Hi, I'm Anna Marie Cox. Welcome to With Friends Like These. It's an actual friend this week.

My friend Ezra Klein, who in his official bio, I note it says born in 1984.

He is an American journalist, blogger, and political commentator. And he co-founded Vox,

where he's currently an editor at large. You may recognize his name from his general pun

to tree, but also he has a best-selling book on the New York Times best-seller list right now.

It is called Why We're Polarized. And he will be here to talk about that

and unconditional love in just a minute.

Ezra, hi. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Ravenbanks. Pleasure to be here.

Well, it is a pleasure to talk to you. It's been it's been many a moon since we actually spoke.

I guess this isn't even face to face, but it's, you know, in real time, not mediated by a social media,

you know, conglomerate of some kind. I think we spoke last face to face when I came into your

studio. I want to say it was like it's slayed or in Dupont somewhere when you're doing an

air America show. Is it possible recollection? Yes. Yes. That and that was, whoa, that was that was

like maybe 10 years ago. Yeah, it's a minute ago. Wow. But of course, I've kept track of you. So,

I know you wrote this book, but a lot of people know you wrote this book. Congratulations on being

a New York Times bestseller. Thank you. And obviously, people want to know. People want to know the

answer to the question posed by your title, why we're polarized. Well, actually, that's not a question.

You you you report to tell us why we're polarized. So, I mean, I kind of want to start with the

answer. As I'm like I said, sure, many people want to know. But first, why did you want to write this?

I'm not sure I did want to write it, to be honest. I sold the book here seven, six years ago,

something like that. I think it was in 2012. Wow. And then I put it down for a long time. And it was

a somewhat different book then. But in both cases, it was very substantially about polarization,

...