I've known Ross D outfit a long time.

[music] We were bloggers back when the

earth was young. Uh,

>> hey Ross, how are you?

>> Good. I'm fine, Ezra. How are you?

>> And then I watched him become a [music]

columnist here at the New York Times

Opinion in 2009, the youngest ever New

York Times opinion columnist. About a

year ago, he launched Interesting

[music] Times, which has been a great

fellow podcast here in the section.

>> What is the Antichrist? [music]

>> How much time do we have? We've got uh

as long as much time as you [music] have

to talk about the Antichrist.

>> And then breaking all of our hearts, he

announced [music] he's going to 60

Minutes where he's going to be a

correspondent. So I want to talk to Ross

on his way out here about how he has

seen [music] media change, how he has

seen politics change, and how maybe he

believes it is changing again. Ross Dit

[music] joins me now.

Ross Dela, welcome back to the show.

>> Thanks for having me, Ezra. It's a

[music] pleasure.

>> What the hell, man?

>> What? What do you mean?

>> Going to 60 Minutes. You're leaving us?

I

>> I mean, in spiritually, [laughter] I You

never leave any place that that you love

and all things are gathered in by God

for his But yeah, I'm I'm going to 60

minutes.

>> All right, we're we're going to we're

going [clears throat] to get to going to

60 minutes. We're going to uh start with

where you came from and get to where

you're going. Where do you locate your

own spiritual origins as a journalist,

as a commentator, a pundit? I I was

going back. I had always thought you

were like me, like an original blogger

who gets absorbed by a media borg.

>> Oh, yeah. No, it was the opposite.

>> Yeah, you're the opposite. You start at

the Atlantic and become a blogger.

>> I, you know, I was a a junior junior

junior editor. I edited the letter

section at The Atlantic for a while and

I did blogging on the side. Um, I think

of myself as someone who was sort of

present for

both the end of an old dispensation and

the beginning of a new one. So, I had

sort of parallel careers in my early

20s. I had the career inside the

Atlantic where I was doing junior editor

work and sort of trying to work my way

up the mast head at an institution

where, you know, you were still doing

fact-checking and copy editing on these

huge sheets of paper that would be

printed out and circulate around the

office and 17 people would have red pen

on them and it was very much a pre-in

magazine and a pre- internet

journalistic experience. And then then

at the same time sort of as a side

hustle I was blogging doing freelance

writing and sort of participating in

yeah the kind of the world of [snorts]

the early 2000s internet. Those two

things sort of converged because what

then happened as you know was that many

many traditional publications looked at

that landscape and said ah this is the

future and we need to co-opt it. Right.

So, at the Atlantic, that meant

basically creating a mini uh editorial

page or opinion page that consisted of

prominent bloggers that The Atlantic had

hired. So there was a period when they

brought in Andrew Sullivan who was then

the biggest deal in blogging but they

also had Eglacius Megan Mardle Tanahasi

Coats um and and then me because I was

already on staff and I can tell you that

my own traffic numbers were were

somewhat lower than than the others. Um

but that that was sort of the the path

as you know in that era because you

followed it too was to sort of be a kind

of outsider blogger critic of the

establishment and then an establishment

institution might hire you or buy your

blog or or bring you on board and it was

just that in my case I was sort of

already on board when that happened. So,

how would you describe to somebody who

was not around for that, you know, a

young journalism student today, what

blogging was? What made it different?

What made places like The Atlantic,

eventually the the New York Times think

they needed part of it, too?

Well, so there were a couple phases,

right, where um there were a couple

cohorts of bloggers who became a big

deal. And the first wave was uh

immediately after September 11th and

then in the run-up to the Iraq war where

you had a set of people who were some of

them were former liberals who had moved

right uh some of them were just

right-wingers but they got called the

war bloggers right and these these were

people who were I would say the simplest

way to put it is that something crazy

had happened something worldaltering had

happened right and we at the exact time

that the internet was emerging as a

force and so there was a huge market

suddenly of people who were you know on

their web browsers looking at a screen

all day um and wanted to hear people

talking about terrorism September 11th

Islam in the Middle East and then you

know Afghanistan and Iraq and so on and

it's not surprising that the people who

filled that niche were mostly people who

were in favor of the war on terror and

then in favor of the war in Iraq. But I

I think it really was that the event and

the demand or the event and the

technology sort of intersected to create

this opening. Like I remember being an

intern at National Review in the summer

before September 11th, so summer of

2001, right? And so I think Sullivan was

blogging. There were like two or three

people who were When did you start

blogging?

>> 03.

>> 03.

>> I was a freshman at UC Santa Cruz,

>> right? Um, so in 2001, you had the

internet and you had a few bloggers and

I remember just sitting in, you know,

the offices of again this like 50,

60-year-old magazine. I'm an intern. I

have very little to do and you just sort

of hit refresh, right? You hit refresh

on Andrew Sullivan's blog and you see

what you know, you see you see if he's

posted something new. Mickey Couse,

right? Cow Files was also probably one

of the initial blogs at that point. But

then September 11th happens and suddenly

you just have a lot more people hitting

refresh and having having this kind of

demand. Well, I want to go before that.

So, one of the things that I find

interesting about this period is that

this is one of these places where I

think media has changed more than people

really realize. There just wasn't a lot

of political opinion accessible to most

people. So it's like I grew up in Orange

County, California. My family subscribed

to the LA Times. Uh so we, you know,

there's a op-ed page in the LA Times

which I would read sometimes. We were

not a family that got you know small

circulation DC political

>> the inflight magazine of Air Force One,

the American Prospect, the National

Review, which is a conservative um

magazine that you've written a lot for

um the Atlantic.

There was talk radio by that time,

>> the Laura Ingram show, [music] Glenn

Beck.

>> And now, America's most exciting radio

talk show, The Savage Nation.

>> But even that had only been on the scene

for uh so long in it sort of like post

Rush Limba form,

>> right?

>> You know, when I was growing up there,

Fox News was beginning to roll out, but

it wasn't what it would eventually

become. I remember MSNBC beginning.

>> You had Crossfire. you had Crossfire as

sort of a like that was what you watch

if you were

>> into MSNBC [clears throat] originally is

Microsoft NBC. Yeah.

>> And I remember there being a it was

about tech primarily and I remember

watching a show with Solad O'Brien where

she like had an animated co-host like a

clip art co-host.

>> WOW. WELCOME BACK TO THE show [music] my

friends and the SITE WITH SOLIDAD

O'BRIEN. I'm her co-host. Can I May I

call myself that?

>> Sure. call yourself whatever you want.

There may not be, [laughter] but hey,

what the heck, you know,

>> and what I always saw blogging is doing

is like there was an unmet demand for

political opinion and particularly after

911 when people were really really

interested in politics, really upset

about what was happening, really

uncertain about what was happening. And

all of a sudden you can get a flood of

it. Like now there is so much more

opinion between X and Instagram and you

know Subseek and everything else that

it's like the news that has been

somewhat drowned out.

