Azeem Azhar

Like back in the days when Democrats had friends who were Republicans and Republicans had friends who were Democrats, which I think is not the world the U.S.

lives in today.

I love that example of having a, you know, a critic, a helpful critic to challenge perspectives on a piece.

And I think that's, I'm mentally logging that to think, you know, we don't write much around politics, but lots of issues today have those political undertones.

I found it extremely difficult to find that balance because I think, as you know, you've read a few of my essays.

I really...

endeavor to, of course, I'm involved and I have a position, but I endeavor to have a bit of dispassionate perspective on the left and the right, the up and the down.

And one of the things I find really tricky is that if I am critical of something that Elon Musk might have done,

the inbox fills up.

And if I then write about something that I think he's done that's really impressive, SpaceX, the inbox fills up and it's not the same people and they're all cross.

And so there are these hot buttons where you can't at the moment find a way of getting people to sit around the table and say, listen, we can accept that this person does something impressive here and they do something difficult here.

And that's all within the capability of a single person personality character.

And I just wonder, you know, are there historical precedents for us going through these moments?

And what are the things that we can learn that help us come back together, bring it back to, you know, to a sense of common understanding while still being able to disagree quite civilly?

I don't write about ketamine that much.

I mean, we've written about psilocybin.

We've written about GLP-1s.

But I mean, I love this idea.

I mean, we do use AI tools in that way.

I mean, we use AI tools to challenge perspectives, to find weaknesses in arguments.