From New York Times opinion, I'm Ross Douthan. And this is Interesting Times. This week, I'm joined by my colleague, Ezra Klein.

Ezra, welcome to Interesting Times.

Thank you for having me.

You're very welcome.

Sitting on this side of the table is unnerving for me.

It changes the experience.

Yeah, it's like being on the wrong side of the bed at home.

It's, listen, you know, it's a game-changing experience, but you will be better for it.

So we're talking in the week after the assassination of Charlie Kirk,

and we're talking the day after, the vice president of the United States,

hosting Kirk's show, gave a kind of impassioned speech about how he thinks that the American left is more likely to either excuse violence or delight in the deaths of its political enemies than the right.

Justice, and importantly, we have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement

of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years,

and I believe is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin's bullet war.

And I'm not sure that's the right way of looking at this moment,

but it connects to something

that I do think, which is that there is a problem of pessimism and despair from my perspective

on the American left right now that hasn't been there to the same extent for most of my life and career.

So I'm wondering if you see it that way, if you see a lot of progressive despair out there.

I think that there has been a kind of evaporation of a bright horizon

in liberal thought, in a lot of left thought.

I think that it has become about averting different kinds of calamities.

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