noted, and reference to a promise Cavanaugh made during his tumultuous confirmation. Thanks to selections, the court has this term for the first time ever, more women than men serving his law clerks. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg came to the defense of our more conservative colleagues on the bench. I can say that my two newest colleagues, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch,

are very decent and very smart individuals, she said Wednesday at an event in Washington, D. C. Could you re read the whole thing in, Do an impersonation of her? What does she sound like? I don't know. Justice. Really good. The high voice, Very touching, strong and tiny. She's a miniature mouse, for she is okay. You said we have a 3.9 unemployment rate.

Unemployment rate is 3.5%. 3.5. Well, you see, it was the difference between cum laude and assume a cum laude. I was suma a lesser school, but yeah, no, I assume it. I got some All except 11 89 point. Oh, um, female teacher. Yeah. Yeah. She wouldn't do it.

Surrender? Yeah, I knew it. Girls don't be given girls breaks give girls breaks. Okay, They're back. Whoa, My goodness. All right, that's all. That was it. Yeah. All right. Well, he was delightful. And he was on Bill Maher last week and ah made a great showing. I will check it out. Check it out. I love you,