>> But but then it was somewhat

revolutionary that all of a sudden you

could be you know refreshing and getting

just throughout the day more and more

and more commentary on what was going

on. But the other thing that was

revolutionary was that it was opinion,

but it was also just a very different

kind of argument from what you would get

reading oped pages and even like small

circulation journals. Early blogging was

all about this kind of ongoing rolling

debate where you'd write 4,000 words and

someone else would come along and block

quote, right?

>> Very few people would write 4,000 words

on a blog. That might have been your

thing. [laughter]

>> I mean I Yeah. All right. Someone would

write

>> 300 words. [laughter]

>> I No, I mean I But this was also it

right. You had more length. I mean there

were people there were people early on

es maybe I'm thinking too much of the

war bloggers and not like the war

bloggers were all about like let me give

you 2500 words on how you know this

event in ancient Greek history totally

explains George W. Bush's brilliant plan

to remake the Middle East. I mean, there

was there was a lot of prolicks content,

but maybe some of it was just created by

this kind of you quote someone and you

say why they're wrong, but people did

this back and forth to each other

constantly. It was hostile, but it was

also, I think, at its best sort of

really interestingly respectful because

you were you were putting the other

side's words on your site. Like even if

you even if you were doing it just to

show what a total idiot they were and

you know how terrible they were, you

were still you were sort of like all

right here's 200 words I'm quoting and

I'm going to go line by line and I'm

going to respond to every single line.

That was I think a really distinctive

part of it at least at least for the

first few years. It was I thought a lot

about why I think the blogosphere was

healthier than what came after it and

whether or not that was just I was in my

20s and people like what was happening

when they were in their 20s, right? The

music was better. The But but I do think

this was to me the the reality of it. It

was fundamentally conversational. You

wrote things in the expectation that the

people you were writing about would read

them and they would answer you. And I

don't think that is how a lot of media

works now. Instead of talking to the

people you're talking about, you talk

about them, right? X or Twitter, you

know, you quote tweet and

>> and say,

>> "Yeah, and you, you know, and and and

dunk on them and then, you know, you

look for the hearts and the retweets.

>> It it has really changed what the

currency was. I mean, I remember so I

began my blog in 2003 and the only way

you could get readership, I mean, there

were not algorithms. you were not

winning Google search results,

>> right?

>> The way you got readership was through

these links back and forth. And so, you

know, if right now what happens is the

reward and the way that audience is

secured is, you know, you get people who

agree with you to retweet it, to, you

know, restack it, whatever it might be.

[snorts]

Then, you know, I actually wanted I

disagreed with Andrew Sullivan on all

kinds of things. It was good for me if

Andrew Sullivan like block quoted me and

then argued and then you know I would

block quote him and argue back and we

would go back and forth and it wasn't

that it can never be disrespectful. It

was often heated

>> but there was still a sense that you

were in relationship. People talked

about the blogersphere, right?

>> You had a blog you had a blog role you

put on your blog ecosystem. Yep. Well,

so we we've had a lot of arguments over

the years in our in our days as

bloggers, but I thought it'd be fun to

to go back to to one of them in

particular on what I think it's fair to

say is a forerunner to podcasting, which

is Blogging Heads, the uh I knew I knew

I was Robert. Yes. Robert Wright, who is

>> older than us, a brilliant writer, and

who basically invented podcasting

without getting credit for it because

the world was not quite ready. story of

the moment is um John McCain's um

running the most disgraceful campaign in

American history possibly um maybe in

world history

>> global planetary universal um universal

history I think is is where we're at

basically

>> right so it's so it's been pretty

disgraceful so basically McCain has um

there's been sort of a flurry of ads

statements um sort of back and forths

that have in different ways

you know, from from the McCain campaign

sort of shaded the truth um or not

shaded the truth, you know, have been

outright lies,

>> redacted it is, I think, the word you're

looking for, right?

>> Enacted the truth,

>> right? And so there's been and so, you

know, all of the all the great and good

observers, the sort of Joe Klein and um

EJ Deion and so on have have weighed in

with um with remarks on I think I think

Richard Cohen is the latest today. He

has a column. I think it basically says,

you know, I used to be in the tank for

McCain. Um, but uh now he's sold his

soul to Satan and um, you know, I'm no

I'm no longer in the tank and so on. So,

it's basically the final the final

divorce between John McCain and the

reporters who used to love him.

>> So, I I want I want to I want to say on

behalf of myself, right, that for those

>> for like I I'm being ironical in that

commentary. And it is it is a simpler

time where you as Ezra Klein were part

of a vast liberal conspiracy bent on

portraying the war hero John McCain as

the most dangerous politician in

American history.

>> I think we're both being pretty

skeptical by a champion. No, I I don't

remember whether you were part of it or

not, but yeah.

>> But it it

>> it's kind of amazing how different that

moment is when you can imagine that

there were like huge eruptions over the

level of negative campaigning from

McCain to Obama. I always feel this way

when people talk about the Obama Romney

campaigning where it all just seems so

compared to where we eventually went.

>> Right. But this is, you know, part of

part of the argument of many of Donald

Trump's supporters is that it was

precisely because

um liberals insisted that first McCain

and then Mitt Romney were history's

greatest monsters that you know [snorts]

that's how you got Trump.

>> But the right it was so kind.

>> We don't need we don't need to argue we

don't need to argue about this. This is

this is yeah this is my office at the

Atlantic. I think that's his copy of

Grand New Party back there. But in in

but again with the sense that like the

point was to the point was that this was

somewhat extracurricular and it was sort

of you know to be Norman Moresesque,

right? It's sort of an advertisement for

yourself, right? that then in theory is

supposed to cash out in promotions and

new jobs at the existing institutions

which is what happened again to that

cohort which is why I ended up here at

the New York Times and you ended up at

the Washington Post.

>> So you are hired as the youngest ever

opinion columnist at the New York Times.

Yes.

>> I believe this is 2009.

>> Yes, this is 2009. Yes.

>> But but you're also in a in a funny part

of this. So throughout your career, I

think it'll continue to be the case, you

are the more conservative voice at

institutions

that are understood as broadly more

liberal, right? I think that's true for

the Atlantic. I think it's true for the

New York Times opinion page. People

would say,

>> I wrote I wrote the conservative column

for the Harvard Crimson. It goes all the

way back.

>> I'm curious about that experience. Tell

me what doing that for as many years as

writing for liberal audiences as a

conservative, you know, a pro-life

Catholic conservative. Let's start here.

What did it teach you about liberals?

So, I like liberals.

>> That was a long pause after that.

