Welcome to the weekend bowl work podcast. I'm Charlie Sachs. I thought we take another

break from Trumpism and the shambala clown car what's happening on Congress

to talk about other issues that are marginally less controversial.

No, not really, actually.

There is a new book out next week.

It is the identity trap by our good

friend Yasherunk and it's going to generate an awful lot of buzz because he goes

at the whole question of illiberalism from the left and wokism from the left but from a

center left perspective and so yasha first of all welcome to the podcast thank you so

much Charlie okay we got to do a little bit of the hype because you have some of the best blurbs.

I got this book in the mail about a month ago and I'm driving in the car and I'm reading some of it to my wife.

This is Jonathan Haight, who writes, America's academic, cultural, and

political institutions went insane beginning around 2014. And I've been trying to

figure out why ever since. In this new book, the identity trap, Yashamung, explains how a few

powerfully bad ideas propelled to institutions by people with good intentions are causing

systemic dysfunction and dangerous

polarization. This is among the most insightful and important books

written in the last decade on American democracy and its current torments

because it also shows us a way out of the trap.

Okay, David French, New York Times columnist, regular on this podcast.

In this indispensable book, Yashermunk, proposes an alternative to the ceaseless combat between

woke and anti-woke extremes, one that takes seriously the enduring malignant legacy of

...