‘We Are Not Alone, and We Never Have Been'

Part one of a two-part conversation with Michael Ignatieff on his beautiful and poignant new book "On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times."

Detail of sarcophagus from the Al-Bass Necropolis of Tyre, second century A.D. Priam pleads with Achilles to give him the body of his slain son Hector. (Photo by Steven Damron, Creative Commons)

By Michael Judge

I launched The First Person just over three months ago because I was dissatisfied with the discourse in today’s media—the way things are too often presented with a political bias or, in some ways worse, an intellectual snobbishness that looks down on the reader and “explains” the way the world really works to us poor slobs who just live and work here. But way back then, on Feb. 1, a thousand news cycles ago, few expected the largest war since Hitler invaded Poland to break out in Europe, or a leaked draft opinion revealing that the U.S. Supreme Court may soon overturn Roe v. Wade. The dreaded news cycle has a way of dragging a journalist back in.

This TFP conversation with the celebrated author, historian, and former Canadian politician, Michael Ignatieff, I’m happy to say, is a …