>> No, I Well, [laughter]

it's

I spend I mean, the first thing to to be

said is that I always regarded this kind

of role as just an incredible

opportunity like as a baseline, right?

where you write

you write opinions in order to argue and

persuade. That that's what opinion

journalism as far as I can see is

supposed to do. And you know it's an

illusion to imagine that anyone has

their whole worldview altered by an

800word column or anything remotely like

that. But but still on the margins at

the very least, right? You're trying to

pull readers closer to your perspective.

um move people to some degree, expose

people to ideas they wouldn't otherwise

cover. And in that sense, there's just

no better way to do it than to be the

person at a given publication who has

heterodox views relative to their

audience. And look, obviously there's

lots of conservatives who read The

Atlantic when I was there. There's lots

and lots of conservatives who read the

New York Times. So if you're if you're

working for a big publication, you're

never exclusively speaking to people who

disagree with you. But yeah, clearly

clearly I'm speaking to a lot of people

who do disagree with me. And that's a

gift. And then you have to remember that

it's a gift because it's also a very

stressful

situation, right? the claims you make

are going to be exactingly

scrutinized in a way that is maybe less

true of people who sort of assume that

the audience is going to be on their

side.

>> Well, what have you learned about

writing persuasively?

>> I mean, this is benal advice, but it's

still the fundamental thing. It is to

argue effectively, you need to

understand why people you disagree with

hold the views that they do. And you

need to start from a version of their

argument that is high-minded rather than

low-minded. And that is sort of the best

version of the perspective that they

hold. And that doesn't mean that you

can't think that like secretly or

subconsciously

they hold their opinion for bad or

wicked reasons or because they want to,

you know, just destroy their enemies and

salt the earth. Like you can believe

that that exists somewhere in their

mind. But to argue with them, you have

to actually engage with the version of

the argument that they themselves would

put forward as their own best defense.

Right? So like the obvious examples,

I'll pick one from the right and one

from the left. Right? So, if you are

pro-choice and you want to argue with

prolifers, like actually argue with

them, you cannot start from a

description of the pro-life position

that says the point of pro-life politics

is to subjugate women and punish them

for sexual immorality. You're allowed to

think that that's out there and like is

part of, you know, the socially

conservative psyche. You're allowed to

think whatever you want, but you're not

going to get anywhere arguing unless you

start with the fact that like pro-life

people think uh unborn human lives are

human and worthy of legal protection in

terms of being human. That's just where

you have to start, right? And then to

take to take an issue from the other

direction, if you are a um conservative

opponent of liberal views on

immigration, you're allowed to think

that liberals are politically

machavelian cynics who are, you know,

bringing in lots of illegal immigrants

to vote Democratic. But you're never

going to get anywhere arguing unless you

start with

what liberals themselves would say,

which is that, you know, immigration is

a humanitarian and economic benefit to

immigrants and to the country that

receives them. That, you know, that's

that's like where you have to start.

That's it. That's the the whole the

whole secret. And again, how effective

the arguments are that you end up making

from that starting point, I don't know.

But I I do think generally that

the act of sort of sustained attempted

good faith interaction

does even in totally polarized

environments

yield a kind of you know reasonably

favorable response. Like it's not the

case that it that you can't talk across

partisan divides. It's it's challenging

and difficult and sometimes exhausting.

Um, but people are open to it.

>> I think relatively few opinion writers

are actually engaged in ongoing efforts

at persuasion. I think typically people

who think they're doing that are engaged

in ongoing efforts at affirmation. And

there are things around the edges where

they're sort of putting their spin on

it. But it it starts from a a kind of

locust of major agreement and then

you're sort of like shifting in one

direction or another. What I think has

been interesting to watch across your

career is that you actually have been

engaged in a very very long effort at

persuasion. You are almost always in

relationship with an audience that

mostly doesn't

>> a profoundly a profoundly successful

exercise. say you've been most

successful. What What would you say you

feel you have been most persuasive

about?

>> I I don't honestly know exactly how to

judge that. I mean, I I think that the

So, all right. On the one hand, there's

a bunch of things that have happened

since I took the Times job that sort of

fulfilled my expectations to some degree

about like what was going to happen in

American politics and where certain

things would go.

uh above all the sort of populist

nationalist transformation of the

Republican party.

>> It's worth noting here for people who

don't know, you and your former

co-blogger Ryhan had written a book

called Grand New Party.

>> We we were we wrote a book, but beyond

the book, we were just sort of involved.

So this this wasn't persuasion directed

at liberals, honestly. This was

persuasion directed more at our fellow

conservatives and saying, "Look, the

tectonic plates under the Republican

party are are shifting. The party has to

deal with the fact that it has a more

working-class coalition. It has to adapt

its policy and rhetoric, all these kind

of things.

But in fact, that vision was fulfilled

in a way that had absolutely nothing to

do with us. It was not the case that we

wrote a bunch of columns, persuaded a

bunch of Republicans to become more

populist, and lo and behold, you know, a

populist version of Marco Rubio was

elected president in 2016. No, obviously

our prophecies were fulfilled by Donald

Trump and the whole Trump phenomenon was

just was and for the most part remains

pretty disconnected from the work of um

you know opinion mongers and wouldbe

intellectuals. So there's that. I that's

that's sort of one

one area of

um success of a kind, but not the

success that that I looked for. I think

that

>> Well, stop there for a second. In what

way was it not right? You put some flesh

on that. So you wrote this book. You

you're sort of involved in an effort to

say the Republican party should not be

as doctrinally libertarian. It shouldn't

be all about cutting Medicare and

cutting social security. That it had

this opportunity at a time when it did

not win majorities of workingass voters

to shift its policies in a way that

would make it more appealing to them.

And the kinds of shifts that you and

Ryhan advocated had to do with things

like immigration, had to do with things

like tax credits for kids, had to do

with sort of shifting it to a more pro-f

family um more concerned with the

problems of working-class families from

I would say a more traditionalist

perspective maybe than the left is. So,

how would you describe what happened of

that and then what happened that created

the the working class shift? because

Republicans do now win majorities of

working- class voters or Trump at least

does. Um

what drove that that maybe was not in

your prescription? Well, so one part of

what drove it was just that

Trump picked or intuited a different set

of issues to focus on than Ryhan and I

would have would have favored. But but

generally we were focused on sort of

family policy, wage subsidies, these

kind of things. And Trump was just

focused on obviously like trade tariffs

and re-industrialization

um in a way that I don't think we we I

don't think we fully anticipated how

much some of those arguments would

resonate in 2016. I don't know how much

they resonate now, but in 2016, I think

big part of the country was still

getting over the shock of the opening to

China. And there was just a real

percentage for Trump in flying around

the Midwest, going to places that had

been hammered and saying, "I'm just

going to bring back your jobs." Right?

>> We're going to stop businesses from

leaving our country. And we are they are

being

[cheering]

and they are being drained out of our

country. our jobs, our money, our base,

and our factories. We are we're going to

stop it.

>> And that was again a different message

from saying we need to use government

policy to help people form families.

>> And I'm genuinely angry at the people

who took

>> and I'm right. Well, that too, right? So

then there's there's a more substantial

anger. There's more substantial

scapegoating.

