Welcome to one of our ask me anything

episodes. I'm here joined by our

fantastic executive producer Claire

Gordon who has sharpened all of your

questions into like darts she will throw

at me first and answer.

>> [laughter]

>> Um but we appreciate everything you all

send in. We have tried to look at the

questions to see which ones were the

most common, which seemed to have the

most interest. And we're going to get

started. Claire, welcome to the other

side of the show.

>> Uh thank you. Thank you for having me.

Um it's uncomfortable to be here.

>> [laughter]

>> Um

we will be getting to the question

everyone's mind which is the secret

society you're a member of, dialogue.

>> When have When have I spoken to Peter

Thiel and what did we say?

>> Exactly. [laughter]

Um but first,

>> [snorts]

>> this is from Scott K who's noticed that

you seem to have a very intense

relationship with electronic music as we

all have. Quote, is musicianship

something you've ever been drawn to? You

are clearly not a passive listener. What

does music do to your craft? And why do

you think you feel so at home in such a

specific genre of music?

>> Mm. Um musicianship is not something

I've been highly drawn to, but I did for

the first time ever recently take a

singing lesson.

>> Really?

>> And it was such a beautiful experience

because I've never felt I can sing at

all.

And it's been

the fact that I make my living a part

now on my voice is

surprising cuz it was always the way I

speak and how I sound has always been

like a point of real insecurity for me

when I was growing up particularly.

>> No, like how you thought you sounded

like what about it?

>> A lot about it. Um without letting

people into my private insecurities. Uh

but um but it's really amazing to take a

singing lesson and I'd always thought I

could not ever find a like a tune or a

note. And it turned out I could. I was

just wrong about that about myself which

was a a cool thing to learn.

Uh I played the flute a bit when I was

young, but you know, as a kid.

I tried to learn the guitar when I lived

in DC as an adult and I loved doing

that. I loved it. I should really pick

it back up.

>> Like pulling it out at parties.

>> Playing Crash into me for women.

No, I did not play in front of other

people.

But the guy who's teaching me was just

hungover too often to come. And so it

kind of like just filtered out.

I I'd like to learn something. I

wouldn't try to learn how to do

electronic music.

I

It is a

This show in particular can colonize

like everything I love. You know, I can

read a great novel and then it's like,

well, we should have the novelist on the

show.

And I think it's good to be an

appreciator of some things and not try

to make them another thing you're

learning how to do. I have

in my life like an excess of energy that

is oriented towards productivity,

accomplishment, doing

being angry at myself for not doing

things well enough or not doing enough

of them. And so having spaces where

I am an experiencer not a creator

is important for me.

I don't really know how to answer why I

feel at home in it.

Uh

It just is the music. I mean, I've been

listening to

Oh my god, it's so good, but it's so

such an even hard album to tell people

how to find. So Four Tet, who's an

amazing producer,

has an alias

that is entirely composed out of

Wingdings.

Like I recognize how this sounds.

So he's got this new album out, but both

the artist on the album and every song

on the album cannot be pronounced or

even searched, but you can find it on

platforms by searching Four Tet.

>> But it means 9/11 was an inside job.

>> [laughter]

>> It means Azar Klein and Peter Thiel are

in a secret society.

Um and

I just love the album. I've actually two

experiences like this on the show. One

with um Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and another

with Brian Eno

talking to them about

individually a song they had done. Um

for Tweedy, Impossible Germany, I think

it's called.

>> [music]

>> Impossible [singing] Germany

Unlikely [music]

[singing] Japan

>> And for, you know, Come On with Fred

again.

>> To a place [music] that's only ours

>> And learning that the incredibly, like,

intense experience I had with that music

was

totally different than the way they

understood that music.

And I find that really beautiful.

And so

whatever my experience is with music I

like here, it's just mine.

It's not I think legible. Other people

don't have the same one.

But why these songs do the the set of

things to me, the ones that I like,

which is not all of them. I mean,

there's a lot of

There's both a lot of bad electronic

music, but also a lot of electronic

music that just

doesn't do it for me.

Uh, and but I think it is a thing best

left illegible even to the self. Like,

there's a lot of art

that what you want to do is just

allow yourself to feel differently

and not

not try to pin the different feeling

like a butterfly to a board.

But, yeah, I

I feel at home in this music because it

makes me feel things I don't feel

elsewhere.

>> Happy?

>> [laughter]

>> No, often not. I don't actually go for

that much music that primarily makes me

feel happy.

In some ways, I think I use the music to

feel things I have more trouble feeling.

A lot of the music I like is a little

bit

discordant and difficult for me. Um, you

know, other people can experience it how

they experience it.

>> when you take out your headphones or I

actually hear it blasting from your

laptop, I'm like that's a choice. That's

a That's a choice [laughter] of vibe for

your Tuesday afternoon.

>> And I think the music holding very

contrasting emotions actually is

important for me

because the work I do often has to hold

very contrasting emotions.

There can be beauty and fear and anxiety

and hope and all these things at the

same time. And so

a lot of the music I go for

I mean, some of it I just used to calm

down my nervous system. I love Ólafur

Arnalds' work and most of it for me is

very soothing. So there's a lot of music

I do listen to that's soothing. Um my

wife is always like, "That's a really

sad." Really but like I don't find it

sad. I find it like sometimes a little

bit melancholy but in a way I enjoy and

then often times really, really calming

and really beautiful.

>> [music]

[music]

>> But then a lot of the music is

actually helping me hold things

that are hard to feel at the same time.

So that I can infuse the work I'm doing

with the kind of contradictory emotions

that it sometimes needs to have.

>> Wow.

>> [laughter]

>> Um

let's talk about the

the feedback to the Chris Rufo episode,

which um of our recent episodes like got

a lot got the got the most questions, um

the most comments.

