Hi, I'm Annamarie Cox and welcome to With Friends Like These, a podcast about difficult

conversations.

And you know what, this week's conversation is actually a little bit more difficult

for me than last week's.

Even though my guest, I rematisone, as someone who I probably agree with on almost any policy

you could name.

But ideological and policy differences are not the only differences we have in the society

and sometimes they're not even the most important differences.

And sometimes the differences we don't talk about with our friends are the ones that deserve

the most attention.

So Ira was good enough to sit down with me for a little while and bear with my massive

discomfort about some of this stuff.

And I hope you appreciate his patience as much as I did.

That conversation coming right up.

So welcome Ira Madison III.

Thank you for having me.

At Ira on Twitter, we were just talking about how lucky you are or not lucky.

It was a business negotiation for you to get at Ira.

It was.

Okay.

You're a culture writer at MTV News and you write a lot about movies.

I do.

...