>> They're moving to other places. A lot of

them are moving to Mexico. Don't

underestimate. It's like the new China

uh on a smaller level, but like the new

China.

>> So our our view wasn't that you should

never cut Medicare and Social Security.

It was more that if you're going to cut

Medicare or reform Medicare, you should

be doing it not to just pass a new upper

bracket tax cut, but to free up more

money to help working families, right,

would be would be how the argument would

go. And Trump just said, "No, you know,

we're never cutting these things,

right?" And so he outflanked all of his

Republican primary opponents by

realizing that a big part of the

Republican base wasn't on board with

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. But what that

did was basically create a kind of a

more popular but much more fiscally

unsustainable and in the end I think

sort of unproductive policy mix on the

right where the right sort of defines

itself as defenders of old people's

entitlements rather than people who are

eager to cut it and then has no space

left for for a lot of the policy ideas

that that we would have favored. So

that's part of part of what happened.

The other thing that happens, right, is

that we were trying to sort of craft,

you know, I think you use the word

traditional, I would have said sort of

like a kind of moderate social

conservatism

that um was compatible with the

Republican party's sort of religious

religious base and pro-life commitments

and so on, but tried to start from there

and broaden into, you know, broader

support for two parent families and

marriage and these these kind of things.

What actually happened was that for

about 10 years social conservatism was

just routed in the US. It lost I mean it

lost the argument over samesex marriage

most prominently but it lost a lot of

different arguments. Like if you just

look at the trends in the 2010s on you

know all kinds of questions from you

know drug use all the way to like

polyamory you know not that the country

is universally pro polyamory but you can

you can see that leftward shift all over

it ends up showing up on abortion too

right comes in on the one hand as a kind

of someone who speaks to that who says

to embattled social conservatives and

religious conservatives you're losing

the culture and you need to live with

that and just have me as like the tough

guy who will defend you. Um but then

that the the other thing that happens is

that uh liberalism and progressivism

having won those victories then

radicalize further and say well you know

what happened on same-sex marriage where

we sort of shift the country completely

in our direction in an incredible amount

of time and then declare that you know

the other side are bigots and we don't

need to talk to them anymore. We can do

that with a lot of other issues too. And

that gets you the woke era and then it

gets you the backlash against the woke

era. But like the backlash against the

woke era is very far removed from a kind

of stable social conservatism

like sort of building building

something. I mean the backlash against

the woke era is then you know everybody

from Catholic traditionalists to pot

smoking libertarians right who don't who

don't like the woke but it's not a I

don't know it it's not sort of a

coherent basis for governing the country

in ways that I think have become totally

apparent in the second Trump term.

>> Well, you have this famous 2016 tweet.

You write a thought sent back in time to

the theocracy panic of 2005. You seem

like you're enjoying this interview. If

you dislike the religious right, wait

till you meet the post-religious right.

>> Unpack both sides of that. I mean, for

people maybe who don't really remember

what you're calling the theocracy panic

of05. What was that? Um, but then the

religious right versus the

post-religious right I think is actually

a quite significant thing. I just did

this big Odyssey essay which I would say

is very much about that question in a

way. So, you know, so the theocracy the

theocracy pan the theocracy panic was

just that George W. Bush won re-election

in 2004 with the support of lots and

lots of white evangelicals. Liberals

were not expecting Bush to win, a bunch

of liberals became obsessed with the

idea that evangelicalism was taking over

America and was going to build a kind of

Gileadesque evangelical theocracy. I

thought that was ludicrous at the time

and wrote a bunch of essays about it.

Um, and

then by the time you get to the mid2010s

and Trump is winning while being

conspicuously

non-eangelical, conspicuously

non-Christian, it seems like you're in a

world where everything that liberals

hated and feared about George W. Bush

becomes something they're they're

nostalgic for, right? and that they see

sort of and that as you kind of

dechristianize

conservatism, you get more bigotry,

xenophobia, these kind of things. You

know, that was 10 years ago. There's a

lot of different forms like a

post-religious right could be and you

see versions of this not a kind of you

know terrifying fascist formation but

just a kind of right-wing politics of um

you know sort of libertine indifference

and sort of proud amoralism right and

again this is part of part of Trump's

coalition right is people who just hate

moralistic arguments and want to do

whatever they want to do and saw and

ended up seeing Trump as an avatar for

that which is I think quite different

from the part of the post-religious

right that is literally people trying to

revive kind of a pagan non-Christian

fascist politics but both of those

things sort of exist as phenomena in the

last 10 years tell me what you think

leads to the phenomena of the more pagan

formation so so the first time I heard

this uh description of it was actually

in an interview that Luis Perry, the

sort of British conservative kind of

critic of modern feminism did with your

new boss Barry Weiss and she was making

this distinction between Jordan Peterson

and Andrew Tate. So, you know, the

really crucial difference between Jordan

Peterson and Andrew Tate. There are

obviously lots of differences, but the

the one that I think is most salient to

this issue is um Jordan Peterson is

basically um preaching a Christian

message and Andrew Tate is not. I the

more I think about it, the more I think

that actually that's really the key

dividing line if you're thinking about

um [clears throat and snorts] American

culture in particular

>> and that a lot of the fights on the

right she sort of made this argument are

going to begin to come down to this you

know are you sort of pushing towards a

you know what can be called here at

least in certain forms of Christian

ethic or is it about strength about

dominance about hierarchy obviously

Christianity is a big phenomena and you

all as is Islam and Judaism and all

these religions have many many different

>> it's a complicated world

>> political manifestations so I don't want

to I don't want to overly probably

pagans too

>> but I do think there's something to that

>> well the issue there though is that

Jordan Peterson is not a Christian

Tate is a that that is a right-wing

politics that formally rejects

Christianity Jordan Peterson is a

post-Christian right-wing politics that

is sort of trying I mean he's been ill

for a while and I I don't want to like

sort of

>> characterize where he is right now, but

generally he's engaged in this sort of

constant like wrestling with the texts

of the Old Testament and the Christian

story and so on and saying, you know,

these are incredibly important and we

need to, you know, preserve them without

ever actually committing to to Christian

belief. And conservatism generally, I

think, as Christianity has declined, has

ended up in this weird place where it's

trying to find some kind of category

that includes Christianity, includes

traditional religion, but isn't

reducible to it. So, it's like, well,

we're defending Western civilization,

right? You you'll hear that a lot from

people on the right and and often like

that language is associated with people

on the right who are not themselves

formally committed to Christianity. Um

but so Tate Tate is an extreme

but even Peterson himself is sort of

navigating in the kind of post-Christian

landscape in his own way.

>> So tell me a bit of how you understand

the story. How do we go from the

front-facing Christianity of

conservatism in the Bush era to this

much more postChristian assemblage that

includes Christians as you're as you're

saying. But I would I would say it's

fair to say Christian ethics and virtue

are not demanded as a um

>> right. So two two things happen. One is

um at the mass level Christianity just

declines. It declines sharply between

the late 1990s and 2020.