>> Bifurcated feedback?

>> Bifurcated feedback. Um

so this question's from Jason

and it requires a little bit of setup.

I listened to your recent episode with

Chris Rufo. Then out of curiosity, I

went and listened to a few episodes of

his podcast, Rufo and Lomas. And one of

the episodes, Rufo reflected on his

conversation with you.

I found his interpretation of the

conversation wildly different from mine.

So I'm going to play two clips here.

Um and so the first clip, this is from

our episode with Chris Rufo. And I you

described Tucker Carlson as a white

nationalist.

Rufo then asked you to define white

nationalism, and this is what you said.

>> In some versions, Jews are included in

that white race, sure. In some versions,

they are not included in that white

race.

In some versions, we are talking about

something I would describe primarily as

a kind of nationalism, right? The

you know, if you have too much of a

country

not sharing a common heritage, you lose

solidarity.

In some cases, we're talking about

something much darker than that.

Right? There are people just don't like

the way their community is changing, and

there's the KKK. Right? Everything

exists on a spectrum.

>> But But would you say someone who is,

like, for example, hesitant about rapid,

large-scale demographic change is just a

kind of 1% white nationalist? Yeah,

because that would be like the majority

of the country.

>> Yes, I don't think it is a problem or

unfair

or even wrong to worry about large-scale

rapid demographic change.

>> And then here's Rufo's response.

>> A couple years ago, you would not hear a

prominent New York Times voice saying

that it is totally legitimate,

reasonable, and understandable to be

concerned about large-scale rapid

demographic change. I mean,

you know, that was a right-wing talking

point for many years, and the left-wing

uh criticism was that was the great

replacement theory, that was white

nationalism, that was KKK-style

uh white supremacy. And so, is this a

concession? Is this going to be the

left's uh kind of moderate left's or the

establishment left's new position moving

forward?

>> I'll also add that that episode of Rufo

and Lomas was called Ezra Klein admits

the New York Times was wrong on woke,

and the first two chapters on on YouTube

were called Ezra Klein's great

replacement moment, and what Ezra now

admits was once branded white

nationalism.

So, with all that set up, Jason's

question is it seemed that Rufo and

Lomas equated your statement with a full

endorsement of the great replacement

theory. To me, this is a ridiculous

misinterpretation of your point. Uh when

you have guests with broad platforms

like Rufo, do you engage with them after

an interview? And if so, how at all do

you respond if you feel that someone is

misrepresenting your position?

>> I don't for the most part. Um

I'll say a couple things here.

One is that a major thread of my

interview with Chris Rufo is that Rufo

is a propagandist. We begin with his

discussion of agitprop. And then a lot

of the conversation is me

unspooling with him the way he does

that.

And the consequences I think it has and

the way it often misrepresents and then

um worsens reality and has worsened the

political party that he's part of.

But I'm not thinking of like sit here

and be surprised that a person who is

like a proud

propagandist

um maybe the way he

responds to that interview is by

focusing on the parts he thinks he can

turn into propaganda.

I I did find that particular take, which

I actually saw from other people, too,

very surprising.

I have for many many many years and in

fact it's part of my first book Why

We're Polarized

not just believed but talked a lot about

how

the

immigration issue

gets sanitized as about economics.

But it is actually about people's

discomfort with demographic change.

I wrote a piece called White Threat in a

Browning America.

I think I've been very attentive for a

long time

to the fact that it is very politically

destabilizing

for the

nature of a place for who lives in it to

change really rapidly. And it has

changed on a

kind of generational level fairly

rapidly. So in the 1970s 4%ish 4.5% of

America was foreign-born.

Now it's around 15%. So it's went from

you know sort of a low to either it is

or it isn't your high.

>> [gasps]

>> I have read in a lot over the years

about how that is a major driver of what

Donald Trump is.

I do not believe and I just like I

cannot say this more flatly

um that it is a

normal

constant and legitimate dimension of

politics in a nation

for people to have views

on who lives in the community and how

it's changing.

I think great replacement theory is a

white nationalist theory.

The thing that I'm critiquing Rufo for

in that section is

footsie with Tucker Carlson at the time

when Tucker Carlson is offering all

these theories and then later on being

shocked that Tucker Carlson has gone as

far as he has. So I'm saying this was

all happening and you seemed perfectly

happy with the trend that it was on and

now you're like oh my god like how did

we end up with this conspiratorial

racialist right? And I'm saying it was

right there in front of you.

>> To follow up on that

I disagreed with Jason in his question

of saying

that Rufo was suggesting that you were

fully endorsing the great replacement

theory. He's saying that what you said

you believe is what people on the right

like him have been saying for years and

they have been branded white

nationalists for it.

>> It's hard for me to know like which

position Rufo is trying to ascribe to me

or even to the broader left here. But I

guess like the only thing I can say is I

think you can have normal concerns and

it's just a normal part of politics that

people notice and have views on when

their communities change. I think you

can do that without it being understood

as white nationalism. I think if you

brand that white nationalism or any kind

of um you know racial view

then you have basically taken a huge

amount of contestation in every nation

we know of

and tried to make it, you know,

politically unsayable. I have personally

never done that and have never believed

that's like a usable way to think about

politics.

Of course, you can then take that and

turn it into a white nationalist

version. And the white nationalist

version

is

there are

white people. They are the true builders

and inheritors

of our society.

The people coming in are genetically or

culturally inferior.

And that it is a threat to the

fundamental

success of our society to have it not

dominated by a certain percentage

of

ethnically, you know, your northern

European or something, um, descendants.

That to me is white nationalism. I think

it is very important

to be able to delineate these things. I

think it's important for the left. I

think it's important for the right. If

the right can't see the difference that

I'm talking about, then of course it's

not able to police white nationalism

because it wants to say there's no

difference in anything, which means you

cannot, like, see the thing you're

trying to look for.

