Hello there. This is Mark Bowerline with another conversation.

Before we get to it, a word about our sponsor.

The University of Dallas is a premier Catholic liberal arts institution, renowned for its rigorous core curriculum and thriving graduate programs.

Careers in ministry, teaching, business, humanities, and science are formed here.

With campuses in Texas and Rome, Italy, students begin their pursuit of a life well-lived.

We have two alums of Dallas here at First things on staff, and they are both superb.

For more information on the University of Dallas, visit Udallas.edu.

That's Udallas.edu.

Josiah Ober is professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

His books are The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece, Democracy and Knowledge, Innovation and Learning

in Classical Athens. The Greeks and the Rational, the Discovery of Practical classical Greece, democracy and knowledge, innovation and learning, and classical Athens,

the Greeks and the Rational, the discovery of practical reason, and a new book co-authored with

Northwestern Professor Brooke Manville on a timely subject, The Civic Bargain, How Democracy

Survives. That's our topic today. Welcome, Professor Ober.

Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here. You begin with a sad fact about the United States

that we are at the moment in a state of, quote, democratic pessimism. A lot of negativity

out there about U.S. democratic institutions.

Why, I know this is a huge question, but if you want to give us a capsule, why this dark civic mood right now?

I think, Mark, that the dark mood in the country is, at least in part, because we have polarized

in a very particular kind of way.

Obviously, there's the left-right blue-red polarization, but I think we've also really

polarized in terms of what people think is the

...