Political Reality
Political Reality is a podcast that explores how politics and government function, aiming to cut through polarization and misinformation. It offers evidence-based discussions on democracy, fairness, and navigating political information. The show encourages listeners to find common ground and understand opposing viewpoints.
Episodes
PREVIEW: What Americans can learn from Australians about politics with Chas Licciardello | S02E08
https://www.patreon.com/politicalreality/posts/what-americans-171733279
PR ABROAD: Australian Political Primer + Panda Diplomacy | S02E07 | Political Reality
https://www.patreon.com/c/politicalreality
PREVIEW: WAR: why don't we stop having them? | S02E06 | Political Reality
FULL EPISODE
https://www.patreon.com/politicalreality/posts/war-why-dont-we-170386581
1. ⚔️ Sun Tzu (circa 500 BCE), The Art of Warhttps://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html
2. 🏛️ Thucydides (circa 400 BCE), History of the Peloponnesian War (brief overview here)https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7142/7142-h/7142-h.htmhttps://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/thucydides
3. 🌐 Morgenthau (194
How climate change got politicized | S02E05 | Political Reality
PREVIEW: Who has more diversity of thought: Democrats or Republicans? (Sorry Independents) | S02E04 | Political Reality
FULL EPISODE
1. 🧠 Dias et al. (2025), “American partisans vastly under-estimate the diversity of other partisans’ policy attitudes.”https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-science-research-and-methods/article/american-partisans-vastly-underestimate-the-diversity-of-other-partisans-policy-attitudes/CD71B9D75D10CFA0A9A07501E1CCD81A#article
2. 👥 A few corporate-focused diversity of though
Are Americans getting less religious? w/ Dr. Melissa Deckman | S02E03 | Political Reality
**1. ⛪ Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI):**
https://prri.org/
---
**2. 👩🏫 More on Dr. Melissa Deckman:**
https://www.melissadeckman.com/
---
**3. 📊 2025 PRRI Census on American Religion**
https://prri.org/spotlight/2025-prri-census-of-american-religion/
---
**4. 🗺️ Mapping abortion views across the 50 states: Insights from PRRI’s 2025 American Values Atlas**
https://prri.org/researc
PREVIEW: Why haven't we had a woman president? | S02E02 | Political Reality
1. 📊 Burns et al. (2025), What’s happened to the gender gap in political activity? Social structure, politics, and political participation in the United Stateshttps://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/whats-happened-to-the-gender-gap-in-political-activity/1A6EFA30E995F841B8D61D6EDEC0F777?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=bookmark
2. 📄 Burns et al. (2018), “What’s happened to
What good is the electoral college anyway? | S02E01 | Political Reality
## Show Notes for Electoral College Ep.
### 🏛️ History & background
1. https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Great_Compromise.htm
2. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/connecticut-compromise-great-compromise
3. https://libguides.ctstatelibrary.org/US-Constitution/Connecticut-Compromise
4. https://constitutioncenter.org/education/classroom-resource-library/classroom/4.4
What We Hope You Learned | S01E24 | Political Reality
Thank you for watching/listening to this season. We hope you find the show informative and will join us in Season 2
Season 1 Recap - What We Learned | S01E23 | Political Reality
Thanks for joining on this new endeavor.
How Does Democracy Score | S01E22 | Political Reality
PREVIEW: Being in Congress | S01E21 | Political Reality
Full Episode https://www.patreon.com/posts/being-in-s01e21-159335999
Thanks to Derek Kilmer for joining us!
How to Talk Politics with Prof. Lindsey Cormack | Political Reality | S01E20
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/
PREVIEW: European Affective Polarization | S01E19 | Political Reality
🌍 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 Stat
Damage to Science Under Trump | S01E18 | Political Reality
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/upda
PREVIEW: Politicization of Science | S01E17 | Political Reality
https://www.patreon.com/posts/politicization-156907450
What would it take to solve homelessness in America? with Andrew Heaton! | S01E16 | Political Reality
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 th
PREVIEW: Urban Rural Bias | S01E15 | Political Reality
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
Alliances with Prof Paul Poast | S01E14 | Political Reality
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/a
PREVIEW: What does it take to change a mind | Political Reality | S01E13
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 connec
The SAVE act, Voter ID laws, and turnout in America | Political Reality | S01E12
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
PREVIEW: Gerrymandering: Mutually Artificial Democracy | Political Reality | S01E11
Show Notes Coming Soon
Cutting through the fog of war in Iran | Political Reality | S01E10
📰 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
☢️ I
PREVIEW: Which came first? The Media or The Message | Media Divides | S01E09
Full info on https://www.patreon.com/posts/152180612
How Parties Learn... if at all with Prof. Seth Masket | Political Reality | S01E08
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)
PREVIEW: Can we vote our way out of this? | Voting Systems | S01E07 | Political Reality
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:
Fascism comes to America, it is wrapped in the flag w/ Prof. Tom Pepinsky | S01E06
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/10.1080/1
PREVIEW: Is Polarization actually a problem? | Political Reality | S01E05
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 (specific
America is a nation of immigration | Political Reality | S01E04
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
Misinformation is bad, but not for the reasons most of us think with Prof. Joshua A. Tucker | Political Reality | S01E03
https://politicalrealitypodcast.com
How do we quantify misinformation?
Thank you to Prof. Joshua A. Tucker for joining us on this episode about Misinformation.
How Democratic is your Democracy? | Political Reality | S01E02
https://politicalrealitypodcast.com
How do you measure democracy? Are these standards reasonable, onerous, empirical, propagandistic, unscientific or quantifiable?
We Don't Agree...Now What? S01E01
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
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