Ezra Klein

One of the things that has happened to you over the years, you've written very beautifully about, is you've had profound struggles with chronic Lyme, and it made you more open to the way a lot of people feel failed by official knowledge and the institutions that produce it.

One of the things that has happened to you over the years, you've written very beautifully about, is you've had profound struggles with chronic Lyme, and it made you more open to the way a lot of people feel failed by official knowledge and the institutions that produce it.

And I've been interested in how that experience, which I think is blazed in some ways through the book, the generalizability of it for you.

And I've been interested in how that experience, which I think is blazed in some ways through the book, the generalizability of it for you.

Like what happens when all of a sudden what is official knowledge no longer conforms to the world as you experience it and the sort of crowbar of skepticism that places between not just you and that particular institution, but maybe you and all of them simultaneously, if this could be wrong, right?

Like what happens when all of a sudden what is official knowledge no longer conforms to the world as you experience it and the sort of crowbar of skepticism that places between not just you and that particular institution, but maybe you and all of them simultaneously, if this could be wrong, right?

If this could have failed me so profoundly, well, who's to say it's not all failing me so profoundly?

If this could have failed me so profoundly, well, who's to say it's not all failing me so profoundly?

When we were young bloggers so many years ago... So many, many years ago, yes. It felt then, you know, the political system seemed deeply polarized on taxes, on foreign policy, on the Affordable Care Act. And I'm not saying those polarizations don't still exist. They do. But we seem more fundamentally polarized now on official knowledge than on anything else.

When we were young bloggers so many years ago... So many, many years ago, yes. It felt then, you know, the political system seemed deeply polarized on taxes, on foreign policy, on the Affordable Care Act. And I'm not saying those polarizations don't still exist. They do. But we seem more fundamentally polarized now on official knowledge than on anything else.

And the parts of the Democratic Party that were sort of outside that consensus, led by a figure like RFK Jr., have sort of become parts of the Republican Party, the parts of the Republican Party that are more inside that consensus and want to stay there. Some of them, like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and Mitt Romney, have sort of moved away from at least the Trump Republican Party.

And the parts of the Democratic Party that were sort of outside that consensus, led by a figure like RFK Jr., have sort of become parts of the Republican Party, the parts of the Republican Party that are more inside that consensus and want to stay there. Some of them, like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and Mitt Romney, have sort of moved away from at least the Trump Republican Party.

So the coalitions, which used to have a mix of people sort of inside and outside, like official consensus, now are split between them. And like, this feels to me like one of the things that is really deranged are politics, right? that the parties are sort of imbalanced in terms of their relationship to institutions.

So the coalitions, which used to have a mix of people sort of inside and outside, like official consensus, now are split between them. And like, this feels to me like one of the things that is really deranged are politics, right? that the parties are sort of imbalanced in terms of their relationship to institutions.

Democrats may be too trusting, Republicans much, much, much, in my view, too skeptical with sort of too little sort of empirical and grounding anymore. I guess I was curious before you said yep a bunch of times if you agreed with that.

Democrats may be too trusting, Republicans much, much, much, in my view, too skeptical with sort of too little sort of empirical and grounding anymore. I guess I was curious before you said yep a bunch of times if you agreed with that.

But let me add to that story just in one way, which I think the polarization had already happened. And that's actually part of what that period represented. One of the things Democrats didn't have during that period was actually enough skepticism of the institutions of official knowledge.

But let me add to that story just in one way, which I think the polarization had already happened. And that's actually part of what that period represented. One of the things Democrats didn't have during that period was actually enough skepticism of the institutions of official knowledge.

I think you would agree that the people pushing a lot of the ideas that you see as destructive from them, and some of them I probably also feel were ultimately destructive, were doing so wrapped in the—

I think you would agree that the people pushing a lot of the ideas that you see as destructive from them, and some of them I probably also feel were ultimately destructive, were doing so wrapped in the—