>> The point that you said about it's,

you know,

reasonable to be worried about

large-scale rapid demographic change.

Why do you if and you've said that

several times before in the past going

back years, why do you think Rufo

expressed surprise at you saying it?

>> I I mean, I don't want to speculate on

why Rufo is pretending to be surprised.

>> You think he was

>> I think on that one he

I I again, I don't want to interpret him

for him. Um, I really try not to argue

with guests after they've left the the

room.

Um,

I actually don't even think my views on

immigration are that different than

they've ever been.

The Democratic Party has definitely

moved on immigration. It shot really far

left in 2020,

you know, with Julián Castro pushing the

primary field to raise their hands or

the you know the debate moderators

pushing them to raise their hands around

Julio Castro's argument that

illegal immigration should be

um decriminalized.

That the movement across the border

should be decriminalized.

And I think even many of the people on

that stage would agree with the way I am

talking about immigration, but at that

point they were not willing to stand up

to parts of their party that were

one very very appropriately angry at the

cruelty Trump showed towards immigrants.

But also were trying to make an argument

that pretty normal views on immigration

that most Americans held were

on some level racist.

I just

think that happened before, right? And I

don't think it's about I don't think

that the concession there actually had

to do with whether or not it's

legitimate to worry about or have

feelings about change inside of

community. I think the concession there

from the left

which in general was a mistake it was

making in 2020 and we certainly did

episodes on this like you know going

into the next election

is that order is very very important to

people.

And if what they feel

is that when you are in power

the world is disordered

that prices are out of control

that all of a sudden there are migrants

everywhere, you know, on the subways in

New York selling candy and like putting

aside how much immigration there is, is

it orderly? Is the border like

controlled?

>> So Jason in that question, I mean he was

he was defending you against um what he

thought was Rufo uh

sort of twisting what you said.

We did get some feedback that was

critical of you and Rufo.

And specifically people feeling like you

didn't push back enough. Uh this is

Matthew W.

How do you decide, especially in the

moment, when to push back on a guest

versus let a claim go?

>> I come into episodes typically

with a

broad structure I want to be able to to

tease out.

And

I try to let people talk. I'm having

people on so you can hear what they

think and you can come to your own

judgments. Again, I push back on people

when I think it serves the episode.

When I think you don't know what they

think yet. When I think what they think

is not clear. When I think what they

think has not been tested.

But if it begins to fail some set of

that tests, right? And And sometimes I

can't test it in the moment because I'm

trying to go somewhere else and that's

going to take us down a a path for 25

minutes and we don't have that 25

minutes.

>> Yeah, I mean the episode was already 2

hours.

>> So I just don't

>> And I think And if people like didn't

listen to it or didn't make it to the

end, I would recommend making it to the

end because it it's very revealing.

>> We We were saying at the beginning we

got very bifurcated feedback on Rufo.

And you know, from my perspective there

was feedback that like really saw like

what the structure of that episode was

and the way things were playing against

each other and people who

their interpretation of it was different

from mine.

But that's also I think okay. Like I try

to keep the episodes from becoming

so legible that there is not room for

independent thought. I have a lot of

faith and trust in the audience.

And

even where I understand there's going to

be like a contested interpretation of

something,

I'm trying to create something here

where you can have contested

interpretations of it because it's

supposed to be a space for you to think

in,

not for me to tell you what to think. I

write columns. I write books. I

occasionally do like essays on the show.

When I want to tell you what to think or

try to persuade you of what I think, I

do that.

I don't want this show to be that. Like

I think that there is a tremendous

amount of very didactic

work out there.

And I think Twitter and social media in

general has made it much worse where

it's like people

they've gotten used to every time

something is bad

or

somebody coming in telling them, "And

just to be clear, what you just heard is

bad and you should be a bit like I don't

I don't think that makes people smarter,

richer. And also, one thing I I try to

leave room for is that

people legitimately come to things with

different values and different

interpretations and they should be able

to see different things in the same

episode.

I think that episode

is really good.

And I think that if you

follow it through its entire arc

around corruption

around what is turning the right into

this racialist right that he seems

concerned about on his own show.

I think there is

both like an argument being made there

and a thing being revealed there that to

me worked really well.

But I'm not going to tell you if it

worked for you, right? If you don't like

the episode, you don't like the episode.

You know, Tyler Cowen has a line. I

don't know if he still says it before

his episodes, but he often says before

them,

"This is a conversation I want to have

with this person, not necessarily the

conversation you want me to have with

this person."

And I think there's a truth to that.

Um there are episodes that from my

perspective go totally off the rails or

they end up as something totally

different than what I thought they were

going to be.

That's not the case for that one.

So, again, I don't want to break my own

rules here and go like point by point

and tell you what I think you should

think of it.

But I can tell you that

if you're not a subscriber to the New

York Times, we have some news for you.

You can now explore the Times for free

without any paywalls at all during your

first month in the New York Times app.

>> Uh this is from Kevin T.

I'm a listener going back well into the

Vox days. I love your show because while

you were definitely to the left of me on

some things, I think you're a solid guy.

You operate in good faith. You're not a

bullshitter.

I'm wondering if over the years you've

come to see any of your more woke

positions as mistaken. E.g. your

infamous Vox article from the Me Too era

where you suggested that it might not be

so ultimately bad if some men were

falsely accused of things if it led to

progress. Parentheses, feel free to

quibble with this interpretation if you

like. I'm sure you will. Uh, or your

conflict with Sam Harris who I'm closer

to ideologically. Um, in this space in

particular, identitarianism, wokeness,

or whatever you want to call it, are

there any positions you've changed your

mind on in the last 5 to 10 years?

