Ezra Klein with Malcolm Gladwell: Why We’re Polarized

welcome to New York thank you it's surprisingly intimidating to do an event here with you because you come and normally do a book event and people are excited to see you but you come and do an event here with Malcolm Gladwell people keep coming in like I am so excited about tonight's moderator it's also not true but I appreciate the sentiment but um no there we are all here to see and hear you you don't did I am I wrong did do you say at one point in the book in fact that you don't like me or I do just want to get that I want it I want to say I'm gonna hold my ground on this point among other things every place that so I've come from outside LA from Irvine California I lived in DC for many years and I find both of those places LA and then particularly DC are just filled with New Yorkers telling you how much better in New York is so I have developed and this will go directly to the core themes of the book a very strong oppositional identity to New York because my identities is a proud Californian and and and district 10 is in have so often been threatened challenged and otherwise mocked yeah but you could also have you been here like god I was on this sub oh my god you run away you're in the subway it's a trash everywhere it's a lot what what subway were you on that was I've been I've been late to a lot of stuff okay the F train did not do me well as someone who was in DC for many years which has you know our subway system looks like Paris next to DC's right that's that's very the the DC subway has the advantage of being it's like the New York subway if the New York subway were clean but didn't go anywhere and far in SF which I will admit that New York has much better public transport than anywhere I've ever been elsewhere in the US Bart is like it's just a light rail system it's not actually a useful way to get around the city yeah it's very disappointing wait this is buildings this this discussion gets us into something that is relevant to your book which is you taught your this is a book about identity and I was curious we're describing at the moment regional identifications can you list all of the ways all of them all of the identities that are relevant to as recline and then rank them in order of importance to Ezra well as it happens I have a board here and I'm gonna write them down I have a thing in there where I do talk about this a bit one of the big points I try to make in the book because it's explaining how or making an argument that identity is a dimension not just of human life but of politics and needs to be taken seriously and and I there's a lot of evidence on the score in the book identity is a fundamental driver of polarization itself not policy in politics so there's a great study that I talked about in there where Liliana Mason who's a political scientist University of Maryland she shows that if you look at Republicans whose policy positions should make them Democrats or Democrats these policy positions should make them Republicans that fact that their policy crossing the line does a lot less to restrain their dislike for the other party then if they have identities across the line so if you are a Democrat but you're in the south and you're an evangelical Christian and so on and so forth you have a bunch of republican-leaning identities that will do a lot more to make you friendlier to Republicans and then just believing the Republicans are right about everything esra I asked you I'm setting it up no but this can I just say this is by the way something that like totally predicted would happen and in fact you declare it very very beginning this book you see you make it very clear this is a book about Paul's it's not gonna be a book about characters or personalities or human beings are untrustworthy infallible yeah you're and you're doing the exact same thing you're refusing to talk about yourself damn it talking about your sorry my mugs identities want your list of your dead I'm gonna write them down because I want those I'm trying to think of how I would think about what makes an idea most important be so father it's hard to rank identities until you challenge them father is probably right now okay I'm thinking about the most I'm aware my son and that's hurting was it really that hard okay keep going father and husband so deeply rooted I'm a Californian and I don't like pride in that I'm a journalist and I think a lot about that yeah the son of an immigrant and that identity is important to me I'm Jewish I have a linked world of identities around politics but I think easily stated I'm a liberal okay what are my other core identities I dislike Manhattan well no that's my disorder that very I hold that very close to my heart we're gonna get you and I think there's actually important kinds of identities and people do hold close I have a set of values that I think of us at enemies vegan is actually a very important identity to me has become increasingly so in the past couple of years and for better and for worse I try to I like there's I have an identity that I am fair-minded that I try to be generous to people I'm in disagreement with those are those are ones that I try to think about because I want to embody them in my work in life and so those I've sort of self-consciously tried to build into identities not just things I think are good in the world I try to push myself to see that as something that I am NOT something that I believe so we have a here father Californian journalists immigrants son Jewish liberal oh seven I'm sorry oh we good no even an eight nice person can you I don't think those are nice person nice is different what can you um can you rank these so what if you if you had to do you think first of all do you think it's useful to rank them no no do you think each of these is an equal if I said you had to get rid of one of these as a descriptor could you do it I mean it's descriptors yes some of them matter a lot less to me in others I don't care if the world sees me as vegan and I'm a little looser in that than I am in other things whereas I for historical reasons related to my tribe I would not want to give up the identity of Jewish you I would not let you take that for me yeah yeah would um like if I guess about another way of saying this is which of these could you would you be willing to change what change being a father I think that one's well established at this moment um I would be I think that there I can imagine a lot of context in which I would change political identities I could like yes very much and probably not being I didn't a couple years ago actually self-identify as liberal and I had a reason for that but I've changed my mind on that in the past couple years so it's actually an identity that I've changed it in terms of whether or not I claim it yeah yeah but you would you ever convert to Catholicism or I mean that's it is that an identity that you would ever consider is that conceivable it is hard for me to imagine Catholic conversion for reasons not related to the identity one of the things here that were just say one of my favorite because I I wouldn't talk a lot more about religion because I think is super interesting I've always wondered what is that if you are Jewish and you're going to convert what's the most likely faith you're gonna convert to atheist yeah there's a there's an old joke that Jews blue there's a joke that a kid comes home from Catholic school and he says does like what did you learn today and he says well we learned about the three gods the Father Son and the Holy Ghost and that's his son we're Jewish we believe in one God and he doesn't no because there's a you know there are well-known conversion pathways so you know a lot of politically conservative Protestants end up as Catholics particularly recently that's a kind of known pathway but the Jewish to Catholic pathway is like I mean it's it happened in the in the 17th century at the point of a you know it's not a super happy memory people did it we're forced to do it but no one did it voluntary I wasn't interested me because I always thought that if you were you know I can the the gap between being a student of the Talmud and being a Jesuit seems to be quite as the principal and one reason I think Jewish identity is very important to people who don't keep the faith yeah that's true for me is that identities as a general rule root reinforce and activate under threat and so an identity like Jewish comes under threat a lot and that's true in general the identities that lay fallow are the ones that don't get brought up in daily life the ones that don't come up very often there are things I mean I don't declare myself a TV watcher right where I told you what my diet is whereas actually I'll put this differently people who become vegan end up holding that identity coast because it's a constantly threatened identity people laugh at vegans right there the splinter has Bala like movement of the vegetarians but people who are not don't run away if you asked that question to me five years ago I wouldn't even said I'm an omnivore that's an important identity yeah yeah so identity often which is relevant for the political dimension of the book identity operates under threat it gets stronger under threat and that's how it tends to not the only way can activate but a strong way it activates a Jewish identity the main thing you learn about being a Jew is that the Jewish identity has often been threatened so it operates under a sense of constant like historical threat because I was you know cuz the reason I ask this questions I think something I've always thought about is that all of us have a list like this I have a version of that list and so does everyone in the audience