And now from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, the Act Spiles, with your host, David Axelrod.

When you think about the imaginative, creative young thinkers in the conservative world in our country today,

one of the first names you think of is Rehan Salam.

Rehan is the executive editor of the National Review. He's a columnist at Slate.

He's a contributing editor at National Fairs, a fellow at the National Review Institute.

And an incredibly fertile mind, and I'd say all these things even if he didn't graduate from the same high school I did,

I had a chance to sit down with Rehan who's been a fellow at the Institute of Politics.

We covered a lot of ground from the election of 2016 to the problem of economic mobility and institutionalized poverty in this country.

Rehan Salam, your son of immigrants. I'm the son of immigrants.

Yours from Bangladesh, mine from Eastern Europe. You're a native of New York City. I'm a native of New York City.

You both went to the same high school. You're a graduate of Stuyveson High School. I'm a graduate of Stuyveson High School.

But I'm a liberal and you're a conservative. What the hell happened to you?

I suppose I was always a bit of a contrarian. And when I was a teenager, I met some students who came from families very different from mine.

I grew up in a household that was liberal, not in any active kind of way, but in kind of a reflexive way.

I actually learned much later in life that my mother was less liberal than I had always assumed. But I grew up in this very liberal milieu.

And when I was a teenager, I met people.

What part of New York were you?

I grew up in Brooklyn. I grew up in Kensington from nine until I left home for college. And I grew up in a baroque park.

I grew up in a neighborhood that has changed quite a lot. I mean, all of New York City is different than I was getting.

Well, Brooklyn is particular. And particularly these kind of ethnic, out-of-bro neighborhoods.

There's been more change than you assume. Because what you read about in the papers is the kind of gender-fying neighborhoods, brownstone, Brooklyn.

But actually, further out, I mean, in a way that's been just as much change if not more of a different kind.

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