And that means that just inevitably

the kinds of appeals and rhetoric and

argument that are sort of normative on

the right when lots of people are going

to church uh are less normative when

fewer people are going to church. And

that's a very simple story, but I think

it, you know, it does a lot of

explanatory work. As a culture gets less

formally Christian, it's not surprising

that its leadership would get less

formally Christian. Trump is again an

extreme case. he takes he takes a trend

to an extreme right where he is just

sort of nakedly transactional in his

relationship to Christianity and doesn't

even sort of necessarily mouth the

pieties but then at the intellectual

level right so let's say you are a

writer or thinker or wouldbe elite on

the right looking at this landscape

looking at not just the decline of

Christianity but this sort of sweeping

victory for social liberalism that I

just described

Well, you're going to look at that and

say, "Okay, we had an evangelical

president in George W. Bush. We had sort

of a Catholic evangelical alliance sort

of defining Republican politics. And

what did we get from it? We got

secularization and the triumph of social

liberalism." So, something went wrong

here. And a lot of the sort of

controversy and argument and debate

among younger conservatives especially,

but all over the place is this kind of

wrestling with like, well, why did why

did we fail, right? And there's just a

lot of different impulses at work there.

You have, you know, you have people who

sort of want to leave Christianity

behind entirely and say the problem, you

know, the problem is just like, you

know, this this religion is sort of weak

and and its leaders are hapless and

defeat and soft and you need, you know,

a harsh a harsh masculine force and so

on. That that's that's a pretty narrow

group. I think what what's more common

is a desire among people who are

connected to Christianity, who are

Christian and so on to like say, well,

where can we find greater strength?

Where can we find, you know, greater

toughness? How can we be more effective

political actors? How can we defeat our

enemies instead of having them vanquish

us? You could call it a reaching for

pagan energy that doesn't go all the way

to actually becoming pagan, right? And

look, the truth is that, you know, if

you go back and look,

>> I'm not Steven Miller's not a Wiccan.

[laughter]

>> Steven Miller is not a Wiccan, right?

But there, yeah, there's a I mean, there

it's like the desire is for strength and

toughness and a politics of enmity.

There's various versions of this that um

that show up and they're connected also

to the reality that you know if you look

obviously historically at the

expressions of political Christianity in

the western world they are you know I

mean very comfortable with fighting wars

and um you know conquering enemies and

all of these kind of things. people,

Christians, conservative Christians

today who are like, you know, what

happened to the crusading spirit or

something like that are are not wrong

that like that that has been part of

Christian culture in the west for a long

time. But you know, you see this in the

debate about like the Odyssey for

instance, right? Where

Christopher Nolan takes the Odyssey

and some people have said he

Christianizes it, right? This is sort of

debatable, but he he certainly makes the

moral vision of the story

more compatible with Christianity where

it's like, okay, you know, Odysius has

committed sins and feels guilt and he

doesn't glory in war. Um, he doesn't

sleep with Calypso uh and Cersei and so

on. But then there's clearly a group not

just of would be neopagans but sort of

conservative Christians on the internet

who don't like that and are like where's

the you know where's the war right

where's the you know we we this is sort

of this is like losing losing the the

the core the core of the story and

that's an that's I think that that

partially reflects this desire to

find something that doesn't seem present

in like late 20th century

sort of public Christianity, the

compassionate conservatism of George W.

Bush, find some kind of fighting spirit

in the theory that that's what you need

to overcome

liberalism. It

>> it's funny. It's an odd take on George

W. Bush in a way that what he lacked was

a fighting spirit. Bush, who won two

elections in a row against the

Democrats,

>> uh but also launched a large number of

wars.

>> Yes, there were some wars. Well, yes.

And there is no part there's also some

of this is like a creative mis or a

convenient misremembering by the right

where you have like young nationalists

on the right young wouldbe nationalists

who will say you know the one thing we

can't do is go back to you know the

feckless liberal internationalism of

George W Bush. Um, but if you look at

the things written in the run-up to the

Iraq war, and this is maybe where my war

blogger reference at the start is

actually relevant, they had a lot in

common with populist nationalist

arguments today. There's this sort of

recurring. They were like, the West has

gotten soft, right? Radical Islam has

taken advantage of our liberal weakness.

we need to show strength and make a

friend enemy distinction in the battle

for the Middle East, right? Um the the

whole like national greatness

conservatism and this runs

history is filled with these like fun

ironies, right? So there were a bunch of

people who were associated with what got

called national greatness conservatism

which was basically a kind of you know

pretty hawkish

um form of Republican politics um who

then like Bill Crystal right um who then

end up as like the great critics of

Trumpism. our former colleague our

former colleague our right our former

colleague David Brooks he's a less he's

a less extreme example it's just really

striking if you go back

>> like nobody hates Bill Crystal more than

Trumpists and Bill Crystal hates

Trumpists but if you go back and read

like the way Crystal wrote about

politics and war and all these things in

the late 90s and early 2000s he has a

lot in common with the way sort of the

young nationalists spoiling for a fight

write about politics today it's just the

focus the focus is is different.

>> So why do you think that ended up being

such a major split? Because I agree that

that is one of the places where you tend

to see a lot of split between Trumpist

and never Trumpers, people associated

with national greatness conservatism.

>> That was an aggressive muscular

conservatism. Y

>> that was a we need to defend Western

civilization version of conservatism.

And you know, for all the talk about not

launching new wars, it does not turn out

to be the case that that is so central

to Donald Trump's conception apparently

not of how MAGA works. Yep.

>> So why do you think that became such a

cut in the Republican coalition?

>> I think it was well it was partially a

cut because even though Trump has ended

up starting a new war in the Middle

East, he really did pretty strongly

repudiate elements of neoonservative and

hawkish foreign policy. And to the

extent that like if you were committed

to the idea that the Iraq war had been a

good idea then Trump in 2016 was not

your guy. Right? So there was that as a

kind of specific breaking point. Then

there was al there also was you know to

make the case for the never Trump side a

kind of clear characterological

argument where you could say you know in

in the early 2000s that a n a politics

of national greatness only made sense if

it was founded on

character and virtue in your leaders and

I don't think George Bush was like a

paragon of every single virtue but it's

fair to say that he was a more

personally virtuous in various ways than

Trump. Right? So there were people who

had committed to that idea for good

reasons for whom it was just like okay

[snorts] I don't care how muscular Trump

is or how international greatness he is.

He's just a bad guy and I'm not I'm not

going to support him. And then for

younger people like especially after

2016 like once you know once Trump wins

then he just sort of resets the

landscape right and you sort of

it's it's just like you sort of I I feel

like with younger people on both the

left and the right the world where we

had arguments about the character of

American politicians the world where you

know Bill Clinton's adultery was

something to be litigated all all of

these is just kind of a lost world

and so it's sort of

>> I think it might be rediscovered soon.

