Political Empathy Lab Summer 2024

Welcome to Season 2 of the Political Empathy Podcast hosted by Noah Kocher, PEL research team member and undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. In this series of interviews Noah sits down with students who joined the lab for its second phase, a one-week research trip around Pennsylvania last summer (2025), to talk about their experiences of listening deeply to people across the s...

Welcome to Season 2 of the Political Empathy Podcast hosted by Noah Kocher, PEL research team member and undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. In this series of interviews Noah sits down with students who joined the lab for its second phase, a one-week research trip around Pennsylvania last summer (2025), to talk about their experiences of listening deeply to people across the s...

Welcome to Season 2 of the Political Empathy Podcast hosted by Noah Kocher, PEL research team member and undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. In this series of interviews Noah sits down with students who joined the lab for its second phase, a one-week research trip around Pennsylvania last summer (2025), to talk about their experiences of listening deeply to people across the s...

In the fifth and final episode in the series,  Final Thoughts on Summer 2024,  Dr. Lia Howard reflects on how the summer of 2024 was a profound one for the Political Empathy Lab. While traveling 2,500 miles around Pennsylvania as political sea changes were happening week to week, they had to be both aware of their own emotional reactions to changes in geography, people and the polit...

In "Episode 4: National Media, Burnout, and Local Government” members of the research team discuss the effect of political media on local politics in Pennsylvania. The students explain ways that political media can cause tension, violence, and political burnout, as well as ways that local governments have focused themselves in a nationally oriented political scene. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/p...

In “Episode 3: Collective Memory and Siloed Narratives,” members of the research team discuss themes they encountered over the summer during the lab, including post-industrial struggle and nostalgia for a more prosperous past. The students explain ways that historical experiences impact political narratives in towns across Pennsylvania, and the ways in which they practiced listening in order to em...

Welcome back. You’re listening to the Political Empathy Lab podcast where connecting with people across difference by listening with heart and mind guided us across Pennsylvania this summer. In Episode 2 of the Political Empathy Lab podcast, "Jumping Right In: Strategies for Connection," members of the research team discuss Political Empathy Lab’s strategies of connection, an approach to enga...

Over the summer of 2024, Dr. Lia Howard, a political scientist and Fellows Director at the SNF Paideia Program, led a small group of students in the inaugural cohort of the Political Empathy Lab, a project born out of Dr. Howard’s SNF Paideia designated course, “Political Empathy and Deliberative Democracy.” The inaugural research project this summer consisted of several trips to towns and cities...

Summer 2024 will be a significant time, from the summer Olympics and Paralympics going on in Paris, the 60th anniversary of Freedom Summer with special events planned to commemorate 1964 and NASA will be prepping for a September trip to the Moon.     In addition, in 2024, 49% of the world’s population, including 6...