SIO418: The Polarization Express

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:15 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode four hundred and eighteen. I am your host, Thomas Smith. Thanks so much for joining me today. I am excited to have back on the show, Joe Magestro. Might remember Joe from episode 405 on polarization. Had a very, very fascinating discussion on that, as well as a Wisconsin update. Well, guess what? We're here today to talk about polarization as well. Let's say, uh, update, Wisconsin. So just run it back, just the same. It was, it was good.

We're just redoing it. We'll redoing the episode. No, it's, it is both those things, but the Wisconsin update is obviously an update. So it's new, different thing than last time. Also, we wanted to explore a little bit more, more on polarization, and a little bit more on possibly what can be done about it.

So whereas last time was more about the kind of the axes of polarization, and along those lines, this time we're going to talk a little bit more about that and start to venture into what we might do to solve it, or not ever solve it. That could be, that could be another. I don't know. Spoilers, could be either of those two things.

0:01:24 Thomas: As always, if you'd like to support the show, and we very much beg you to please consider supporting the show, you can do that at patreon.com/seriouspod. I have a really good bonus planned for you this month. Can't wait to announce it. Not going to announce anything before I record it because you don't want to, it's not really jinxing. It's more like, I just don't want to get anyone excited about something in case something changes, but it's going to be good. Can't wait to tell you more about that. And of course, if you are a member at patreon.com/seriouspod you can, you can avoid the highly annoying auto ad you're about to hear as soon as I stop talking. So, so thanks so much to our patrons who do that, and everybody else, you know, here's an ad. Sorry. Back to the show. Joe Magestro, how you doing?

0:02:09 Joe: Am fantastic, how are you?

0:02:11 Thomas: Doing okay. I'm excited to have you back on. I had a lot of fun last time and I think we're pretty much just doing the sequel. We're just, we're like Marvel. No, that's not a good comparison. I was gonna say, like making a sequel is like a time-honored thing and then Marvel is like a sequel, sequel, like a thousand, how many Marvel properties have even come out? It's got to be, is it a hundred? It could be a hundred. Is that's yeah yeah no I would never I if I'm like you up with you I think it would be if I'M LIKE JOE I CAN NEVER HAVE YOU BACK ON YOU'RE LIKE DC THAT'S WHY IT'S IT'S SO

0:02:21 Joe: Look, Long as you don't compare me to DC, I'm okay. Oh, Ouch. It's It's like one of the worst, like, insults you can give someone. I was like, oh, you're just like Superman and just basic as hell, you have nothing good to offer. They

0:02:55 Thomas: IT'S AMAZING HOW HOW WORSE THEY WERE AT DOING THEIR I'M NOT A COMIC BOOK GUY BUT EVEN I WAS LIKE OH MARVEL'S THE ONES THAT ARE LIKE YOU KNOW THEY TEND TO BE KIND OF GOOD AND THEN THE OTHER ONES are such dog shit. You can't even, they're not watchable. It's It's not just like one's good and one's like, ah, it'S not as good. It'S like one'S pretty good.

0:03:13 Thomas: The other'S not movies. Yeah. It''s not even, DC's not, it''s that you watch them and you're like, that's not you didn't even do a movie. I don't even know what to tell you. It's terrible.

0:03:13 Joe: All suck, I Am Yeah.

0:03:21 Thomas: So anyway, don't be that. Let's be, I guess, more like Marvel, except we're just doing a sequel rather than an entire Joaverse, but we'll see. We'll see where we get. We want to talk more about polarization.

0:03:32 Joe: So basically, we talked about last time how polarization is a little bit more nuanced than a lot of people think it is. And we thought it'd be kind of a cool idea to talk about where polarization even comes from to begin with. So what I wanted to to talk you about, Thomas, was where political beliefs come from, the psychology behind it, and how that actually shapes, we'll say, our more polarized electorate that we hear about each and every day.

0:03:58 Thomas: And remind the audience, you're coming from a political science perspective. I want to say, do I remember right? Was it kind of a newer program that you were a part of? Or am I thinking of something else?

0:04:08 Joe: You're good. Yes. So I come from a political psychology background, which is basically a subset of political science. And then I also work in politics. I have been working in politics for the last several years now and currently work in state government in Wisconsin.

0:04:09 Thomas: Okay. That's right. Okay.

0:04:25 Thomas: Did we have any more? Oh, last time we had to, you know, of course, go on about Wisconsin the news of the day. But did Wisconsin have a gerrymandering decision recently? Or was that a different state?

0:04:32 Joe: Yeah, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has officially declared that the Wisconsin maps are unconstitutional.

0:04:38 Thomas: There we go. Wow.

0:04:39 Joe: It begins.

0:04:39 Thomas: Well, can you give us any updates on all that? How do you feel about that? How's it looking?