>> It might be.

>> I think in the turning of the wheel on

>> Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. No,

the next cohort I mean yeah we're old

now so you know you can you can see that

each cohort will have a different

perspective and there may be a renewed

interest in character. There's another

fascinating at least to me shift that

has taken place which is you know we've

described a couple times here the

centrality of evangelical Christianity

to politics in say 2005

and now Catholics seem much more central

to politics right Catholic thinkers you

have a lot of Catholic converts at the

top of Republican party politics

including JD Vance who is just on your

show the vice president who just

released a book about his Catholic

conversion

>> albeit one with a Protestant church on

cover.

>> It is an odd design choice. I agree.

>> Sort of. I mean, it it actually is a

design choice that makes a lot of sense,

but we can we can get into that. Go on.

>> What have you made of that? What what

what does that move from like the form

of Christianity that seems to be driving

right-wing politics? Was evangelical

Christianity to Catholic thinking? What

is that?

>> I don't know. So, one, I don't know how

much Catholic thinking can be said to be

driving Republican politics. I I would

not look at the second Trump

intellectual trends.

>> Yeah, I think it's I think it's I think

it's very important in sort of

right-wing intellectual culture. In the

last 5 years generally after a long

period of secularization, there is a

renewed interest in arguments about

religion, religious ideas, um that

extends beyond conservatism, maybe even

extends to you, right, Ezra? We've we've

talked about this on this show before.

Um, and I think in my own my own work

has been in this period kind of well

suited to that moment. I felt sort of

more in tune with the times than I

usually do in in that sense. But the way

that's manifested in kind of right-wing

intellectual culture is that

Catholicism,

which has, I think it's fair to say, a

stronger and deeper intellectual

tradition than evangelical Christianity

in the US, has just become like a kind

of natural attractor for a lot of people

who are like looking for looking for a

harbor, looking for a place to land,

looking to convert or revert or anything

else. But then the other thing is that

you know Catholicism is still struggling

as a mass institutional religion right

and evangelicalism

is still thriving relative to

Catholicism. I mean, one argument you

could make is that under sort of digital

conditions, under sort of internet

conditions, which are hard on they're

hard on things that don't have a clear

definition that are sort of just based

on kind of loose ancestral loyalties.

So, they've been really hard on like

denominational Protestantism, on people

who are like, well, I'm a Methodist cuz

my parents were a Methodist, or I'm a

Presbyterian cuz I like the pastor, and

so on. and they've been good for in

different ways sort of stronger brands

and in a way Christianity sort of

polarizes into the strong brand of like

lurggical religion of which Catholicism

is the strongest expression and then

kind of the strong brand of mass market

seeker sensitive you know come for our

amazing our amazing praise music concert

and th those are the two strongest forms

but the Catholic form is stronger at the

elite level and the evangelical form

seems stronger at the mass level. That

was a very long comment, but it's it's

something obviously that I think about a

lot, but it's a very Yeah, I I don't

know where it goes from from there.

Like, do we just have a world where like

it's sort of natural if you're in the

elite to be Catholic the way it would

have once been natural to be an

Episcopalian?

But that's somehow separate from like

what's happening in mass trends in

religion? Does an elite turn to

Catholicism eventually sort of trickle

down and sort of revitalize

the wider Catholic institutions? I have

no idea.

>> Do you think the relationship between

the left and religion has changed?

>> Yes. Uh, I think that again I'm not sure

where this goes, but I feel like the

kind of post-Christian left is having

its own kind of existential

crisis of like pessimism. But I feel

like there was a period when it when on

the left it was like we are leaving

traditional patriarchal

ciseteronormative

Christianity behind and we're going to

be great. we're gonna, you know, we're

gonna enter the broad sunlit uplands of

science. We're going to trust the

science in this house and so on. And

then somewhere between COVID and Trump

returning and, you know, the rise of AI

and various other unsettling things, um,

I think the left started to feel like

they were missing something. Um, you

know, if you watch, did you watch the la

the last Knives Out movie?

>> I did.

>> Right. So in the in the latest kn So the

prior Knives Out movie was a movie about

how Elon Musk and billionaires are bad

and evil and this the latest Knives Out

movie um was a movie about how uh there

are really awful forms of religion and

there's also really good forms of

religion and we should want the really

good forms to survive and you know it's

just just one movie but I thought it was

an interesting sort of

>> sense of like a a kind of a kind of like

groping around in liberal culture for

sort of some kind of religious or

spiritual point of connection that again

I think also shows up in just kind of

post-Christian spirituality interest in

sort of new age pagan stuff all that

stuff too there's just a lot of there's

a lot of groping

>> well I think you can see a couple things

happening that are least interesting so

I agree knives out is is one of them we

were talking about the Odyssey But you

have James Terico who became a kind of

phenom candidate, sort of one of the

only like mainstream liberal candidates

who's been like a big attentional phenom

of the moment and does it by wrapping a

pretty straightforward progressive

politics

>> in a very very moralistically Christian

y framework.

>> What would Jesus do about a justice

system that incarcerates more people

than any other country on the face of

the earth?

And what would Jesus do about an

economic system that prioritizes profits

over the health of our planet?

Would he stay in his room and pray or

would he walk into the seat of power and

flip over the tables of injustice?

>> And I think people have found that

exciting. It has given them a way to

talk about the moment that I think feels

deeper and

uh

it has tapped into something very real.

I think if you're watching some of the

other people coming up, this would

include not just Ralph Waro, but but

John Of in Georgia, they're much more

comfortable in that grammar as well.

They

got together, the speaker of the house,

held hands with other legislators,

prayed a prayer, and then they went and

cut a trillion dollars out of Medicaid.

15 million people, right,

>> off of their healthcare. They they

kicked veterans and seniors and children

off of SNAP. And I I don't understand

how you read the book that I read.

>> I'm a Matthew 25 Christian. A government

transformed into a tool of one man's

vengeance

>> and enrichment.

>> A spiritually broken president.

>> Who digs the moral pit deeper and

deeper.

But pastor Proverbs says, "Whoever digs

a pit,

[applause]

>> whoever digs a pit

will fall into it."

>> And scripture is full of kings brought

low by their own arrogance.

>> Uh so in my view, something is

happening. It's not necessarily the left

is becoming believers in a in a in a new

way, but there is a desire to sort of

reconnect, I think, to traditions. Well,

I mean, there was a way in which from

from my perspective as a skeptical

outsider, the whole great awakening was

this fascinating attempt to do religious

energy without metaphysical commitment.

