Ross Douthat: The Exit Interview
About this episode
Douthat's exit interview, recorded as he leaves the Times for 60 Minutes under Bari Weiss, reflects on how media and religion have changed. He describes the shift from blogging — where readers sought arguments — to social media, where everything became marketing to algorithms, and how his podcast 'Interesting Times' tries to escape that trap. On religion, he revisits his 2010s thesis that the religious right was fading: the right is now post-religious in a pagan sense — Trump as 'pagan warlord,' the 'consecration of America' as civil religion — while Catholicism has grown in right-wing intellectual culture. Meanwhile the post-Christian left gropes toward ritual through wellness, fandoms, and even a saint-like cult around Luigi Mangione. They discuss Pope Leo's new encyclical on AI, the 'vibes theory of everything' in politics, and whether the Trump era has been good for America — Douthat's verdict: bad, and not good.