>> I would quibble with that description.

There's a that's a piece about

affirmative consent rules in colleges.

Um, and I would probably quibble with

that view of it. Like it's not that I

think it's good for people to be falsely

accused of things.

I guess like to the broad question being

asked here, I often see people ascribing

a lot of movement to me on all of this

and I actually

>> Yeah, this is this has become a thing

that people are saying about you.

>> get it, but I my positions to me haven't

changed that much. I think probably what

gets emphasized has a little bit. Um,

but here's what I'd say. I think that if

I could go back,

there's probably two things that I was

less alert to

than I am now.

One is that

an argument you would often hear people

make

and that I probably made somewhat

had to do with

well, there's no First Amendment right

to amplification on Twitter or Facebook

or something like that. Right? That if

it's not something that is affecting

like the actual legal system

or government policy,

uh,

you don't need to worry about it all

that much.

>> Like the mob yelling at Twitter or being

shadow banned because you said something

that like was like hate hate speech.

>> And I cultural power like that is I

didn't think it was totally unmeaningful

at the time. I mean, one thing you'll

see in my 10 year box, we never fired

anybody for speech. Never happened.

Right? I like I wrote pieces in that era

about

like the difference between in my view

cancel culture, which I always thought

was like a poorly defined thing, and

cancel behavior, which I thought was

very real. Which is people acting in a

way

that was going to lead to people losing

their jobs. Now, they only lost their

jobs when it combined with power.

And something that I tried to be alert

to then, and I still believe now,

is that a lot of things where people

were saying what they cared about was

free speech, what they cared about was

power and losing power. And I think the

Trump administration has proven me 100%

right on that.

100%.

That Donald Trump and all these people

came in saying they were going to

restore free speech, and they did

nothing of the kind. In fact, they've

used state power

more aggressively than Democrats ever

did

to chill speech, to punish people for

speech, to scare people, to deport

people.

So,

one thing that I just got into a lot of

fights about, and it put me like in the

way people categorize my opinions like

very much on the woke side, was like

there is a big fight over power here.

And

>> But and there's a real threat to free

speech here.

>> But I do think that the people who are

arguing that um

the way that power is being deployed on

platforms, and you know, in spaces like

colleges, that it was fundamentally

illiberal,

and that it wasn't going to be contained

to there, it actually was going to leak

into society,

they had more of a point than I thought

then, right? This is a point John Haidt

made, and and we had a debate about it

back in the Vox days.

And

you know, there's all these debates

about college campuses, and and a lot of

my view is like, who cares?

Like I just don't want to hear that much

about what happens at Yale.

Um

and the view of Haidt and some other

people was

it's not going to stay at Yale. Like

you're training the next generation of,

you know, staffers and leaders and like

this is going to come out of there.

I think one that was basically true.

Right? That the um spillover effect is

very real.

And two, that

uh

that it also the the application of

cultural power

caused such backlash

that it

arguably more than wiped out the gains.

The number of people who I've seen who I

think were truly radicalized by just

stuff that happened to them on Twitter,

on Facebook, on Instagram, on places

like that.

In part because I always looked at those

places as kind of cesspools,

>> [laughter]

>> to just be blunt. Um

I think I was like just less concerned

about what was happening there. Yeah.

So, but but I I always want to say this

because I think this other side of this

is important.

The reason I was sympathetic to what

gets called wokeness,

I actually still believe all that. I

believe systemic racism is very real.

I believe that our society is

fundamentally unequal in very, very,

very deep ways.

I believe that we often have very

difficult tradeoffs between who gets

justice and then as those as the power

moves, right?

I mean, the the sort of piece about

affirmative consent was trying to

grapple with something that I still find

is very hard to grapple with, which is

the equilibrium that existed.

You know, that people were trying to

alter in affirmative consent laws wasn't

an equilibrium where there were no

harms.

It was one where there was rampant

sexual assault that went unpunished and

many, many, many women I know have been

sexually assaulted

and traumatized by it and harmed by it

in spaces where there was not really a

recourse.

Did affirmative consent laws find like a

great equilibrium? They didn't. So, I

think you could say like it's a hard

problem.

But, I don't want to just say no, this

was all wrong.

One of the the things happening when you

begin to sort of unearth

the way we have settled into unjust

structures in society

is

you don't always know how to change

those structures in a way that will

work.

And I think a lot of things failed. I

think a lot of things failed.

But, the things people were trying to

change were very real. I mean, they

level of just overwhelming workplace and

social harassment that, you know,

primarily women

faced and face, right? It's not gone.

Was real. I think racism remains a

problem we don't really know how to deal

with. I think that

I actually have like mostly [laughter]

the same views on

what it is we're trying to fix in

society.

But, I think I take more seriously the

people who said that using illiberalism

to create something more liberal, even

if the illiberalism is not coming from

the state

is you are you are imperiling

more than you realize you're imperiling.

>> I mean, I also think it's like an

emphasis thing that in 2014, like as

we're like like ratcheting up into this

like big moment, but it's also a moment

of like progressive tailwinds and all

these like

issues feel like so live and that like

on the cusp of change and things are

happening and you're weighing in all the

time on like talking about the finer

points of these issues. The political

moment right now is

is not that.

>> Yeah, although I guess maybe the one

thing I would say is that as I

understand my own work over time,

I understand myself as trying to figure

out how to make progress on things that

have remained pretty consistent.

And if an approach fails, and I think a

lot of those approaches failed and they

particularly failed politically,

I think it'd be crazy not to try to ask,

well, why did this fail and what do we

learn from it?

And the thing you maybe hear me saying a

lot about how do Democrats win in Iowa

and Ohio and Nebraska and South Dakota

and North Dakota and Arkansas and these

places they used to win

and thinking, okay, like what kind of a

tent do you need to do that? What kind

of a party brand do you need to do that?

