Ezra Klein on Why We're Polarized

Conversations with Tyler

Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2020

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In his new book, Ezra Klein argues that polarization in America has become centered on partisan political identities, which has subsumed virtually every form of identity, be it where we live, what team we root for, the church we attend, or any other. This stacked form of polarization thus carries much more weight and is activated by a wider range of conflicts than before.

But is polarization really such a pressing concern? If it's all merged into one form of identity politics then aren't we just polarizing more efficiently? Over what percentage of GDP are we more polarized today versus in the past?

Tyler posed these questions to Ezra and more, including thoughts on Silicon Valley's intellectual culture, his disagreement with Jonathan Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory, the limits of telecommuting, how becoming a father made him less conservative, his post-kid production function, why Manhattan is overrated, the "cosmic embarrassment" of California's governance, why he loved Marriage Story, the future of the BBC and PBS, what he learned in Pakistan, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded December 27th, 2019

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Transcript

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0:56.0	with Tyler.com.
1:03.0	Today we are here with Ezra, which of course means Ezra Klein.
1:06.8	Ezra is editor at large at Vox.
1:09.5	He has a new book out which I like very much called Why Were Polarized?
1:13.8	And he too runs his own podcast called Believe It or Not, The Ezra Klein Show.
1:18.3	Ezra, welcome.
1:19.3	Pleasure to be here.
1:20.3	So let's start right in on polarization.
1:22.5	Are American religions more polarized than they used to be?
1:26.8	Religious.
1:27.8	Catholics hating the Protestants vice versa.
1:30.2	I doubt it.
	...

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