Like it was it really was the case that

there was kind of the energy that you

associate with a moralistic revival at

work in anti-racism and you know

everything associated with that. Like

you have iconoclasm, you have you know

people enforcing new moral norms. Like

these are things that we associate with

periods of spiritual ferment. Um but

quite self-consciously like the

anti-racist cause was detached from the

black church in various ways, right? And

you had like our [snorts] again my

former Atlantic colleague Tanahasi

Coats, you know, as a kind of prophet

who very explicitly rejected cosmic

hope, right? If anything sort of carried

a kind of cosmic despair around with

him. I think that combination

doesn't work well, right? you end up

with a kind of a kind of politics of

guilt without the possibility of

redemption is a pretty dark perspective

on the world and I think sort of

wokeness for all its revolutionary zeal

ends up itself just in some dark places

again independent of what's happening

with Trump or on the right or anything

else. So some of it might be just a

reaction to that too, right? a sense

that like, okay, we can't moralize at

people if we're also telling them that

the universe is sort of empty and

meaningless except for like the meaning

we impose on it through ideological

categories or something like you need if

you're going to have progressive

moralism, you need to be able to claim

to that it corresponds to something like

out there in the cosmos that's real,

right?

>> I don't totally agree with that. Um

maybe one one way to to to ground that

disagreement is Pope Leo's AI and

cyclical one of the things that struck

me reading it was without agreeing with

his metaphysics. Right? I am not a

Catholic. My vision of the world and its

cosmology is not Catholic.

I found it to be a really

beautiful and moving articulation

of what I would otherwise describe as

liberal values. um all the way down to

ways of practicing politics uh you know

approaches to pluralism, approaches to

to to the human being. So now you could

say and I think this would be true. I

mean I come out of um Jewish tradition

and I probably have a lot of that in the

way I look at the world. But I do think

there is something about the

emphasis there on a certain kind of

human dignity and a certain kind of

treatment between people that Trump has

thrown into a kind of relief. So maybe

it looks more explicitly connected to a

politics I am interested in in trying to

create than it would have if he had

written the same thing but Jeb Jeb Bush

was president.

>> Yes. Maybe at this point we have sort of

moved through the Trump era to a point

where um liberals are saying like okay

Trump is so corrupt and such a rotten

person in all these ways and so what if

we counterpose a kind of beautiful

politics of human dignity against him

but that's after trying for many years

to say and and again not you personally

maybe but some some people right saying

Trump is rotten and corrupt and his

rottness and corruption reveals the dark

racist heart of America and the fact

that we're all still enthralled to

Confederate patriarchal values and what

we need is, you know, a sort of total

moral reckoning with all the deep

profound evils of the United States.

Like those are different messages. And I

think the left kind of ran with the

second message for a while and again I

think ended up in some culde-sacs and

dark places. And so now it's like, okay,

now maybe we'll maybe we like that Pope

Leo is linking his critique of AI to a

vision of human dignity rather than a

dark just a a purely dark vision where

you're like AI is bad because it is

controlled by,

you know,

um the evil evil ruthless tech bros or

something. I I don't or you or or AI is

bad because it's part of the horrifying

structures of capitalism which are a

nightmare from which we're struggling to

await.

>> So I want to go back to to a question I

asked you a bit ago. that asked you what

being the the sort of conservative in

many liberal institutions had taught you

about liberals sort of answered that but

I think over time

>> I don't know yeah I don't know if I did

answer that but

>> what about the media right you you've

been you know inside the media for a

long time what has it made you think

about what the media does well what it

does poorly

>> when I was coming up right the media had

its kind of self-conception where it was

like we're just telling you the truth

about the world that's it we're just

reporting the truth

and we're not partisan and we won't even

tell you if we voted for Republicans and

Democrats. We're just in the truth

business. And then people in our cohort

came along and challenged that, right?

And obviously the right had been

challenging it for a long time. Parts of

the far left, Nam Chosky and so on had

always had this critique, but the

internet helped make those critiques

much more powerful. And there was just a

sense that okay, we you know are moving

into a landscape that is more opinion

driven as as you said earlier where

we're going to acknowledge biases. We're

going to accept that the New York Times

seems to have a pretty liberal audience,

right? and a lot of liberals work for

it. Like we're not, you know, it's not

just a view from nowhere and Fox News is

going to make, you know, it's going to

be explicitly conservative and that like

a future where the American media looks,

you know, looks a bit more like the

British newspaper business did where you

have like, you know, you know that the

Guardian is the liberal newspaper and,

you know, the Telegraph is a more

conservative newspaper that like that

was sort of where America was going to

go and it was okay, right? right? It was

it was okay to have sort of competing

media institutions that sort of own

their biases in various ways. Um

but you know we've lived in that kind of

world I think for a while now. I don't

know the Trump era, the AI era, the

COVID era and so on. They I I feel like

they have really undermined

my my own sense of sort of knowing who I

think the good guys and bad guys are in

any particular circumstance. And the

less you feel like the less you feel

certain about knowing who the good guys

and bad guys are, the more you

feel the benefit of just like setting

out every day to just sort of try and

describe the world like and maybe maybe

become less of a persuader. I feel like

I write maybe more columns like that

these days. As the world gets weirder,

journalism needs people and institutions

that sort of

refocus on just saying, "We're trying to

we're trying to figure out what's

happening here." Cuz I'm struggling to

figure out exactly what's happening in a

way that I don't think I was when Mitt

Romney and Barack Obama were running

against each other. Um, and maybe this

leads to like, you know, you wanted to

ask me about

>> you're going to 60 minutes,

>> which is the first place you have worked

in media that The Atlantic is a is a

magazine that is opinionated at its at

its core. It it's launched initially as

an abolitionist magazine. You worked on

the Times opinion page. 60 Minutes is

different although it's under now Barry

Weiss's management. Um, your former

colleague here. I never over overlapped

with Weiss here,

>> but is that you know I'll ask the

question straight. Is that part of why

you're going to 60 Minutes?

>> I think that so I have You have been

doing interview podcast for a long time.

>> Uh I've only been doing it for you know

less less than two years. But presum

presumably I'm going to be doing a lot

of interviewing, right? That's my hope.

And I I find interviewing I don't know

how you find interviewing. I find it

very difficult relative to writing. Um,

writing just comes easier and more

naturally to me than than interviewing

does. Um, but I have found interviewing

just very helpful at a moment when like

what is actually going on in the world

seems more opaque to me. And so, yeah,

one one reason to take a job at 60

Minutes is just an opportunity to sort

of do more of that for for a somewhat

different audience than than the Times

has, although of course there's overlap,

but um yeah, this is sort of and this is

yeah, this this seems like a good time a

good time to to ask questions a little

bit in an open-ended way. Um, and that's

I guess, you know, that's what we've

both been doing with our shows, but

that's sort of what I'm thinking I'll be

doing there.

>> Obviously, you're talking here in the

way you often do to a audience that is

more liberal than you. Um, and who is

>> in spite of in spite of reading my

columns all these years, Ezra, who

workers concerned about what uh they

they think Barry Weiss wants to do with

60 Minutes, what it means that that

you're one of the the first bigname

hires there. What did they say they

wanted? like what what is your sense of

what 60 Minutes um is trying to become,

you know, with you launching with you as

a marquee name?

