Conversations with tyler is produced by the mercatus center at george mason university, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems. To day, we are here with ezra, which, of course, means ezra kline. Ezra is editor at large at vax he has a new book out, which i like very much, called why we're polarized. And he too runs his own cast called, believe it or not, the ezraKline show. So let's start right in on polarization. Are our american religions more polarized than they used to be? I doubt it. Certainly not than we used to be. Ri
In his
new book, Ezra Klein argues that polarization in America has become centered on partisan political identities, which has subsumed virtually every form of identity, be it where we live, what team we root for, the church we attend, or any other. This stacked form of polarization thus carries much more weight and is activated by a wider range of conflicts than before.
But is polarization really such a pressing concern? If it’s all merged into one form of identity politics then aren’t we just polarizing more efficiently? Over what percentage of GDP are we more polarized today versus in the past?
Tyler posed these questions to Ezra and more, including thoughts on Silicon Valley’s intellectual culture, his disagreement with Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory, the limits of telecommuting, how becoming a father made him less conservative, his post-kid production function, why Manhattan is overrated, the “cosmic embarrassment” of California’s governance, why he loved Marriage Story, the future of the BBC and PBS, what he learned in Pakistan, and more.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Recorded December 27th, 2019 Other ways to connect