Welcome at Crystal Kagan to Crystal Island friends. Today we're going to be talking to

Zed Gilani. I'm actually really interested in having this conversation because

Zed is a really interesting character to me. He was somebody who used to work for Think Progress,

back when Think Progress did great work. They no longer exist by the way, but there was a period where

they sucked. But when he was there in the golden era, right?

Right. So he was a great reporter back then, pretty committed lefty. And then what happened to him recently is really interesting he had a

moment where he sort of started flirting with or just outright was a variety of

like anti-establishment right-winger and then in recent times he actually sort of has come back home to the left

It's been really interesting watching his evolution over time and and like he's one of those people were

I take him at his word throughout the whole thing

it wasn't like he was ever grifting or like trying to find an angle he just

genuinely felt certain ways at different times. I think that one of the throughlines you could

say I'm interested to hear you know his perspective on this one of the through lines you could say I'm interested to hear you know his

perspective on this one of the through lines you can see is he's like very deeply

opposed to sectarianism so when you had this like you know the rise of the quote unquote

woke ideology that had this these very sectarian

elements I think he was deeply genuinely opposed to that and now that you see like the

most sectarian possible viewpoints coming from the pro-Israel right and democratic

establishment. I think he also is like deeply repulsed by that.

Yeah, so there's a lot of interesting stuff that we're going to talk to him about.

I'm excited for it.

But before we get into that, who man.

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