and I always wonder do do the dudes our ranking are plus it ranking change over the course of the day over the course of depending on the situation we're in or is it pretty like I was thinking of my mom's ranking my mom it probably doesn't change my mom would put probably Christian first mothers second Canadian third and I sort of figure I don't think she's gonna deviate from life you know what's interesting you just made me realize that I put California and didn't think about American well it's gonna follow up in that as well that was because that's something you which is interesting because there's actually studying there that that's abnormal yeah that over time we people have come to rank their national identity much higher than state identities but but when you put me on the spot the thing that came to mind was that I was in California yeah nothing might because I've moved back there in the last year so I've been thinking about it more you move and you move back to Northern California yes which is not where I grow do you do in your mind distinguish do you say I'm in Northern California now or not a Southern California anymore or do you know I just say I'm a Californian I don't yet feel rooted enough in Northern California to have that be an identity yeah because it's new it's a weird identity you grew up in Irvine can everyone counter right yes and now you live in Berkeley Oakland Oakland I mean Oakland and Irvine County are about as far apart as you can get in America right what do they have in common what about as far apart as you can get in America but they're far differences I mean it's an interesting identity to have as Californian and to because that identity is is is containing two countries I mean two very very different in some ways doesn't somebody know I mean if you ask me what composes a Nirvana identity the the reputation Irvine has is for being boring basically but when I think about it the primary thing that I think that is an incredibly immigrant heavy community so the place I grew up in the school I went to I grew up in a very diverse space and particularly as I've my father is uh but my father came to this country in the 70s from Brazil so the way I think about if you asked me about Irvine the thing I would tell you about it at a sociological level how it felt growing up in it level is that it very deeply rooted in me a belief that diverse places can be and are great places and so when I hear all this about which is dominant our political conversation about how you lose these very essential things and what is in America if it's not this way that it was and these other I grew up in a part of America that was majority-minority racially from the moment I could sense it and it was a wonderful place full of amazing people and so that does not feel that different than Oakland now in terms of other cultural dimensions Oakland is very different than Irvine and probably people in Oakland be pissed at me for even comparing them ya know but I what we just went through is a version of the problem that you're focused on that I had a stereotypical view of I had a polarized view of Irvine right as a kind of Republican all right I wasn't even thinking about that right yes then I realize now that we're public highways yeah and I and that's because I don't know her vine I disc drive su and I spend all my time if I go to Southern California eighteen to the house but an ad Porter who's awesome but I'm guessing you're not from Newport Beach no right so that's what I think of when I think of everybody I think of Newport Beach but you're talking about inland Irvine County I guess it's technically a little inland from do they're very close i I'm worried we might be getting too deep into you know but Orange County geography but what I'm interested in is you're describing what's fascinating about your book is that you're describing in a certain way the hardening of identified entity and our of our identifications with various ways of with various self descriptors and I'm continually puzzled about why they've heartened right it's I mean I agree with you they've hardened but it's weird to me because it it strikes me that why wouldn't they be fluid but there's the things that you've described these eight descriptors first of all there's eight descriptors you have for themselves and they don't have any logical connection right they're all different totally different things what I don't understand is that why one moment you can't act like a Orange County person the next person time you only think about yourself as a father and the next person you're thinking totally in terms of a journalist trying to so I think we do yeah I mean that's very much my theory of identity which is that a huge mistake we make is to call identity singular right identity politics but nobody's singular and things get activated in different ways at different times and it's very I mean this is always Obama's line on this if you go back to his oh four DNC speech he says you know we coach Little League in the blue states we believe we don't like federal agents snooping around libraries in the red states his whole idea is that we are different when we are not being triggered by political spin masters and pundits who slice and dice us and my counter on that is not that he's wrong he's deeply right it's just that as our political identities link to other identities and enlarge and we can talk about how that's happening they're constantly under threat there's a very large industry devoted to activating them threatening them like go on Twitter for two minutes it's all about activating political identities at least if you're following those kinds of things and then they root deeper um it's not the only thing going on and then you get away from Twitter and you're a dad again or a husband or you know you're out and you're a crossfitter which is a very powerful identity for some people but but when you are dealing with politics the more the identities come together the more they root I'll just give one example this so there's a political scientist from Irvine named Michael Tesla and he's looked at racialized controversies in the 90s and now and so he looked at polling on the OJ Simpson trial or to be more local the Bernard Goetz trial of The Subways shootings and then looking at similarly racialized controversies today like George Zimmerman or in a different way should 12 years of slave win an Oscar and these always split the country but in the 90s those controversies did not map onto party at all Republicans the Democrats had more or less the same views on them today they map overwhelmingly unto party 69% of Democrats at 12 years of slaves win an Oscar 12 percent of Republicans did as you link identities together and more conflicts activate them that identity just gets stronger and the other side gets more infuriating to you yeah yeah what two things I want to discuss is you talk about that puzzled me about this phenomenon that I don't understand why certain things aren't stronger moderators so we thought we touched our religion before why isn't you you would think if you were a Martian landing in America and you see how extraordinarily religious this country is you could you would think intuitively that religion must be the great moderator of political difference because the most important relationship religious people have is to God and God does not belong to a party and you would think that that identification would swamp yeah so why hasn't religion played that function so there's an argument that at other times it did and there are a lot of people I'm not I don't actually believe this but I will say to represent it that a lot of people believe that a cause of our political position I don't think any political scientists believe this to my knowledge but a lot of conservative pundits believe that our political polarization is a function of religion declining in this country and as a result our political identities coming to be more Sayle and Andrew Sullivan is adherent of this view and and so are a number of other people one reason I don't buy it is it if you go look at other times of extraordinarily high polarization so the civil war you will find a lot of religion in that debate but the religion was a broadly scattered enough identity or force that it actually in some ways amplified the conflict because people felt that they had God on their side on in in a way that I find chilling on both sides of that and so religion has been there at times of high polarization and been there are times of low polarization but religion can be moderating or it can be conflict orienting depending on how you understand it and depending on how linked it is to other things story I don't tell in the book but it's in a book called democracy for realists about Ireland and the way it is related in there is somebody is going through and going through island and traveling through island and meets I don't know who it was says are you prostitute or a Catholic and the guy says well I'm an atheist and the guy says yeah that's fine but are you a Protestant atheist which is one of these ways in which religion can I was talking about this in a way with Jewish identity earlier it can stand in for things that are not your relationship with God it can mean much more or much less than a relationship with God yeah yeah but it's not you know I when you in the discussion of in your book of religion I thought of my my mom my parents moved to rural Ontario in 1970 my mom is the only black person for miles around moving to a very conservative small town you would think oh she's gonna have difficulty you know being accepted by the town no difficulty whatsoever why because they ripped because she's my mother's very religious