Can We Move Past The Culture Wars? Quillette's Jonathan Kay On "Other Interests"

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 7 March 2022

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Editor, journalist and podcaster Jonathan Kay is the author of several books, has worked as an editor and columnist at the Canadian newspaper The National Post and is currently the Canadian editor of Quillette, a digital publication founded in 2015 as a haven for what Jonathan has called "ideological refugees. In this interview, he talks with Meghan about a range of topics, including a question Meghan has been pondering a lot lately: What is a conservative? Though you wouldn't necessarily know it from his work over the last several years, Jonathan has spent much of his life identifying as a conservative. (His mother, the columnist Barbara Kay, has been a high profile conservative figure in Canada for decades.) He talked about what terms like "conservative" and "liberal" even mean in the post-Trump era, why he thinks political correctness hurts people on the left far more on the right and why he's losing interest in culture war topics and would rather focus on subjects like ancient history. Most of all, he talks about why it's time for "heterodox" thinkers to stop obsessing about culture war issues and pursue other interests.

Guest Bio:

Jonathan Kay is Canadian Editor of Quillette, a TedX speaker, an op-ed writer at National Post, and co-host of the Quillette podcast. His freelance work has appeared recently in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Gotham, Canadian Jewish News, and other publications. Kay's books include Among The Truthers (2011), Legacy: How French Canadians Shaped North America (2016), Your Move: What Board Games Teach Us About Life (2019), Panics and Persecutions (2020), and Magic In The Dark: One Family's Century Of Adventures In The Movie Business (2022). Follow him on Twitter at @jonkay.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's absolutely true that Quillette made its name as a liberal site that pushed back against the excesses of progressive ideology.
0:12.0	But there are now other sites that do that, right?
0:14.7	There's unheard and there's the skeptic and there's like your podcast.
0:18.4	And, you know, it's a a great niche but there's other people
0:24.0	doing which i think is great uh you know things were lonely there for a while and and also just
0:29.0	the people who work we have other interests like i lately have become interested fascinated by ancient
0:34.1	history and i got like behind me i got like a dozen new books from university presses that I'm dying to excerpt about things like there's a new history of the Phoenicians. I don't think there's a culture war tie-in for the Phoenicians, but I think...
0:48.3	This would be a great parlor game. Somebody needs to invent this. This is like, it just named the most random thing. And I bet
0:56.1	somebody could find a culture war. Yeah. Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host,
1:04.3	Megan Downe. My guest is Canadian editor, journalist, and podcaster Jonathan Kay. Throughout his career, he has written several books
1:13.1	and worked in places like the Canadian newspaper, The National Post. He is currently
1:17.9	Canadian editor of Quillette, a digital publication that was founded in 2015 as a haven for
1:25.2	what John has called ideological refugees. Quillette has been maligned by some on the
1:31.7	left, unfairly, in my opinion, as alt-right adjacent, even as it skews pretty solidly, or at least
1:39.7	classically liberal, and increasingly veers away from culture war topics.
1:45.0	And we talk a lot about that in this interview.
1:47.7	But before we get to the interview, I have a few items of business.
1:51.8	The first is that my next personal essay and memoir masterclass on Zoom will take place April 4th through May 23rd. It will run for eight consecutive Mondays
2:05.0	from 3 to 6 p.m. Eastern Time. The last class just wrapped up, and I have to say, it was a spectacular
2:12.2	group. This format is working extremely well. These classes are small, no more than 12 people, and there are a few students returning,
2:21.0	but I am taking applications until March 18th.
2:24.9	So if this interests you, you can go to Daummasterclass.com and find out more about it.
	...

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