To me, I'm trying to make progress on

the same issues. I think one of the

very, very bad habits people pick up

learning their politics in online

discourse uh

online

algorithmically structured like

discourse holes

is they begin to equate political change

with political position taking.

And that your commitment to something is

defined

by how stridently you express your

opposition to the thing you don't like.

Not how effectively you build power

to fix it.

And I understood, like again, what we

call wokeness as a an effort to build

power to fix something.

And it went in directions that even at

the time, like I was not on board of.

But

I think you can't look around without

saying that you were trying to do

persuasion and the persuasion failed.

And now things are quite a bit worse

than they were even, I think, then.

And so you have to ask, okay, like what

failed and what have you learned?

I think if you have a politics

over an extended period of time that is

not learning things about the world

something is wrong with it. You should

be changing your emphasis. You should

But you should also be changing your

approach and

I guess the only other thing I'll say,

and and this is a very consistent theme

for me back then, too.

I just think a lot of what went wrong

then and what is going wrong now has to

do with

these fights taking place in

fundamentally

deranging spaces. Spaces that have only

become more deranged after Elon Musk

bought Twitter, become more deranged as

they've all become much more algorithmic

and less focused on your friends and the

people you follow.

And I think if you go back to my work

then, if you go to it now, I have an

extremely clear through line of just

somebody who's been very, very, very

concerned that if that attention is the

fundamental

capacity we bring to politics, what we

pay attention to

shapes what we see, it shapes how we

act, it shapes what we believe about

other people.

And if the way we pay attention, like

the space it mediates our attention

deranges it, focuses it on the wrong

things in the wrong ways,

then our politics is not going to be

good.

And the reason I think

both there were

pretty bad excesses in a political

movement I fundamentally agreed with,

and now there are really bad excesses in

a political movement I fundamentally

disagree with,

I think the fact that both are sort of

were taking place primarily, first and

foremost, on then Twitter, now X, is

inseparable from what has gone wrong.

>> Just so we don't end on an

entirely just down note about how woke

went, I went back and and read your yes

means yes, this is your affirmative

consent article in Vox. Yes means yes is

a terrible law and I completely support

it, is the article.

I thought there was an editing that

jumped out at me, but your way you said

it was false accusations.

>> I I have not read this piece. I didn't

even know we were going to talk about

this. So I've not read this piece like

in many, many, many, many, many years.

>> Also, I don't think affirmative consent

law makes false accusations more likely

or more likely to to to lead to guys

being like railroaded. There was

something that did jump out at me as

feeling like actually quite radical in

what you said in that article.

>> you say what I said then and what?

[laughter]

Because I would like to know what I

said.

>> So, what you said

is that, which is the the thrust of your

argument, is for one in five women to

report an attempted or completed sexual

assault means that every day sexual

practices in college campuses need to be

upended. And men need to feel a cold

spike of fear when they begin a sexual

encounter.

>> Yeah, things get warped. I definitely

don't remember myself as writing that

false accusations are not a big deal. I

mean, that's what I remember people

being mad about that cold spike of fear

line. And I'm not sure. I think I

phrased that a little bit more vividly

than I would. And it's not that I want

anybody to feel fear when beginning a

sex.

>> [laughter]

>> Um

>> There has been a cultural shift to a lot

of anxiety around consent. Um I recently

saw Obsession, the blockbuster horror

movie by this Gen Z director, that is

all about, uh this is my interpretation,

turning that anxiety into supernatural

horror. And there's also very little

data about how

sexual assault on college campuses has

like actually shifted in the years

since. But there is one study of 10

universities, like elite, like Harvard,

Yale, that does show that self-reporting

sexual assault has gone down, like

significantly.

But like what you argued for here, like

it kind of happened, and it maybe

worked.

>> Maybe. I mean, I'm not sure the

affirmative consent laws were a good

idea. I don't I don't know

>> know what a diff- how much difference

they

>> Yeah, I don't know how much difference

they made. So I think like what you

could say about this was that

I'm not sure what to think about what

colleges should do.

And I thought they were worth trying.

And, you know, amidst this debate I made

an argument for it. And that argument is

very informed by things people near me

had gone through, to just be very blunt

about it.

And I still believe that the difficult

thing here

is that

I mean, sex itself is like a

a very complicated interaction between

human beings. And a very vulnerable and

a very intimate one.

I think what I'd say after writing that

piece, in the years that followed,

amidst Me Too and everything else, is

like it all became much more sort of

widespread and seen,

is that I do think the way this got seen

and treated really changed. I think a

lot of those changes were for the

better.

I also saw a lot of stories where

ambiguous interactions, um,

you know, got interpreted as like the

worst form of interaction.

And I don't like you need a way to

protect against that, too. And like I'll

just I don't have an answer to all this,

right? I don't know how to fix

the

like constant reality of sexual assault

and also the reality that, um,

if you like

Yeah, I don't know how to fix the mix of

the constant reality of sexual assault

and like the ambiguous way in which two

people might understand the same thing

happening.

Uh, I think it's really hard.

>> This is a question from, uh, Jobin S.

Uh, with the Democratic Party now

splitting into center Dems and DSA, is

DSA just now becoming hip to

anti-establishment uh, politics in a way

that MAGA did a decade ago? Are both

movements just different flavors of

populism, where populism is the real

current of politics dressed up in

different outfits?

>> I I wouldn't focus this question on the

DSA because a lot of the candidates we

are talking about in this populist

moment are not, to my knowledge, DSA

candidates. Grand Planners is out of the

race, but he was not a DSA candidate.

Abdul El-Sayed, to my knowledge, is not

a DSA candidate. A lot, I mean, there

are some populists running who are DSA

affiliated and some who aren't.