0:04:43 Joe: I'm happy. You can't say too much about that. Conservatives are pissed. That's all I can say, um, the anything we probably have ever said about Clarence Thomas or our current, like, Supreme Court and how, like, stupid some of their decisions have been with, like, Alito and whatnot, imagine that, but like really stupid and uninformed and then just super hateful the entire time and that's how conserves are reacting to this oh, yeah, like their version of trying to do actually legal analysis is just hilarious and insane. I've been here for all of it and just watching the salt. Ah, beautiful.

0:05:03 Thomas: Well Okay. Oh, like their critique of it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:05:20 Thomas: And I mean, this is pretty important for the coming elections. I assume. I mean, a map that's not insanely gerrymandered is bad for Republicans, right? I mean is that pretty much the lay of the land.

0:05:29 Joe: So, Basically. I mean, so the Supreme Court, Wisconsin said that new maps have to be, um, and finalized by the 2024 election. That was kind of the whole idea where Republicans were terrified of when they were trying to impeach one of the justices, and we talked about that last time, came What's happening now is we're set to receive, I believe, new maps both from the liberals and conservatives or the Democrats and Republicans sides of this court case. And I think we're supposed to get them by this week at some point. They haven't dropped yet, but people are anxiously waiting to see what the new maps are going to look like. And then basically from there on it's gonna probably, um, looked at Scowis or Supreme Court Wisconsin, so I just call it Scowiz, um, Scowz, I know, right? Um, to political jargon where we make, just say, up names for everything, um. So Scowist is gonna basically look at all this, pick what, something in the middle probably, and then it's going to to get appealed to SCOTUS, and probably chaos

0:05:45 Thomas: All right, let's go.

0:06:25 Joe: Will ensue again. So, oh,

0:06:26 Thomas: Well, yeah, geez, we'll see how that goes. But But as I said, I mean, there's so much more room for Democrats to win from here on out than is Republicans, just because by my memory, it's like you have to really work hard to get a map that favors Republicans. Saying it's a guarantee that they're not going to somehow pull that off with SCOTUS or something. But like so many more maps would favor Democrats just because, you know, there's more voters that want them in the state, right?

0:06:30 Joe: I know, it's insane. Oh, yeah, well, and let's put it this way too, Thomas, because Republicans have been really scared about how these maps are going to turn out for the last, you know, we'll say six or so months now, and they tried doing the impeachment thing, that didn't work, they tried just delegitimizing the whole thing, that that didn't work. And now they're trying to advocate for more independent voters. So we actually had our lead, I think we talked about him too, our lead Speaker of the House, Robin Voss, who you can think of as our Mitch McConnell. He actually pushed forward some abortion bills that were actually going to be more compromising compared to the absolute ban on abortion that we have in Wisconsin at this point, that fell through horribly wrong because all the Republicans hated it. Now what they're doing as of yesterday is we finally heard some kind of movement on medical marijuana, not full legalization of recreational marijuana, but medical marijuana

0:07:45 Thomas: Medical marijuana as in like welcome to 1998 or whatever. Like, wow.

0:07:47 Joe: Uh, -huh, that's how far back we are, man. Um, basically if we can scare Robin Voss Republicans to even suggest that we should propose medical marijuana to people, you know they're scared.

0:07:51 Thomas: Okay.

0:08:00 Thomas: That's so funny. I like this person, if you're calling them you're Mitch McConnell. I mean, it sounds like they are a competently evil person, right? But it's just like, yeah, but it's like, I love that idea of, can we find something that isn't like a hot button MAGA type issue or hardcore Republican issue to do something with, to maybe appeal to more people? And they're like, all right, medical, that's the best we can do, medical marijuana.

0:08:07 Joe: They basically are. He is a Republican political machine.

0:08:26 Thomas: Because anything else, they aren't able to, it be a lot like the U.S. House right now where you have this problem of like you need to compromise because they only have a margin of a couple of a handful of votes but you cannot compromise with MAGA so it's like, okay.

0:08:26 Joe: That was the best we can do.

0:08:42 Joe: Correct.

0:08:42 Thomas: Well then we just don't do anything and repeatedly fail. So is it a similar, uh, in Wisconsin, is it kind of just a microcosm there?

0:08:50 Joe: Think to a bit. But more so out of fear than anything else. So we don't know what the actual maps are going to end up looking like. And I mean, I'm kind of on the other side where a lot of my liberal friends are like super enthusiastic and ready to go, like, oh, we're gonna potentially flip the state house to, you know, a Democrat, and that's not gonna happen.

0:09:08 Thomas: Dang.

0:09:08 Joe: Like we... Mean, it sucks, but like the way people are actually kind of spread out geographically in Wisconsin, I many people are in the cities and suburbs. To like, really, um, the maps that much, we'll get some seats and we'll avoid super majorities, which, which will be fantastic, because then if we have the governorship, we're good to go.

0:09:09 Thomas: Oh. Right. Yeah. Right. Right.

