Political Reality

Thank you for watching/listening to this season. We hope you find the show informative and will join us in Season 2

Thanks for joining on this new endeavor.

Full Episode https://www.patreon.com/posts/being-in-s01e21-159335999 Thanks to Derek Kilmer for joining us!

Prof. Cormack’s excellent book, How to Raise a Citizen (And Why It’s Up to You to Do It): https://howtoraiseacitizen.com/ Her DC Inbox searchable database of e-newsletters from members of Congress (well worth exploring): https://www.dcinbox.com/ More of her research and writing: https://www.lindseycormack.com/ Follow Prof. Cormack: https://www.instagram.com/howtoraiseacitizen/

🌍 Primary studies discussed in the episode: 1. 📄 Wagner, Markus (2024), “Affective polarization in Europe,” European Political Science Reviewhttps://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-political-science-review/article/affective-polarization-in-europe/36BDBF804365FE0B350E610E9E7C714E 2. 📄 Boxell et al. (2024), “Cross-country trends in affective polarization,” The Review of Economics and Sta...

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/22/nx-s1-5642965/what-cuts-to-research-under-trump-have-meant-for-science-in-2025⁠ ⁠https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-026-00088-9/index.html⁠ ⁠https://www.science.org/content/article/how-trump-administration-dismantling-science-u-s⁠ ⁠https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/opinion/doge-hiv-funding.html⁠ ⁠https://scienceimpacts.org⁠ ⁠https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-li...

https://www.patreon.com/posts/politicization-156907450

1. 🎙️ Check out Andrew Heaton’s podcast and Substack, The Political Orphanagehttps://www.thepoliticalorphanage.com 2. ▶️ You can also find his podcast and other videos on YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/@AndrewHeatonTPO 3. 📚 Here’s one of his many books: Tribalism is Dumbhttps://www.amazon.com/Tribalism-Dumb-Where-Came-about/dp/B0DJKSZP6J 4. 🎧 Here are some of his Political Orphanage episodes tha...

Full Episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/155715368 1. 📚 Katherine J. Cramer, The Politics of Resentmenthttps://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo22879533.html     📝 a. Non-paywalled, non-scientific, but nevertheless helpful and short(!) student summary of a talk by Kathy about this work     https://civic.mit.edu/index.html?p=1891.html 2. 📄 Katherine J. Cramer, “Putting inequality...

1. 📄 Downs et al. (2009), “Is the good news about compliance good news about cooperation?”https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/is-the-good-news-about-compliance-good-news-about-cooperation/636DE333F8E1EC944825DDBFD81BE294 2. 📄 Von Stein (2005), “Do treaties constrain or screen? Selection bias and treaty compliance”https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/...

1. 🚪 Broockman and Kalla, “Durably reducing transphobia: A field experiment on door-to-door canvassing” (the excellent paper that’s a great model for field experiments on this topic)https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad9713     🧠 a. In general, Joshua Kalla and David Broockman’s work (joint and separate) is worth checking out, both on political persuasion and other topics (mostly conne...

https://politicalrealitypodcast.com Show Notes for Voter ID Ep. 📄 Riker and Ordeshook, “A Theory of the Calculus of Voting” (paper where the key equation came from):https://www.jstor.org/stable/1953324 ⚡ World’s briefest summary of the above:https://adambrown.info/p/notes/riker_and_ordeshook_a_theory_of_the_calculus_of_voting 📊 Meta-study of papers that built from this earlier work (alas, it’s...

Show Notes Coming Soon

📰 Reporting on extent to which 2025 US strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckglxwp5x03o ⚛️ Details about Iran’s uranium enriched to 60%: https://www.armscontrol.org/issue-briefs/2026-03/us-war-iran-new-and-lingering-nuclear-risks 📄 March 2026 Congressional report about Iran’s nuclear capabilities: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN12665 ☢️ In...

Full info on https://www.patreon.com/posts/152180612

More about Seth & his work: https://www.sethmasket.com Seth’s book Learning from Loss: The Democrats 2016-2020 Preview of Seth’s new book (coming summer 2026): The Elephants in the Room: How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders Subscribe to his (excellent) Substack, Tusk Follow him on Instagram and Bluesky (he’s @smotus most places)

Full Episode https://www.patreon.com/posts/can-we-vote-our-151099132 https://patreon.com/politicalreality Further Reading & Resources on Voting Theory 📘 1. Kenneth Arrow's amazing 1951 book, Social Choice and Individual Values: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300179316/social-choice-and-individual-values/ a. A good writeup of the basics of the math if you don't want to buy a book: https://pla...

https://politicalrealitypodcast.com Follow Tom: Tom Pepinsky’s website with links to his research & books: https://tompepinsky.com Tom’s blog: https://tompepinsky.com/blog His substack: https://tompepinsky.substack.com/ Selected books and peer-reviewed works by Tom relevant to this episode: Recent paper on authoritarianism: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13510347.2020.1775589 Recent p...

Full Audio episode available on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/is-polarization-149962215 Full Video episode available on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/149974348 Many of the empirical trends mentioned come from the (still a favorite!) American National Election Studies dataset: Party identity (including strength of party identity) Affective polarization (specifically shown here as th...

The graph on total immigration numbers vs. percentage of the US population is from the Migration Policy Institute. Evidence that the percentage of immigrants in the US peaked recently, but is in the ballpark of an earlier wave is from Pew Research. (n.b. I may have said in the episode that this was in 2023 or 24, when actually it was January 2025, more recent than I realized. I don't know if that...

https://politicalrealitypodcast.com How do we quantify misinformation? Thank you to Prof. Joshua A. Tucker for joining us on this episode about Misinformation.

https://politicalrealitypodcast.com How do you measure democracy? Are these standards reasonable, onerous, empirical, propagandistic, unscientific or quantifiable?

Our daily lives seem increasingly overwhelmed by polarization, misinformation and dubious culture wars while we face countless serious problems that require thoughtful and evidence-based solutions. To move forward we need a shared reality of facts and reason with an equally shared dedication to democracy and fairness. The Political Reality podcast is here to fill that void, diving into how politic...