But it is not in the mind to give advice. I don’t say you do it …
No, I take this point. I don’t see myself in these conversations as an advisor.
Because, you know, there is a tradition of that-Walter Lippmann gives a lawyer to this one or that one.
And do secret diplomatic missions. The lines were blurred at the time.
So you keep it nicely at the top.
I try.
Do you never want to go to politics?
No.
Absolutely not? You make a Sherman statement.
I make a declaration from Sherman. I think you need to know what you are good at doing. I think I’m good to do that.
What is your sense of your mission as a podcaster, as a writer?
My sense of mission is simple: I have values and beliefs about the functioning of the world and what would make the world better, and I try to persuade people from them, but I also try to explore them in an honest way. I do this because I care about where things go. I do not constantly observe the key line. I am emotionally, intellectually, spiritually involved.
But what I do, and the way I do it, has changed a lot over the years. In a way that I can follow more by intuition than by a framework. The version of me who wrote “Wonkblog”, and tell everyone to health care and aging in a single graph, is not what I do on my podcast now. My podcast is a forum in which I do not mainly try to be persuasive. Over time, I think he has persuasive elements, but it is above all other people who speak. I have a lot of people on the show with whom I do not agree. And I think it acts as a space in which certain types of conversations can be carried out and can then be put into conversation with each other. And that matters.
In my column, I am more normative. What will, ultimately, the book “Abundance” comes more from the column, and it is I who tries to understand the world and to try to find ways to confront things that I find confusing or annoying. I try to answer questions seriously that I don’t like. I don’t try to insist that the world works as I want it to work. I try to be honest with myself on how it works.
You are an important figure in what I think is still, today, the most important organization of new collection on earth, New York TimesBut it is also the one on which everyone has opinions. And recently, Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote a book on summer 2020, which was dramatic in many neighborhoods, including the Times. James Bennett fired. Bari Weiss left and created The free press. What is your opinion on the growing influence of Bari Weiss? It seems that it is about to be a very important figure at CBS News.
Yeah, it seems that it is about to take control of CBS.
What do you think?
My thing about Bari – and I’m in her show – I have a lot of admiration for the quality she is in what she does. My disagreements with Bari are that I think it is asymmetrical in sympathy and generosity.
Tell me what it means.
I thought The free press’ Working, for example, the famine in Gaza was really bad.
Spell it.
It’s done all this, like, well, many children who died and who were reported, well, they had secondary conditions. And, yes, when you display a population, people who die first will be the most vulnerable. But it is not at the excifferent. There was overwhelming evidence of the severity of things in Gaza. I felt they were trying to whiten him.
I think Bari, however, is a glimpse of crazy talents. If you look at what it built The free pressShe is very, very good to find people, to attract them, to make networking with them. She is sort of an impresario. Using Tyler Cowen to become a columnist was a very good idea for them.
The economist.
I am someone who edited a site, VoxRIGHT? I know how difficult it is to do. And Bari has an incredibly sensitive sensation for the moment political moment. This is not my feeling for the moment, and its policy is not mine.
What is his policy? How would you describe them?
What I see her trying to do is something that was a little more common, which is to be consciously consciously what she would define as the center. And I see The free press Adopt back and forth around it. It was a lot more pro-Trump, I would say, when he was running and the Democrats were in power. But now that it is in it is, as, oh, no, these are the vandals. The publication is a bit, for me, like the old New RepublicDoing things they did. . . . In fact, it’s funny. When I was a blogger, it was something we all complain about all the time. All these organizations we felt used this concept, this amorphous concept of the center as a positioning device –
That it was a dodge.
No, it was not a dodge – it was navigation. They did not equip. They were just a little. . . There were many politicians and many players who had had the impression that their policy went to an idea of the center, as opposed to a very coherent whole of opinions and principles. And, as the media has become polarized, much fewer places do it. I think Bari has experienced a market opportunity in there. Is its center what I think is the center? No. But I recognize a lot of editorial skills there.
