This weekend, whilst recovering from some excessive fun, I was pleased to find a distraction that rekindled my thinking after a stint of limited writing output. The New York Times’ Ezra Klein did a lengthy interview with Patrick Deneen, the erstwhile Georgetown professor who’s been mentioned in my writings more than a few times. It had been a while since I had a new dose of Deneen in my life, and the discussion was as fascinating as ever, worthy of pondering even when his arguments don’t quite land.

The interview is about as wide-ranging conversation as can be, a gentle sparring match between two people who on paper seem drastically opposed: a staunchly Catholic political philosopher whose isn’t fond of many developments since the Enlightenment and a technocratic liberal policy wonk and internet-era media personality at the Times. Klein prods and probes at Deneen’s idiosyncratic views, sometimes landing some real punches. The two circle each other, working toward common ground, or at the very least an understanding. It’s a model of civil debate between two people who generally agree on what is wrong with American society but see both the causes of and solutions to this malaise in radically different, though not always irreconcilable, ways. It is two worldviews, in the richest sense of that word, colliding.

Klein’s interviews are never dull, but this one is particularly wide-ranging. They debate whether Deneen has grown harsher over time, and what Deneen views as a liberal attack on the family as an institution. They spar about divorce law and the drift of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, about what Joe Biden represents and what Deneen’s philosophizing might look like in a political platform. Later, Deneen gets to the core of his critique of the managerial elite and the prestigious universities he has inhabited for most of his professional career, and he offers some words very similar to the ones he shared with this kid ten years ago in office hours at the end of a senior year. (I find it a timely reflection, as I’ll be back in DC in a few weeks to revisit the institution where that chat happened.) They end with some musing on the interplay between culture and politics, a divide that perhaps most fundamentally splits the two of them.

Give it a listen here.