Listen to Zooming In at The UnPopulist in your favorite podcast app: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | RSSAaron Ross Powell: Welcome to Zooming In from The UnPopulist. I'm Aaron Ross Powell. Joining me today is Berny Belvedere, the new senior editor at The UnPopulist. We're going to chat today about the state of politics and the defense of liberalism.A transcript of today’s podcast appears below. It has been edited for flow and clarity.Aaron Ross Powell: Berny, let's maybe start with a bit about you.Berny Belvedere: Thanks, Aaron, for having me on. I'm really stoked to be here. So, I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which, just a funny thing about that: the literal translation of Buenos Aires is something like good air. But really, I think, the key idea that that name tries to get across is something like friendly skies. It's the capital of Argentina. I didn't get a chance to know it too well—we left when I was four and a half, five-ish. We had an opportunity to become citizens really quickly here in the United States, so my parents took that opportunity and we went from Buenos Aires to Kansas City, Kansas, on the Kansas side of things. We're one of the few on the Kansas side of the divide. Then, for my high school years, we moved to Miami, Florida. So those are the places where I've lived. It's an interesting mix of different types of arrangements and social configurations, but it's also colored my approach to the kinds of places that I feel like society can build well. I've taken my love for suburban America from Kansas City. Miami is an international metropolis, very big on sprawl in a way that I don't quite prefer as much. I like a more densely concentrated type of city. Buenos Aires is just sort of European in its flavor, but also combining South American aspects as well.Those are the places I've lived. Intellectually, I've pursued both theology and philosophy at a pretty high level. I didn't get a PhD, but I went for graduate degrees in philosophy and in theology. In the past, I guess if we were in medieval times, it would have just been one field of study, but with the specialization of knowledge, it forced me to get a degree in each. Even the theology that I did was very philosophical in nature. I guess that [philosophy] would be my overriding interest. That's a little bit about my background.Lots of other stuff we could also talk about, though not the focus of this show. I'm married, got three kids, love sports and music, but let's stick to the stuff that the people want to tune in and listen to us talk about.Aaron: Your academic background is theology and philosophy, but you're now working as senior editor for a political journal, and before that, you were working on another political outlet. What's the connection?Berny: I've always been drawn to political philosophy. Even when I studied theology, I looked into the different traditions and what they had to say about the different polities and how society should be arranged—that was always a really interesting avenue of thought for me. In terms of now working for a journalistic outfit as opposed to some think tank or something else, I decided toward the end of my graduate degree in philosophy that a career in academia wasn't for me. The reason is partly vain, I'll admit. It's also partly, I think, morally okay. The vain part is I wanted to be a part of a broader conversation. Unless you become a kind of academic rock star, your work isn't going to be read by many people, maybe your fellow faculty in the department where you work, but that’s it.“We've got these structural features in place that complicate our ability to genuinely have good discussions and intellectually rich discussions. Same as it always was, but one hope, a techno-optimist hope early on, was that technology in the social media age would try to counteract that, but we're not seeing that at all.”I wanted to be part of a bigger conversation, so I pivoted to journalism where I've been priv