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Impeachment, Explained

Jill Lepore on what I get wrong

Impeachment, Explained

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, Daily News, News Commentary

4.81.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2020

⏱️ 82 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jill Lepore is a Harvard historian, a New Yorker contributor, the author of These Truths, and one of my favorite past guests on this show. But in this episode, the tables are turned: I’m in the hot seat, and Lepore has some questions. Hard ones. This is, easily, the toughest interview on my book so far. Lepore isn’t quibbling over my solutions or pointing out a contrary study — what she challenges are the premises, epistemology, and meta-structure that form the foundation of my book, and much of my work. Her question, in short, is: What if social science itself is too crude to be a useful way of understanding the political world? But that’s what makes this conversation great. We discuss whether all political science research on polarization might be completely wrong, why (and whether) my book is devoid of individual or institutional “villains,” and whether I am morally obliged to delete my Twitter account, in addition to the missing party in American politics, why I mistrust historical narratives, media polarization, and much more. This is, on one level, a conversation about Why We’re Polarized. But on a deeper level, it’s about different modes of knowledge and whether we can trust them. New to the show? Want to listen to Ezra's favorite episodes? Check out The Ezra Klein Show beginner's guide. My book is available at www.EzraKlein.com. The “Why We’re Polarized” tour continues, with events in Portland, Seattle, Austin, Nashville, Chicago, and Greenville. Go to WhyWerePolarized.com for the full schedule! Want to contact the show? Reach out at [email protected] Credits: Producer - Jeff Geld Researcher - Roge Karma Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're going to Hello impeachment

0:27.2

explained listeners.

0:28.2

I'm sorry the podcast is over which impeachment itself had been a somewhat less depressing dive into the underbelly of the American political system.

0:36.4

But something I've said here quite often was that this was a show about impeachment that was in truth,

0:41.6

the show about polarization, because impeachment became a lens on political

0:45.4

polarization and the ways in which it is challenging and frustrating and

0:49.6

reshaping the way our political system works.

0:53.6

Over at my main podcast, the Ezra Cline Show,

0:55.8

where I do interviews on all kinds of things.

0:58.4

I've been exploring polarization a little bit more directly.

1:00.6

A lot of you will know I just brought out a book called Why We're Polarized and I've been having folks come on either as part of my live tour or just onto the show itself to talk about the book about polarization about what I get wrong about what we can see and understand in this moment by looking at the

1:16.0

past and one of the episodes I've done that I really loved was with Jill

1:19.1

LePore. You may know Jill. She's a Harvard historian, she wrote the amazing one-volume history of the

1:25.0

U.S. called These Truths. She writes for the New Yorker, of course. She's a favorite guest of

1:29.2

mind from the past, and she came on the show and did an interview with me that really pulled no punches.

1:34.4

It was very much about this question of,

1:36.4

but what if this whole way of knowing things about American politics is wrong?

1:39.5

What if social science itself cannot be trusted?

1:42.2

I think it's a great exploration of both

1:44.0

polarization as a question which you can see in that podcast and in a lot of other ones

1:47.7

I've been doing over there but also that one was just a fun way of

1:51.3

contesting different kinds of knowledge against each other and I think if you

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