Populism, classically, is a political

perspective that, uh, is more about

seeing a small group of elites hoarding

power and believing that in order to

have a better society, better politics,

you need to break the power they hoard.

And so you can have, you know, your

right-wing variants, your left-wing

variants.

I think it's sort of fairly widely

believed that the most electable form of

candidate you can run right now is

economically populist and culturally

moderate, right? That's sort of the Dan

Osborne formula in Nebraska, and Dan

Osborne is a candidate who really did

wildly overperform in a red state. Now,

he also ran as an independent, but that

meant he wasn't dragged down by the

Democratic Party's baggage.

>> Gram Platner wasn't

culturally moderate.

>> I'm not sure he was the most kind of

electable form of candidate you could

run. So, this So, this is what I mean,

right? I think the problem with seeing

all this is populism is that

it's more than that, too.

I don't think populism necessarily has a

lot to say about Israel-Gaza.

You can have, you know, populists who

end up on both sides of that issue, and

in fact, you do in current American

politics.

And I think at some deeper level,

populism is about listening to

whatever group you are saying it is that

is the mass, right? Whatever group you

believe represents like the real people.

For the right, populism tends to be a

more native-born

phenomena, right? They're like the real

Americans, and then the kind of fake

elites.

On the left, it's often more economic.

But, a lot of these candidates have a

bunch of other positions that are kind

of linked in more elite set of ideas,

right? On climate, on other things that

put them pretty out of step with

working-class voters. And it's why when

you look at who they went over, a Gram

Platner was not overperforming with

working-class voters. Abdullah Sayed is

not overperforming with non-college

voters in Michigan. Like, his electorate

doesn't look like that. There's been a

lot of people noting that the DSA sweet

spot is downwardly mobile, highly

educated voters. So, I think we're going

to see a lot of people making the

argument again like real populism has

not been tried.

Because what the DSA is is leftism, and

that's something different.

>> Sarah V wrote in with the question, "I'm

a registered Democrat and I've been

doing a deep dive into the DSA website

and what Democratic Socialists believe.

I consider myself a progressive, but

more Bernie Sanders type. What is your

understanding of the clear disconnect

between what is on that website, no more

jails, defund police, open borders, and

what Mondani and others actually do when

they are in office. I've been really

enjoying watching Mondani govern since

he took office. It feels like a good

path so far, but it definitely doesn't

reflect the tenants of that organization

of which he's a member.

>> I find it hard to know how seriously to

take the DSA website or platform

uh without getting into like incredibly

tedious detail that has become a

constant topic in our slack. Trying to

say who speaks for the DSA and who is

speaking when you look at what the

national DSA says or what a local

chapter says, it's a very unusually

structured organization.

I do think it is valuable to look at

what somebody like Mondani does in

power, right? We we've had a number of

um

members of Congress who are DSA

associated or you know, people in the

state senates and assembly.

And when you're in power, you are

working coalitionally

to pass legislation or executive orders

or regulations, whatever it might be,

through a system that does not have

entire agreement with you. I don't know

what Zohran Mondani or anybody else

would do if they had

king-like power, but I would say Mondani

in terms of if you knew nothing about

what he has said or what he believes, if

you just saw what he has done governing,

this would not look very different

if another liberal candidate in that

primary had won.

Yes, they have added a tax on uh

pricey second homes.

And I think I know he would like to add

more taxes on on the richer than that.

He's also being very, very, very careful

and doing a lot of both private and

semi-public outreach to people who run

investment banks, to the business elite

of New York City because he actually

does not want to

like infuriate them and run them out of

the city.

If you begin to dry up the tax revenues,

the rest of his agenda falls apart

immediately.

I don't see the Mondani era as

reflecting an incredibly sharp break

from say De Blasio.

And you can I think say that sometimes

with Bernie Sanders, too. And that's not

a hit on them. I think one of the

valuable things about more leftist

figures getting into powers of getting

into offices where they have executive

authority or legislative authority

is you actually see the give and take

between ideology and power. The one

thing that I

sometimes find frustrating is that

people on the left don't recognize that

that is happening everywhere else, too.

So, liberals, you know, often want more

ambitious and sweeping changes than they

are able to get when in power, too.

But there's a tendency to look at what

say an Obama is able to get done dealing

with a Senate riven by the filibuster

and say that's all Obama is and was or

intended to be. Which it isn't. There is

a lot that if Barack Obama were king, he

would have done that he was not able to

do.

And you know, with Mondani, it's very

similar. With Bernie Sanders, we had

Faiza Shaheen, Bernie's former campaign

manager on the show and he said on the

show, "Look, we knew that if we got into

power, we weren't going to be able to

pass Medicare for all."

>> There's a high degree of pragmatism

there. So, while he's pushing, let's

take Medicare for all. Then he gets into

Congress and can we at least lower the

age from 65 to 60? Can we talk about

Medicare expansion so that it covers

home care, dental, hearing, and vision

even if you can't all move with me to

Medicare for all. That actually is how

President Bernie Sanders would have

governed.

>> We would have, you know, expanded

Medicare, expanded what it covers,

dropped down the age range.

And so there is this constant compromise

when you're governing. I think it is

healthy to watch that playing out.

>> [sighs and gasps]

>> How much to take the DSA

as a signal of where these candidates

even want to go,

that I'm less sure-footed on.

>> What do you think of the critique that

just like this platform on their website

is really politically damaging for other

Democrats, is going to be weaponized by

Republicans, and if it's

not actually meaningful for how DSA

elected govern, then what is the point?

>> I think you would have to ask a member

of the DSA that. I don't know to what

degree Democrats broadly are going to be

forced to answer for what the DSA

believes. My suspicion is not that

aggressively because I do think people

understand the DSA is a distinctive

thing. And so

the idea that in North Carolina they're

going to run a bunch of ads against Roy

Cooper

saying he believes in what like the DSA

website. I don't think anybody buys

that. I don't think it really works.