the town's very religious name was like oh Joyce is a Christian and you know she starts hanging out with all of these ministers and you know feminist Christians and everyone forgets that she's black and so that was as a kid I was like oh this is the beautiful thing about religion is it that that identity overwhelms other identities and makes people forget sort of more trivial differences but it's weird how that doesn't it doesn't work that way and kind of once you leave all turn on it really it warps so often I do not I meditate a lot I don't claim Buddhists as an identity I don't think of myself as a Buddhist but as somebody who reads a lot of Buddhism I always find it very I guess I use the same word again shilling that the Rohingya massacres and genocide and displacement is being committed by Buddhists right there's something about the there's something about seeing an ethical and philosophical and spiritual framework that you understood to be peaceful and restraining that it isn't or doesn't have to be that it you just recognize how powerful some of these forces are mm-hmm the other thing that I'm puzzled why doesn't moderate more is occupation so we know that over the last you know that people's jobs have larger seems to have taken out I think there's some evidence for this kind of a larger psychological importance in and certainly larger practical importance of people's life we work longer hours we spend more time in getting educated to prepare for jobs in the workplace so you would think that workplace identities would be so strong that they would overwhelm a lot of this political polarization if I'm a doctor and I go to med school for X number of years and then do a residency and then do specialty training and and finally I'm a plastic surgeon how do I have time to even think about whether I'm you know what why would my political identity which is something that I didn't spend any money on or any didn't do eight years of training for why would that matter to me once I'm a it probably matters to you less I mean so I think there are a couple interesting things in that one is that let me make the argument or try on the argument cuz I'm not sure I believe it that it is moderating I think that embedded in some of what you're saying is that our politically polarized identities have risen to some unbelievable fever pitch of conflict which I think too many of us in almost certainly if you're here interested in a book called why are polarized to you it feels that they have one of the things I note in the book is that if you look at social divisions in this country right now if you look at things like political violence it's much lower than it has been at other times I mean go look at the 1960s look at the number of political assassinations urban riots Kent State we are very angry in our politics and I think the big problem with polarization is a way it makes the political system cease to function for institutional design reasons but we don't for all of the fever-pitch of that conflict if you experience it on Twitter or cable news most people are quite checked out of it most people are not paying to all that much attention to it at all and that might be because these other identities are much more important to them I did a focus group of undecided issue voters in Pennsylvania and mostly what they said about politics was they tuned it out because it was all too angry like they had views but they didn't want to be involved in it because they had to worry about work and they had to worry about their kids and other things so for a lot of the people here politics is a central hobby it's it doesn't necessarily compete with our work but it's a little bit like crossfitter or you know there are people who really are out there practicing politics every day going in organizing their neighbors to get a bridge built or you know organizing in the anti-trump resistance to make sure that so-and-so is elected to the house but a lot of people are following politics away people follow a sport they're tweeting at people they don't like they're doing from the comfort of their own homes when it is convenient it has unpleasant emotional ramifications but beyond that it's actually not that strong and they're not really acting on it in a committed consistent way when you say it's a third thing I want to talk about which is when you say a lot of people are following politics now like it's a sport and you there's a chapter in the book where you make this regulatory quite in a very fascinating way and so it takes on for the politically committed and completely interests interested politics takes on many of the kind of psychological dimensions of an addiction to a game but the weird thing about being a sports fan and I am a rabid sports fan is that and I am a polarized rabid sports fan in the sense that I have teams that I root for and but it doesn't make me hostile to people who it's a it's a community if you were if I'm a crazy Toronto Raptors fan and you're a crazy Golden State Warriors fan I don't hate you in fact I would quite happily talk to you for hours I would welcome the fact that we have this shared body of thing that we're both rabbit about and I would delight in hearing your arguments for and by the way most 90% of sports fans are exactly like this I've had innumerable conversations with other crazy sports fans over the years and we delight in each other's differences it seems wholly unlike politics in that respect I don't you know a political conversation can literally drive me out of my mind with someone who disagrees with me but it never happens in sports so I have trouble imagining you disagreeing with somebody in a way that you actually become disagreeable what I've known you enough that you seem almost pathologically unwilling to get into conflict with people so I remember and you'll remember on when you were on my podcast not long ago I asked you like convince me to be a sports fan like it convinced me of the stakes I don't know enough about sports fandom to be honest to make an argument among this one where another the only thing I will say is that I have enough routing in Brazilian football and I read a Bill Bryson book about soccer hooligans to suggest that sometimes sports fandom can turn darker and it gets competitive I love the fact you talk about sports your first point of reference is a book written by my first point intellectual by my first words with Brazil I thought yes my second was my second is Mel Bryson because this to me is actually Waialae maybe no no no there's a book by a very prominent electoral couple years ago I will I will make no I will make no excuses actually it's a funny thing about the book though like this third most the third most common thing I have been asked is somebody read the book like you played nose tackle in high school I know I was gonna bring it up but it's a good lord now you tell me it's a it's a it's a playing sport seems very different than getting attached to it look I don't think all all identities become conflictual they can but there's a very there's a very big difference between considering someone an out-group and just seeing them as another group even part of your group as you're saying there and this goes to your point about the fluidity of identities um I don't know what it'd be like you said your Toronto Raptors fan that's basketball great see I know sports if somebody came and said Toronto Raptors suck and you suck it's probably got annoyed at them but I think one of the things you're saying is you are talking to people as a sports fan like in fact that's how you even claim the identity a couple minutes ago you weren't saying I'm a rabid Toronto Raptors fan that I'm sure that's true he said I'm a rabid sports fan and I've been actually because I enjoy sports journalism just not actual sports having read a lot of sports journalism and read some of your work on this you really enjoy the analytics of the game so you have an identity that's quite inclusive um I think that in politics a problem is that it is deeply zero and the stakes are very high and the higher they get the harder it is to see us is just I have I know I will cop to this myself I have a deep distaste for people I actually am totally fine talking to I'm a liberal I will talk to rabid conservatives all day I enjoy it I learn a lot the people I dislike and I've met a lot of them over the years in DC these people who actually understand politics is a fascinating sport um the people who actually follow it because they there are a lot of journalists who report on campaigns and in the middle of a very hard-fought very tough very close election you'll be out at a bar covering something in Iowa and they'll say isn't this great and I always think to myself you're a sociopath because the only reason we're there is that the stakes of who wins and loses are very very high and so I think that there is I think that things are warped by a feeling of in-group out-group competition where as you know and similarly in religion as somebody who is culturally Jewish and is interesting I love speaking I have very good friends who are priests it's wonderful like I love talking to people about religion but it's not a threat to the things I believe in for that to be true um one of the arguments I make throughout the book is that things really matter how you structure them and in politics ultimately there is this huge question of who wins and wields power and so things have begin positive some there's no particular reason to your point that the fact that you're conservative not actually but hypothetically and I'm a liberal can't actually make us a very productive team in thinking about how to solve an issue because you both have different insights is why I