>> You would you would need to get Barry to

come on your podcast, right? To get sort

of her answer to that question. I again

I see what what I want to do at 60

Minutes in the show itself I think is in

keeping with what the show has always

done incredibly well which is yeah help

help people understand what's really

happening in the world and get sort of

an accurate sense of reality itself

through interviews investigations and so

on that that's sort of I I think if you

had Barry here she would say that is her

formal goal that lots and lots of media

institutions have lost the trust of

people um who aren't politically liberal

or progressive. And so there's a way to

sort of try and have a more balanced

view of the world and try and get those

people back. My own primary sense of

what 60 Minutes can do is more just

capture the full messy reality of the

world in 2026. And if you get that

right, then exactly how many Republicans

versus Democrats you're reaching is

like, you know, that that will sort of

follow from success at the basic project

of describing the world.

>> You mentioned a minute ago the other big

change in this, which is you're moving

from writing to on camera interviewing,

which you've already done a bit with

Interesting Times, your podcast.

This is another big shift from when you

and I started, which is there is a lot

of movement now towards video. There's a

lot of people who talk about uh a return

to more orality and culture, but but is

that part of it for you? I mean do you

do you have the sense that the

center of what journalism is the way

people are understanding the world is

moving away from the written word? Yes.

I I I think there is some there's

clearly some way in which internet

conditions, digital conditions and

whatever the hell is going to happen

with AI are sort of weakening the hold

of the written word. I've certainly kept

writing while doing my show. uh at the

times and I intend to find ways to keep

writing um while I'm working for CBS. So

I I that's that part of journalism is

very important to me. But yeah people

like it's not only podcast and audio

right like in you know if you look at

like what people engage with at the New

York Times they also engage with written

dialogues like they loved the feature

that our colleagues Brett Stevens and

Gail Collins or David Brooks and Gail

Collins did of sort of a conversation

back and forth. They really like the

features um that my longtime editor John

Guida does where he'll sort of interview

someone in a a written form where you're

writing and people are writing writing

in response.

>> Yeah. The transcripts of our shows.

>> Yeah. And and some of it I think is that

people want to see the person underneath

the writing. And maybe this becomes more

the case in the age of AI. Tyler Cowan

who you know you you know his work well.

One of his arguments about AI is that it

basically is just going to increase the

premium for for instance live

performance, right? For the the ability

to to speak in public and engage with

questions and all these kind of human

things will go up as AI can generate

more writing. And I think dialogue and

conversation are sort of versions of

that, places where sort of writers and

thinkers sort of show their own

humanities. maybe a little bit more than

you do in a kind of voice from the

mountaintop column. Um, and then again,

maybe this is just me projecting my own

perspective onto the world, but I also

think people like these things because

like like me, they're a little uncertain

about what's what's happening in

reality. And the kind of conversational

form is a way into the news and what's

going on in the world that doesn't

require you to sort of accept a single

authoritative take and leaves room for

uncertainty and ambiguity while also

introducing you to perspectives that you

might not have considered. That's that's

the positive case for it. I can also

make the negative case and say that you

know a world yeah where people read less

and are less literate um has various

negative repercussions. I'm not I'm not

trying to like sort of be too polyianish

about this change at the very least is a

real shift I think.

>> Do you think with the reporting

resources of 60 Minutes behind you

you'll finally be able to crack

>> what the UAPs are? Yeah, I I mean, look,

this is obviously the number one goal

and um you know, I I've said if I if I

can't break the UFO story in I I don't

want to make any promises, [laughter]

but yes, the subject of UFOs has has

come up at once or twice, maybe only

from my end in in conversations about

stories that that uh the media should be

interested in going forward.

you you talked here about the the sort

of messy edges of reality and and and

your sense of not knowing quite uh of

being less certain than you've been at

other times and I you know I bring up

the UFO thing not totally ingested I

think it actually has become an

important part of of your work and to me

that and sort of a a deeper skepticism

of knowing who to trust of knowing what

kind of information to trust has begun

to characterize your work. So when you

think about navigating the

boundaries of a reality whose boundaries

seem less certain to you, like how do

you think about how do I think about

journalism? How do I think I so when I

thought of the UFO story as just a story

about people who have weird experiences

in the woods and come back and claim to

have been abducted by UFOs, right? Like

that story is interesting, but it's it's

not it's not intensely interesting

because it's so personalized. Like

you're not going to get it's like sort

of analyzing someone's religious

experience. It's really interesting to

do, but you're not going to get a sort

of final decisive answer. Like if

someone describes their religious

experience, there's no journalistic

trick that can tell you was that really

God or not. But with UFOs, like there

are concrete claims made about objects

that operate in physical reality that

are observed by let's say Navy aviators

and there are other concrete claims

about supposed secret programs that the

federal government has. And those are

questions that journalists should be

able to answer. So, I'm interested in

the UFO story in particular, but also

other questions like, you know, the

debates that we're already having about

AI consciousness, these kind of things.

Not because I think they are unknowable,

but because I think that they actually

do presumably have answers, right? Like

maybe the AI consciousness debate will

never be resolved or something, but like

the question of how dangerous AI is

going to be, how transformative AI is

going to be. Guess what? We're going to

find out. Like I know people, smart

people in Silicon Valley who talk about

all human timelines now in terms of like

three years, right? They're like, "Oh,

if you don't do it in the next 3 years,

you're not you're not going to do it

because the singularity is coming." Now,

I'm skeptical of that argument, but

we're going to find out, right, over the

next 3 years whether those kind of

singularity believers are right or not.

So, yes, I'm interested in zones of

uncertainty and questions that sort of

don't have immediate and obvious answers

and questions that touch on the

supernatural or the metaphysical and so

on. As a journalist, I'm only interested

them in them in so far as you can figure

out what the hell is going on.

>> Well, I hope you do. Ross, it's been a

pleasure working alongside you.

>> It's been a pleasure for many, many,

many years. I'll continue to watch.

>> I imagine we will encounter one another

again after this conversation

>> in the singularity. And then always our

final question.

>> I hope not.

>> Even in this postitate age, what are

three books you'd recommend to the

audience?

>> Uh, I forgot about the three books

question. Um, I have been reading uh,

Speak Memory by Vladimir Nambacov,

Nbachov, however you want to pronounce

it, which is his sort of memoir uh,

mostly of his boyhood as a Russian

aristocrat before the Russian the

Russian Revolution. Uh, I would I would

recommend that to people who don't want

to be post-literate, who want to be very

very literate indeed.

Uh I will recommend uh Julian Jackson's

biography of Charles de Gaulle [snorts]

on general principles. I haven't read it

recently but just strong strong

recommend there. And I will finally

recommend the most recent book that I

read to my children which is Robert

Lewis Stevenson's Treasure Island. So

those are three solid recommendations

and I'm happy to leave you with them.

Rosetta, thank you very much.

>> As recline, thank you [music]

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