Now, they will matter what DSA

candidates do when they come into

Congress. So, if you have, you know,

uh some of these newer members of of of

of Congress who are DSA-affiliated

putting forward a lot of bills to

abolish police or abolish prisons,

then and and demanding Democrats vote on

them, uh

then you're going to start to see more

effort to, you know, define the party by

what it's kind of high-attention left

flank is doing.

Mamdani coming out and giving that uh

sort of direct-to-camera address on how

he would like to

arrest Benjamin Netanyahu and calls on

the federal government to do that.

>> It is clear that we do not have the

independent legal authority to enforce

this warrant. The federal government,

however, does. And I call on them to

join the ICC and execute this warrant.

And I want to be equally clear. Benjamin

Netanyahu is not welcome in New York

City, nor is any other war criminal at

large.

>> That is going to be an issue for the

Republican Party will try to weaponize

against voters who are maybe

cross-pressured,

um and are maybe even critical of

Israel, but do not want to go where Mom

Danni and the DSA want to go on Israel.

Mom Danni being a central figure in the

Democratic Party and making that

statement, that is something other

Democrats are going to have to deal

with.

The DSA having stuff on its website,

um, I'm just skeptical that's going to

become a major political issue.

>> So, we got a bunch of questions that

were all the same question. So, this one

is Amy T. Is this true that you are part

of the dialogue group sponsored by Peter

Thiel?

>> Okay, dialogue. Let me start here. What

happens is that as best I understand it,

um,

some hacker goes on Blue Sky and is

like, I got the membership rolls of

Peter Thiel's secret society and

includes all these people.

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and Reid

Hoffman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt and

Josh Brolin and me and Julian Castro and

Cory Booker and like just like

tons of people with very, very different

roles in the world, different politics.

>> Cool hang.

>> Cool hang, right? Uh,

and then like this gets picked up like

pretty credulously by Wired.

This was surprising to live through. Uh,

dialogue is a pretty banal conference.

It is not secret. Um, just like flatly,

it's not secret. Nobody ever asked me to

keep my presence a secret. I went twice,

I think. And now I have to remember the

dates, but I think it was 2018 and 2022

or something like that. It was like one

pre-pandemic, one kind of post-pandemic.

>> Then why did you never speak about it?

>> Cuz I why would I have spoken about it?

I mean, I don't speak about most

conferences I go to.

It is off the record in the way most

conferences are. I mean, you can quote

somebody if they let you.

But, so okay. So, dialogue, it's a

conference, sort of like an unconference

style. I went because, um, at that time

I was trying to do more coverage of

tech.

>> What is What is unconference style?

>> Un- Oh, sorry. Unconference style. There

aren't panels. Like people kind of

self-organize. You like write up on a

board like I would like to have a

session on being a working parent or

better sleep hygiene or are there any

real uses of crypto or whatever it might

be.

Um so you don't go and like sit there

and like listen to people talk at you.

>> This is this is like a genre and you are

you are you are deep in conference world

my friend.

>> I've done a lot of conferences.

That is part of my job to go places and

meet people and like listen to them and

see if they'd be one day good guests on

my show and like that is like as you

know like part of what I do.

But Dialogue was

a conference that when I went to the

first one was for like people under 40 I

think it was and so it was sort of like

young or up-and-coming people. Like my

favorite person I met there was a kind

of lefty anarchist.

Uh

it wasn't like any of those bold-faced

names who I then was told I was in a

secret society with like

there was no Elon Musk. I've never heard

of him as involved with it or Reid

Hoffman or any of those people.

I went again a couple years later and

just found it like the second one I went

to kind of like

lame and it was reflecting the curdling

anger of the tech right in that era

and I just found the energy pretty

unpleasant and I didn't go back.

By the time I went

my understanding is Peter Thiel was not

involved. Uh he was one of the multiple

co-founders of Dialogue.

I never saw him at it or heard from him

in respect to it. I do want to say

because I think people could get the

wrong idea. I'm not saying I think

there'd be a problem if Peter Thiel was

still involved.

I've invited Peter Thiel on this show.

He has not come on.

I have had reporting meetings with Peter

Thiel.

That is my job. I do not see Peter Thiel

or anybody in our society as somebody I

cannot or should not talk to. So

Dialogue

when I went no Peter Thiel

not a society. It was like a conference

you went to.

Also not a secret. And so then to like

continuously see this thing that you

know is being believed by people

that I'm in the secret society with

Peter Thiel. And like what would that

without anybody even being clear of like

what that would mean. Like what would it

mean

for Julian Castro

who again he came up earlier in our

conversation, like really push the

Democratic Party left on immigration.

And Peter Thiel was supporting Donald

like why would you think those two

people are doing the same thing?

Um

which is to say that there is a way of

looking at the world

that um

I was really surprised how many people

seem to buy into this. And then I was

particularly surprised to have it be

around this conference dialogue because

what I will say in dialogue's favor

actually

is that it was a conference that invited

a wide variety of people

from a very wide variety of industries

and ideologies

to do what it said on the tin, to like

go to a place and be in dialogue with

each other for the weekend.

And or for a couple days or whenever it

was held.

And it did an okay job of that. Like on

conferences I've gone to it's not the

best. It's not the worst.

And its fundamental nature was

fractious. In part its fractiousness is

why I didn't really want to go back

because I just found some of the

conversations very unpleasant. There's

like a big focus in that second one I

was at about like your most unpopular

opinion and it just felt very

performative to me.

>> Well, I think that I think the thing

that um

bothers a lot of people about this or

that it taps into on some level

is this feeling of elites who um people

understand as like

having radically different politics and

being from radically different worlds

just like all hanging out in a chummy

way.