love reading Tyler Cowen or Ross Douthat or people who have a different view on this and I do but because so much of it collapses down ultimately to who has the power to pass a bill things it could be positive some become zero some and then when it collapses down to who's gonna win the election it becomes even more conflictual mm-hmm can you talk a little bit about the idea of sorting you touched a little bit earlier but I think it's worth digging into a little bit because it helps to frame a lot of yeah so this is the macro story of the book which is polarization does not refer to disagreement extremism bitterness it refers to opinions affiliations identities etc clustering around two poles that's it that's the whole definition it's nothing more than that and an argument that it's not an argument make a true thing about the world is it what has happened with past 50 or 60 years is disagreements that used to be unsorted by political party becomes sorted by political party I always think it's a fascinating fact about American politics so that the Civil Rights Act had was a completely bipartisan bill that had a higher proportion of congressional Republicans vote for it than Democrats but was passed and signed by Democratic president Medicare also had a very high number of Republican votes which is only to say that at that time obviously the Civil Rights Act was incredibly controversial divisive brutal fight in American life it's essential conflict in American history it just wasn't sorted by party it was sorted by race who was sorted by values even by ideology not by party um over the last 50 years we have sorted ideologically so they used to be conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans in Congress certainly there are no such things now there's no Democrat more conservative than any serving Republican of which there used to be many like that we've sorted much more so we've sorted by ideology we've sorted by race the parties be not that dissimilar in terms of the racial composition Democratic Party is now about 50 percent non-white the Republican Party's ninety percent white we've sorted by religion again they used to be quite similar Democratic Party the single largest religious group in the Democratic Party now as have religiously unaffiliated public parties overwhelmingly Christian we've sorted by geographic density um if you go back into the twentieth century how how dense the area you live in does not predict party affiliation now there's no city that is dense in the country that votes Republican and overwhelmingly rural areas do vote Republican and this goes down into a lot of things psychology culture I talked about Whole Foods and cracker barrels which are House Democrats represent 78% of all Whole Foods locations but only 27% of Cracker Barrel locations so we've sorted these disagreements everything these discs or demographic dimensions they all pre-existed this sorting process we had all this was here it just didn't align by party and now it does and as it does as the two parties become more ideologically and demographically distinct it activates a lot of this identity threat it creates a rational fear of the other party I'll just offer one more example I I think this is amazing the 1976 republican party platform it has a discussion of abortion in it and it says in our party are people who believe abortion should be available on demand whenever and people believe it should never be available and we respect that difference of opinion um a couple years later that issue obviously begins to sort very distinctly by party but joe biden it's funny i mean this is all in living memory joe biden was a pro-life democrat he voted and he said it was hard votes but he voted for something that was like against roe early on um now he's come and said we absolutely need to protect roe i'm similarly if you even just go back to 96 bill clinton's immigration platform just reads like donald trump now i mean it reads completely different than the democratic party today so you always had these divisions and disagreements that they just didn't sort by party and so the other party was a lot less threatening to you not because of some weird psychological identity thing we have although those things are real and an accident but because it actually was less frightening there were people who believed what you believed even in the other party and that lowered the stakes a political conflict yeah your your your magazine box wrote a really interesting piece i think yesterday on um joe rogan Joe Rogan coming out for Bernie Sanders and how this was deeply perplexing and troubling to many Democrats because he is in some ways unsorted right it's very unsorted he's a someone who is in in many and in other respects doesn't sound like a woke Democrat at all and I'm sorry the did you I'm sure you read this this this we published a couple pieces and people got really mad at me on Twitter for defending Bernie Sanders on this point yeah but so yes her number of pieces on this I think I've read them all so I'm fascinated this larger point is that the notion of a Joe Rogan simultaneously being you know hostile to Tran I don't know what the best is yeah I wouldn't even go that not hostile wait just for people who don't know just to Joe Rogan is the most popular podcaster in the country who's not Malcolm Gladwell and he and he's a comedian east do Fear Factor he has made he has said a lot of things that are pretty awful things that are transphobic things are racist and he also at the same time holds a lot of progressive views the particular I mean it's a it's a he's a comedian I mean he's like a politically incorrect comedian that's the best way to understand him who's never the last probably leans left on most issues yeah yeah so what you're saying is twenty years ago a figure like Joe Rogan would have been unremarkable in the sense of holding what now seemed to be the notion that someone could could hold unconventionally unconventional positions would be fine we'd be fine we'd be much happier with that than we are now that's you argument that's it so that I want to say this is such an interesting point he is unremarkable today it is the political elite like people who are highly engaged in politics and if sorted very intently who are more remarkable than him but the leadership of the parties and particularly the vocal wings on social media they are incredibly sorted but even today most Democrats and most Republicans particularly on policy are unsorted they're not there they're just not down the line they don't always know what they're supposed to believe on every issue or they disagree on what they're supposed to believe on a lot of issues this is part of what I think the article you read if it's Matt's article is arguing that you cannot there is not a political majority in this country composed of down the line whoa liberals that is a small political minority if you want to win elections you have to win over people doesn't literally have to be Joe Rogan but it's going to be a lot of people who disagree with you on key things we are much more sorted than we used to be but when the the reason I'm pushing is it important I think particularly for people were very into politics to recognize that the thing about being very into politics is you are still much more weirdly sorted than the average person including the average voter yeah Jordan Peterson is also unsorted in the same way he I almost struck the people I know that many people have strong reactions against him but if you are pay close attention to what he says sort of half of what he says is more than acceptable to liberal people and the other half is sort of not he just happens to be we had a weird thing about him is that he's Canadian and if you're if you understand him as a Canadian it's totally different you know how because I'm always fascinated by this because I think of Canadians that he's a Canadian always seems very interesting to me because I think he's like a clenched fist of a human being he's got this very combative demeanor he's like very tight whereas most community Canadians have no or a little bit they're kind of chill there a little bit conflict averse polite there we go the well so no here's a here's my here's you went through a whole thing on my podcast about your Canadian can any identity and how there was like a like a March at your school but he thought it was great because like the kids are so cute and yeah no no I I yeah there is something I mean I keep in mind I'm from small town Canada which is super chill Canada I mean is chill I came from like the chillest but here's the Jordan Pearson thing and this an interesting point because it bears on this Jordan Peterson the reason it matters that he's Canadian is that a lot of what is threatening to liberals about Jordan Peterson is the extent to which he his language mirrors the language of angry white male Republicans in America but he's not an angry white male public in America he is an angry Canadian and if you're an angry Canadian he's not in the ascendancy he's not empowering Canada he's a tiny tiny minority he's this in a land of like super chill woke liberals he's like this one guy who's like wait a minute I'm not happy with that and like when you realize that the man's he's he's a professor at the University of Toronto he is the only one I would venture to say that he's the only member of the Faculty of the University of Toronto who is within shouting distance of the center of the political spectrum everybody else is like we say the left everyone else away over here right so like in his world he's like this lonely embattled voice who is who you know one takes seriously no one's been listening to he's he's completely outside