Stephen Dubner

To me, you read history because you had to and sometimes it happened to be interesting and you would remember the interesting things.

Now I read history because it's the reason that people read philosophy.

It's the reason people read old religious stuff.

The human condition has changed a lot, but I don't think the human has changed that much.

And therefore it can be thrilling, intoxicating, scary, et cetera, et cetera, to see what history has brought for us that we can remember now.

I understand.

The most I can tell you is both sides suck.

So I'm glad you used the specific.

I'll have a conversation with anybody, anytime about anything.

It's what I like to do.

Especially in the last 10, 15 years, or maybe 20, I've met types of people that I never thought I would have met.

Just because of the nature of what I've ended up doing professionally.

And then I became a golfer.

Oh.

And that introduced me into a world that I had these preconceptions about and I was so wrong.

But when someone comes at me with a binary, you're for us or against us.

What I try to do, what I probably do do mostly is I say, first of all, let's define terms.

And that's a trick I think I learned from academia.

Let's take it away from the fascism.

If you're going to call someone in economic terms a communist or a socialist, let's define terms.