Um and it

just feeling like then they're on the

receiving end of

this performance when actually like

elites are all hanging out and have this

kind of a class solidarity with each

other. And it was a thing that like in

the episode with

Anand Giridharadas on Jeffrey Epstein

and what it revealed about elite

networks, he's kind of saying this and

that there was like a kernel of truth to

it about how elite networks work.

>> Cuz even if these people were on cable,

you're sitting at home, you're watching

cable at the end of the day and you're

seeing these two talking heads fight.

But that's for you. That's the spectacle

for you at home to keep you entertained.

What they're actually doing is revealed

in these files, which is hanging out,

breaking bread, colluding, sharing

information, giving each other tips on

deals, giving each other PR advice,

making introductions to each other.

>> That's the thing I

think this is a

>> don't really buy this, to be honest. I

mean,

or let me put it this way.

If somebody wants to make this critique

of like functionally all conferences,

that they collect people

from like within an industry or across

industries and put them together and you

think that's bad, that's fine, right?

Like that's a totally legitimate view to

hold about the world. I don't think that

is bad.

I do that work here in public.

I try to have conversations with many

different kinds of people

across industries, across ideologies,

in a way that is simultaneously honest

and like fundamentally gracious.

I believe that is not just not a bad

thing, I believe it is a democratic

habit that should be cultivated.

I think civic friendship, even across

real difference,

is more than beautiful, it is necessary.

And it's not that I think Dialogue was

doing something like amazing for the

world,

but you are definitely not going to get

me to sit here and say

that the problem is that there might be

a space where

I don't know,

Ted Cruz and Joseph Gordon Levitt

and um somebody who works on

cybersecurity risk at Microsoft might

have a conversation with each other. I

think that's helpful. Like, I think

that's good.

Epstein, the problem was it was a

transactional network built around

protecting a pedophile.

The output of the network is the

problem.

And my critique

of people who were in the Epstein files

late,

by the time that they had to know what

he was doing,

or at least had information that they

had to reject about what he had done,

is that they were protecting a

pedophile.

It is not that there is some world in

which Noam Chomsky and Steve Bannon

might have dinner. Like, that seems

interesting on some level. Maybe Peter

Thiel and Noam Chomsky, whoever it might

have been.

I think people should talk to people

they don't agree with.

But, if your belief is that these people

should not get to know each other,

then I just don't agree.

The reason dialogue became, or this

thing became a, what it is, is because

it was called like a secret society.

And so, like, spin was put on the ball

to suggest that, "Oh, in public,

as Reclined and Peter Thiel

are pursuing different agendas. In

private,

they're dressing up in robes and

sacrificing a goat

and

trying to do the same thing."

And that's not true.

It's just not true.

Technocratic liberals,

managerial, professional class liberals,

they can sometimes make the world too

complicated to understand.

Conspiratorial populism makes it too

simple to understand.

That is not how the world works. People

are mostly doing in private what they're

doing in public. There would not be

safety

among a bunch of people who disagree

that much to like coordinate or like say

what's really on their minds or or

anything. Like, I can't even get Peter

Thiel to come on the show, and I kind of

understand why he doesn't want to come

on the show.

>> Say one thing uh that you disagree with

Peter Thiel about?

>> That democracy

and freedom and capitalism

are incompatible, that Donald Trump

should be president, that um

that Palantir should exist in the way

that it currently does.

Like I find Peter Thiel's functionally

his entire agenda reprehensible. That

Gawker was a cool website. Uh Gawker was

a cool website, that Blake Masters

should be a senator, that J.D. Vance is

a good political actor, like Greta um

Thunberg is like a correct model to

think about the Antichrist.

I disagree with Peter Thiel like his

whole agenda is functionally like the

opposite of mine.

But

I will absolutely talk to Peter.

And so

the dialogue thing, the main thing it

did for me,

I mean there's also like the reality

like I can't go and like knock on the

doors of everybody who believes

something untrue now and like correct

the belief. Then like a few days ago on

the internet I was accused of being like

a Chinese communist agent or spy or

something. Like the kind of constant

um cycle now of

that you've no real way to

correct

is a a challenging thing I find to deal

with.

But I think it reflects something pretty

negative. I I don't think it said

anything good

about the way people a lot of people are

absorbing information about the world at

the moment.

>> I think it would also violate the New

York Times like employee handbook.

>> Yeah, it would be

I I think I'm not supposed to be in a

secret society in a secret society. But

what even is a

secret society? Like what makes it a

society, what makes it a secret?

That I find to be an intellectually

interesting question, but I don't think

>> there needs to be an initiation ritual.

>> Sure.

>> You can't tell people you're in it.

And I think besides that you can do

whatever.

>> Anyway, I'm not in any of those.

I can say right now to my knowledge I'm

not in any secret societies.

>> [laughter]

>> And you just stay on an email distro for

the rest of your life.

>> Yeah, sure.

>> Last question. So, what are three

musicians

or songs or albums that you would

recommend to the audience?

>> Ooh, so the four the fourtet wingding

album you should go find.

And then maybe um I'm really into and I

find this like very hypnotic this

particular album mass amenable I think

it's called mass amenable

by DJ Python really cool very strange

music.

And then maybe to offer a a song rather

than a whole album there's a

Jon Hopkins Imogen Heap collaboration

that just came out called reckoning.

Both of them are amazing on their own

like Imogen Heap long time one of my

favorite artist Jon Hopkins like his

stuff is really really cool but coming

together was

I was very excited when I saw it and I

have listened to it a lot since it came

out.

>> Like you and Chris Rufo.

>> [laughter]

>> Thank you Ezra.

>> Claire Gordon thank you very much.

>> [music]

[music]