the mainstream and when you understand that's what he is it's sort of much easier to understand him I have weaker opinions on Jordan Peterson other other people seem to he basically seems to me to be a like a highly symbolically masculine self-help author who has some extremely strong and compatibly phrased opinions on social issues and whenever you talk to him about to a fan of his about him you end up in this like back and forth on you're like well that was a crazy thing to say that Jordan that Justin Trudeau is like has a murderous equity doctrine because he you know supported a women's March they say yeah but that's not the real Peterson what he really wants to do is like clean your room and I just don't really care what I would say about Peterson about Rogan about a lot of them the sort of like intellectual dark web world and then what I would say is actually I think broadly true for American politics in general is that one thing you're seeing which i think is actually important is that we are watching i think we are seeing the axis the primary axis of political conflict change which is as you know it peterson brogan sam harris a bunch of these guys like we don't care about single-payer health care they're fine with it so on a lot of things you would traditionally code the left-right divide in america they're left and there is a coalition there for them in bernie sanders and and so on um what they are very polarized on is what you might call this social justice divide the thing that unites them is a distaste for political correctness for social justice warriors a feeling that you can't say that things you wanted to say I mean again this Brogan thing gets it perfectly Joe Rogan likes Bernie Sanders he says he's probably gonna vote for him in the primary I think he likes Bernie Sanders because of you know Bernie Sanders is authentic and left on economics and so on and also it's not particularly on a guttural level that woke he now has a more wolf policy agenda but that's not what Bernie Sanders is in politics to do and there is a loosening of the strictures on like the left-right economics divide you see it with Donald Trump who ran for office saying it's time for Republicans to stop fighting over taxes in Medicare and Medicaid and begin fighting about immigration or continue or deepen your fight on immigration Tucker Carlson Fox News is again trying to realign what his party is about by saying it's time to compromise on things like taxes so we can really stop the Browning of America and so I think one of the things you see with a lot of these folks to the extent Peterson has a politics it's a politics about demographic change and the kinds of claims that new groups are making on language and how people get talked about and so on and that I think is increasingly the axis of conflict I think people if you go to youtube politics and I think YouTube politics is genuinely super important because we're a lot of young people get their politics it's not a politics about economics it's not about what Washington was when you were there I think at the Washington Post and when I was there at the Washington Post where you could really tell where somebody was by whether or not they had signed Grover Norquist is anti-tax pledge it is all about now how do you feel about the collision over what we can and can't say and how we do and don't refer to people and is America a country founded on white supremacy and defined by institutional racism or not and what do you think about cages on the border and so on so I do think we're in an era among other things of a realignment somewhat about what is the core axis of political conflict and Trump and Carlson express it in a more Republican way Peterson in a maybe perhaps more Canadian way but this is something we're seeing that I think is important but it goes going back to the sorting notion in a world where we are more where we are less sorted where we're we're surrounded by people who who don't fit into very clear templates for all of their views don't line up according to a political label am i right that it's easier for us to kind of peacefully coexist with Rogen's and Petersons like Peterson is and once well before he got famous when I was doing my dev and black book I went to see him he's actually quoted my David and Goliath book and I forgot why and I went to see him and I spent that and he lives I always remember he lives I don't if you know Toronto Toronto the university is here and north of the university is fancy waspy old money Toronto its Forest Hills Rosedale it's like Booga and then south of the university is like hipster Toronto right east of the university east of Spadina and Bathurst it's like working-class immigrant really narrow little houses it's where you're when you're not hip enough to be south of the University and you're now rich and white enough to be north of the university right by the way east to the university is oh sorry this is Wesley East is gay I think I'm an invite you to draw this right complicating where's Jordan Peterson is he in rich waspy no is he in hipster no is he in East like gentrifying gay no he's in West he's west of Spadina in a little narrow house like oh when you go there like oh poor guy he's like locked out of all the areas of privilege fulminating against the establishment that's oppressing him makes perfect sense but it was the most interesting I spent like four hours there it was like the most fascinating four hours I spent in maybe my entire life it was he was amazing I was like oh my god this guy's the most wait which one out Rogan or Peterson well actually it did Rogen as well Peterson Peterson's like in person he is mesmerizing you just it's the most interest I mean I couldn't recommend an afternoon with Jordan Peterson more but you're in I have to say there it is living evening has taken a turn I didn't expect his living room if you take nothing away from my book it should be they should have dinner with Jordan yeah no I was gonna saying his living room B is as why that's here to there do you understand I do I think okay yet does have no your trauma geography like oh okay God is you'd say come to my house I got his address is like you live I don't mean Tirana was like very kind of clearly organized geographically but anyway I think I found this this in your book the most fascinating part was to me was where you described this fact about how we've everything starting to look there's an expectation everything is starting to live on a certain way and an expectation that everything should line up in a certain way and when we encounter those who break the mold in some way we increasingly have problems with that and I found that heartbreaking that's the part of your book that like it was very kind of emotional for me to like I don't think I think my book should be read is somewhat sad it's not a it's not a happy book and it's not an easy book it's about how a system is working and the thing I was thing about while you were discussing that is that the book is in many ways about systems that collapse multidimensionality down to unit dimensionality we are multi-dimensional as you're saying earlier we have many identities we have many ways of being in the world and almost all of us are in deep ways unsorted politics because of the way it functions where it takes a huge issue space and a huge question space and eventually comes down to yes or no right yes or no on the bill this woman or that guy on the vote who should be President the Republican or the Democrat eventually everything collapses down to these Nerys yeah and you are going to lose a tremendous amount in that and it's not just there I mean I think about this on Twitter all the time that Twitter is a place that takes complexity and collapses it down to simplicity and we lose a tremendous amount of ourselves in that there is nobody that I can think of that I like better or as much on Twitter or even really like on Twitter as much as I do in person Twitter is a place it turns us into worst versions of ourselves because we lose our nuance or complication we lose so much signal and I mean it's not the reason that I like podcasts a lot that it's a place where I can take people pull them out of that and have these much more expressive much more complicated and nuanced discussions but I think it's important to it is the case that politics is a collapsing down it is the case that at the same time that these things do not define us are also part of us and so the question I mean in some deep way the question in all these systems is simply what are we designing what are we designing for ourselves to do one of the questions that people keep pushing on me on the book because it's kind of dim on human rationality when it comes to politics it talks a lot about how even very smart people tend to be more self deceptive when it comes to politics is this question like do I not believe that humans are rational and the answer is sometimes I believe they are sometimes I believe they're not but you have to structure systems in the same way that markets channel self-interest and it can channel for good or bad our ability to think to reason can be channeled towards thinking our way to where our group needs us to be or thinking our way to the truth or thinking away to things just being interesting and I think like journalism is a good example I think when I came into journalism which is still sort of the 90s kind of hangover of that newer public is the the highest good and at least an opinion journalism that was about thinking to be interesting I think it was often quite wrong but it incentivized people to come up with a very interesting take and now I think there is a push to think towards the group and that can be good and