Can We Move Past The Culture Wars? Quillette’s Jonathan Kay On “Other Interests"

Editor, journalist and podcaster Jonathan Kay is the author of several books, has worked as an editor and columnist at the Canadian newspaper The National Post and is currently the Canadian editor of Quillette, a digital publication founded in 2015 as a haven for what Jonathan has called “ideological refugees. In this interview, he talks with Meghan about a range of topics, including a question Meghan has been pondering a lot lately:  What is a conservative? Though you wouldn’t necessarily know it from his work over the last several years, Jonathan has spent much of his life identifying as a conservative. (His mother, the columnist Barbara Kay, has been a high profile conservative figure in Canada for decades.) He talked about what terms like “conservative” and “liberal” even mean in the post-Trump era, why he thinks political correctness hurts people on the left far more on the right and why he’s losing interest in culture war topics and would rather focus on subjects like ancient history. Most of all, he talks about why it’s time for “heterodox” thinkers to stop obsessing about culture war issues and pursue other interests.      Guest Bio: Jonathan Kay is Canadian Editor of Quillette, a TedX speaker, an op-ed writer at National Post, and co-host of the Quillette podcast. His freelance work has appeared recently in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Gotham, Canadian Jewish News, and other publications. Kay's books include Among The Truthers (2011), Legacy: How French Canadians Shaped North America (2016), Your Move: What Board Games Teach Us About Life (2019), Panics and Persecutions (2020), and Magic In The Dark: One Family’s Century Of Adventures In The Movie Business (2022). Follow him on Twitter at @jonkay.