it can be bad but it's just a way of structuring a system and I think it's really important to have realistic understanding of it and what it does to us yeah I was thinking along the along those lines I your your friend and and my enteric Cowan has that Disney he always asked a question which is what is your least what is your least predictable opinion or what is the thing that you believe that the other people the teal question what do I believe is false yes yeah now I'm gonna have to have you answer this question in a moment but I wanted to say that it makes me wonder whether we shouldn't be leading with our teal question our teal answer so the till question is what is it was it was it again what is it what is it that you believe what do you believe is true that most people believe is false yes that tends to be now the thing about ourselves that we buried and I wonder whether it should be the thing that we foreground in order to usefully complicate our image among with with each other and the second thing that is that I think it was maybe Tyler made the observation that when most people answered the teal question the answer with something that is not a fact that most people believe is false now there is they can answer the question they're incapable of coming up with something about themselves that challenges conventional wisdom what is the what is your answer to the teal question I've answers before so the main one I gave but you can tell me if you think this is a cheat I don't think it is is that the our entire system of animal agriculture is deeply immoral and participating in it is immoral and people shouldn't do it it's not that that's like you got some of if you got no applause I would say you would really nailed it you've got some applause it just says most people believe is false it's something that literally everybody believes is false like not to be a jerk but you're probably wrong like you've literally everybody's like that's not true like like be interactive I will only say the thing that the odd thing about the teal question is it's phrased as true or false as opposed to acceptable or unacceptable I would say you were answering most people would simply I actually believe what you said is true but there's no way I'm gonna give up me right is that mean I so I'm just aware right that that's where it might be a cheat I actually think a lot of people believe that that statement is true but not enough to act on it yeah Mike Mike that's why I add the it's immoral at the end because I think a lot of people believe like it's true but unimportant oh I see oh I see so I added a judgmental like yeah like jab at the end my fit my teal answer would be uh I think that all prisons should be shut down tomorrow for all offenders I think that's a good answer didn't I hear you answer this once that you believe in ghosts am I crazy on the Tim Ferriss show yeah I do believe in ghosts so that's good maybe that's more that's good and I hate that question I don't understand why that is I put the reason I don't I don't do that anymore is it I'm genuinely baffled wise people would believe that was false like I just don't understand what on what grounds do you not believe in ghosts like the way you somehow you're like in your apartment in the Upper West Side you have a handle on all of like all manifestations of human existence like I mean I agree with this I have a very deep belief that I'm actually have a very deep belief that some subset of paranormal occurrences are true and we just are not sure which ones oh that's interesting I am certain that there is some signal and all that noise and I've like I feel like I've done the reading here and I'm convinced but I just don't know which noise like which is noise in which is you know well I believe in ghosts because my aunt and uncle who lived in a former plantation house in Jamaica and old like so once there were slaves over there there the upstairs bedroom the upstairs bedroom was haunted and they would say it had a my arm would tell me because I was sleeping there she would say well you know it's the haunted room just be aware that there's a guitar in the corner and sometimes the ghost likes to play the guitar I was like nine years old and I was like okay and in the middle of night sure enough the guitar starts playing so I mean what do I left to conclude it's a ghost ghost like through the guitar good to ghost plays the guitar in a you know frizzy good yeah it's fine I it was night I don't know under general never losing good and bad guitar but um so that's why that's why we're polarized we've time only time for more questions I wanted to UM talk a little bit about but and this what someone actually answers this this you talk about as a question along these lines local politics you make this I'm remembering this is the section of book we talk about local politics you point out and it's so hilariously true that we obsess about our national political representation even though we have almost no chance to influence it but most people can't tell you who their council member is and that's actually someone who you have a real chance to them yeah it's so it's deeply irrational that we don't know who our council person is we do know who our senator is and you say would be really healthy if we were somehow to reverse that how does one what does that look like do you think we should all be because every you know should we all be showing up at those council meetings that go on for seven hours and I mean no I've been to those they're not great it looks like constructing an informational ecosystem that gives you a lot of that information so you I mean it's really easy here because you guys could you guys have the New York Times the New York Times is an amazing newspaper and it's not just an amazing newspaper on national and international issues but it's an amazing local paper too they do a wonderful job so that's as easy as making sure that the thing you check every day once a day is the home page of the local section of the New York Times and you're just following that story and I mean New York in general among the many reasons I hate it and the place and it's there's so much coverage of local New York politics there are three New York mayor's who have been involved in the 2020 race this year and three New York Southern District prosecutors who have reasonable role as an impeachment and so there's like so much ability to follow local New York politics and it's really easy in other places it's harder but in most places it just really is the case that you can attach yourself to local news sources I mean for me in San Francisco it means like reading the San Francisco Chronicle I'm subscribed to the LA Times because they do a lot of good like overall California coverage but it's become something you have to do and this is a big point I'm making there it's become something that most people in most places have to work to do again it's easier I think specifically here but when I grew up in Orange County we got the LA Times I'm sure that if I was growing up there now we would it would just be an online subscription to The New York Times mm-hmm right that people are sort of gravitating to these national and resources I would hopefully like I would read box I would listen to revisionist history like you would there's so much ability to have national news now so you actually have to consciously construct news sources and news habits that give you local and and often times it means subscribing because they have different business models and so that's a thing you can do but you have to be intentional and something I argue in the book is seeing identities is something that other people are manipulating in you the logical next step is be intentional about which identities you want to be activating strengthening reinforcing etc and you can do that through constructing you know but your informational role and you talked about how a generation ago when you asked people where they were from they were much more likely to name the immediate place they're from yes and now they're much more likely to name some larger yeah so you used to say you would years ago you would say you were from the town that you grew up in in Irvine and now you say you're a Californian or even more an American so state so there's like a lot of great a great in information on this but state and regional identities are supposed to be in American politics are most powerful that's why the whole thing is built on states and districts we don't represent people senators represent states members of the house represent districts one of my favorite studies in the book which comes from there are too many political scientists named Hopkins and they're all named either Daniel or Dave and they're multiple of them named so some Hopkins but it's a good book called the increase in the United States and one of the studies he runs he looks at literature over time in America using Google Ngram and he codes out for how many times people say I'm an American or I'm American and it versus I am a Virginia a New Yorker California and Rhode Islander etc and for a lot of American history the state identities are more common in writing and it's only after the 60s that I'm an American outpaces and never looks back against our state identities and that's super fascinating than just the other one I'll mention is that when you ask people to say why they're proud of identities and they have done this on national and state when people talk about national they actually tend to choose things that are somewhat political I'm proud of an American because I believe in freedom because I believe in equality because I believe in and when you ask them about why they're proud of where they're from more regionally they tend to use Geographic things I'm a I'm proud to be a California because we have cool beaches and it's sunny unlike here and and so and so like even that has receded in terms of understanding that as an identity that has values in it as opposed to geographic features yeah yeah that's really interesting when what happens when you go is that true even at the level of like if I say I'm really proud to be from Queens when I were never treated even beyond below the state identity what am i you am i you am i appealing to two features or am i being the values of death i don't know it's a great question yeah but what yeah I don't know what the values of Queens specifically are you know I'm just talking in general though if I'm talking about my town yeah I mean I can imagine a moment in the 18th century where if I said where are you from you would have said the town you wouldn't have said that you were Virginian you would have said out that you were up yeah I you know a Richmond and whatever that particular you know I always do this in Canadians I always say I'm from Canada because I just assumed that no one in America if I say I'm from you know Waterloo everyone will think I'm from Iowa or are you from Waterloo I'm from I'm from does that have meaning for you no I just did not know there was a Waterloo Canada well I'm fascinated remember when you had a blackberry what do you think that was made Waterloo University of Waterloo I didn't have a black baby just go yes we had our brief moment in the Sun some we're almost done I wanted to point out there was a great glaring exception to this principle which I observed when I was on my book tour which is when you're doing you know at some times when you're doing these events they pass the mic around and to people and you know you say over here and by person ask a question and you're always obliged as the person on stage to move around mm-hmm pick someone from the left so I'm from the middle of which of course is nonsense all right like why does it matter and it's because in the short time people have been in the audience they have assumed an identity based on where they are in that's actually a great point that he feels so delighted yes if you don't ask anyone from the left they're like what's going you some problem with the left I will say when you all read the book that is a very relevant point to the chapter about Henry toss well yes yes that's right that's a we will well that we'll leave that I think that this is I think our time is up we don't until let's get a couple questions we did not do like many questions well I you asked I did ask one I massage it a little bit how about this is there any level of polarization you can imagine that would make it impossible for us to continue as a single country absolutely I mean we almost had it that's what the Civil War was I don't mean that glibly I mean I think it's actually important to say polarization isn't new it's not the first time we've had it you can have much more than this and it can be much more dangerous the thing I will give you my scary thought please do a slight corrective in the Civil War what's I don't know a lot about it the little reading that go on and on it though what's that go on the little reading that I've done on it though I'm always struck by the extent to which that thing which comes up in someone that you know families were pitted against each other for no they found them you know you found yourself fighting for the north against your cousins who happen to be in the south or there was a I remember reading about the Battle of Chancellorsville and the the north is on the north side of Reb of the Rappahannock and the south southern army is on the south side of the Rappahannock and they're like dug in there for like weeks and weeks and weeks and nothing's happening and they're they start a trade where the the southerners will send tobacco across the river to the north and the north will send I forgot what it is something to the guys in the south and then they would sing songs on either side and and like you realize like at that level they were polarized they were like you mean like that there was this kind of most of the people fighting for the south we're not slave owners they were people who were this I think goes to what we were talking about earlier and I think it's actually an important point to say polarization is in a fractal phenomenon it's not something where if you keep looking at it at smaller and smaller scales it exhibits the same characteristics it's internally contradictory it changes it's you know you're polarized north and south but then as you say if you met you know people from the two armies like mad they were not polarized so political polarization can go way up in very very dangerous ways even as the countries and polarized on key things but I don't I'm struggling I don't think the level of polarization is too goes to the question the kind of polarization that we're seeing now is not like the kind of polarization we saw in the civil war that struck me as a kind of there was a civil war on some level was about a the the inability of the political system to handle the inherent contradiction and the founding of America we don't have we've solved that inherent contradiction now we're on a different kind of on a different kind of problem I mean I would I don't think we are going to have a civil war over slavery I agree that we're not going to be politically polarized over that I hope not but I think the place where political polarization gets very dangerous or one of the places it can get very dangerous is that it creates it organizes around conflicts that it can keep the political system itself from solving our political system is not work well omits polarization because majorities can't govern polarization makes it very hard to get the bipartisanship you need to govern so the kind of scary example I will give is if you imagine the fractures of just mid twentieth century America that nineteen like think about just 1968 you imagine that level of violence if you imagine those assassinations if you imagine they're very fundamental questions being asked but you imagine it in this political system where they all organized by party I'm not saying that tears apart I'm not saying we go into civil war but I am saying that is where I imagine things beginning to look very bad yeah and you know it's not like countries don't last forever I mean at some point something that happened and so I do think we should worry about it is a distinctive thing about America that is able to make tremendous progress on civil rights in the 60s because the race had kept America from being polarized for period and doing something like civil rights would repolarize it it needed that depolarized period for the civil rights act to pass and I think that's like an interesting contradiction it was depolarization that permitted it and in doing that in spending that depolarization on the Civil Rights Act the cost was polarization it was a price worth paying and I think it's something we can manage but but polarization plus a political system that does not work amidst polarization is a very dangerous structure and it's why no other system that works like ours has a hundred year history of constitutional continuity or more we are the only ones who have made that work it's because our system collapses in it's polarization and one of the organs probably made it work is we weren't polarized for a long time which is a scary thing to think for our future what which what and one lesson that we really do have to wrap up but it does that suggest though that this was a thought I had when reading your book that there is that there is a natural end point to this cycle that you're describing which is that all of the demographic trends point to a ascendant Democratic Party majority so maybe what happened maybe our way out of it is that you know Republicans are much older immigration trends are towards the Democrats Texas is gonna be democratic really soon you know when that point doesn't when you get a when you get a can't we reset around the Democratic Party within a generation I think that the I think the most optimistic story to tell is that California story California looked a lot like the national complex we're having a generation ago Pete Wilson prop 187 it was very similar arguments and not exactly similar people but you had some the same but the demographic changed swamped that and now you can't have a political party in California that is anti-immigrant in that way that dozen at least nod towards diversity and inclusion the like the positive path is California the negative path is disenfranchisement which is a political party that does hold a lot of power that feels itself losing begins changing the system you have things like the Supreme Court decision on public sector unions there are you know you've seen in North Carolina specifically a lot of Republicans have lost gubernatorial power trying to change the Constitution so they keep power anyway the demographic change just kind of solving some of these problems and making this system reflect it's majorities more than it does now that's a good outcome and majorities changing the system so that the political minority that holds political power changing the system so majorities cannot take political power is the scary legitimacy crisis out yeah the the former of those two possibilities the most elegant way I've heard to describe it his comes from the Charlemagne to God you know the host of The Breakfast Club who described the Trump administration as the white guy's Hail Mary something do it on that note Ezra thank you very much you've written a fascinating book thank you all for coming you

Channel: 92nd Street Y

Views: 117,410

Rating: 4.5625 out of 5

Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y, malcolm gladwell, ezra klein, vox, why we're polarized, politics, political polarization, sociology, joe rogan, Jordan Peterson

Id: H1PA7mOhQ4Y

Length: 71min 6sec (4266 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/HangryHenry]

Here are all the parts I think this sub might find interesting:

Joe Rogan (34 min) - They discuss him in general and his endorsement of Bernie Sanders.

https://youtu.be/H1PA7mOhQ4Y?t=2045

Jordan Peterson (37min 15sec)

https://youtu.be/H1PA7mOhQ4Y?t=2231

Ezra's Overall Opinion of Jordan Peterson & IDW & Sam Harris (39min 50sec)

https://youtu.be/H1PA7mOhQ4Y?t=2388

Are humans rational? (48min50sec) - We can be rational but you also have to consider what the system around the person is structured to push the person to rationalize.

https://youtu.be/H1PA7mOhQ4Y?t=2932

We should ask each other what do you believe is true that most other people do not? (50min50sec) - Ezra Klein answers veganism.

https://youtu.be/H1PA7mOhQ4Y?t=3051

[u/browntollio]

Wow. I find myself agreeing with Klein on the veganism point and disgusted by Gladwell’s response.

Let me guess MG sources all of his meat from local grass fed free range organic non gmo sources where they are ethically humanely slaughtered.

Just so happens his food has zero environmental or human impact as his beef doesn’t produce methane, the feces of his pork doesn’t enter the water table, and his chicken has zero antibiotics

[u/[deleted]]

I think you're mixing it up. It was Gladwell who was fascinated by Peterson and thought their four hour exchange years ago was the "most fascinating" four hours of his life. Very strange to hear.

[u/Odojas]

Ezra fan sub now.

[u/Ben--Affleck]

They're not wrong about Peterson. I think that's quite accurate. And as Malcolm explains, context matters a lot here. Canada is generally a lot more liberal than the US, and universities, well, it's verging on a far left cult. I'm scared that people within their little bubbles extrapolate their situations to places they've never been to. SJWs are a massive problem in education. But once you escape that world, that problem will pale in comparison to the economic woes brought on by a winner take all economy. Heck, here in Canada, you can see a massive cultural difference between the rural and urban areas. It's not a contradiction to believe there's rampant pro white racism and anti-white racism in the same country. Which is relevant will just depend on where you're standing.

[u/Franco187]

At 54:20 Gladwell tells the story of him sleeping in a "haunted" room and hearing a ghost playing the guitar at night. Not sure what to make of that story.