0:09:27 Joe: But as where the moderate push comes from, I think it's just because, number one, Voss hates Trump, like with all his being.

0:09:27 Thomas: Oh. Okay. Kevin.

0:09:36 Joe: He knows, like, how bad he is for the state of Wisconsin. So he tries to stay away from him as much as possible. And try to push away from him makes him happier, so, like, if it's, hey, I can look a little bit more moderate, we're gonna go that way. If we can stick it to the Mega crowd, I'm gonna try to do it. So basically, try to think of, like, Kevin McCarthy, if he actually had any, like, of spine.

0:09:57 Thomas: McCarthy.

0:09:57 Joe: Ever.

0:09:57 Thomas: On that. That day that he called and was like, yeah, that one day that first up for that two seconds had a spine and then like quickly was like a nevermind. Okay. That's weird. Okay. So then, yeah that does sound quite a bit different though than what's going on in the US House. A that's a more I mean it's nice to have Republicans that are slightly more responsive I guess but then again, I mean, it's also been such a shit show over there but I love it. It's like why don't we, you know, check in from time to time. I love Love that you're a Wisconsin correspondent because it is such an important state for the coming election. And it is really nice to get a dose of news from the ground there. But why don't we get to our topic today, talking more about polarization and

0:09:58 Joe: Yeah. Right. So. Yeah.

0:10:38 Thomas: The psychology of it, as you started to do.

0:10:40 Joe: Let's. Let's do it, I'm super excited. So, last, last episode we talked about how polarization was a little bit more nuanced than we initially expected it to be, especially when you hear from headlines and news sources, polarization is at a massive high, what are we going to do? We can't solve anything, blah, blah. I want to talk about is where that actually comes from to begin with. And we can dive a little bit deep into the psychology of it to make sure we know exactly what we're talking about when it comes to polarization and political belief to begin with. So, kind of where I want want to start with this whole thing is, where do political beliefs actually come from? Of the things that I try to tell people is, politics is nothing without people. Of The marketplace of ideas and best policies went out is complete bullshit, and you should stop thinking like that immediately. No one cares about facts, all we do is care about people.

0:11:33 Thomas: Hmm.

0:11:33 Joe: And that's where we psychologically put ourselves into positions of group identities. So, like, for example, I think we talked about, um, people identify as particular subgroups of people. So, for example, I am a white, straight guy, those are identities, even at things like liberal, conservative, um, Christian, secular, Jets fan, Packers fan, whatever you can imagine, like any type of group orientation, are considered types of group identities. And that's how we actually create our entire belief system for anything political. Well, technically everything, period, but especially political. Yep.

0:12:11 Thomas: Sure, sure. I do remember. And last time, I think we talked a lot about how the big divide was between people like you and I who are more like junkies, junkies who pay attention to it all the time, and the people who don't. And I think where we left it was kind of like that's a more major divider than maybe anything else. But I guess, is that wouldn't be one of those identities, though? That's more just like a description of somebody's habits. Or would you consider that an identity?

0:12:21 Joe: Oh.

0:12:36 Joe: Absolutely, anything you can say, like, oh, yeah, I'm this, that's basically an identity. So, or if you have any type of group that you feel like you should belong to, those are considered identity. So yes, political junkie, that's an identity. And it's literally where the intersection of these identities collide is where we create our political belief systems. Systems.

There's actually some fun research out there, again, not necessarily politically based, but psychology based, where you may have heard some of these experiments where, oh gosh, I think it was in the 1950s, and forgive me, I can't remember the actual scientist's name, but he took a group of kids and divided them into two teams, I think he called them, like, the Rattlers and the the Fish or something, or the Snakes, or I don't know, it was two, like, animals, and he divided them into two different camps of two different teams and told them that they were going to compete with each other.

Now, these two teams were made up of literally random selection. He said, go here, go there, that's all it was. By the end of the week, he saw how this group identity, based on these very arbitrary teams, took precedent over anything else. It was where kids chose to sit at lunch, where kids were chosen to give, like, gifts to other kids, it was always to their own groups.

They started viewing, because they were surveying these kids throughout the week, surveying kids, and viewing the opposite team as lower status than themselves, or as morally inept compared to themselves, uh, which was kind of fun. And then, I think even, like, fighting or so broke out, they had to actually separate kids multiple times because there was just all this tension between these teams for just no reason. And that has been replicated over and over and

0:13:33 Thomas: Right. Yeah.

0:14:23 Joe: Over again, even with adults as well. So group identity precedes anything else when it comes to our political beliefs, I

0:14:30 Thomas: On what group you mean, though. Like, it's going to really matter which group identity is activated at which time, right?

0:14:38 Joe: Does.

0:14:38 Thomas: Because, Because, I mean, that arbitrary one took precedence in that moment in those experiments. And I do vaguely remember hearing about those as well. It's kind of thing that I never really looked into because it seems so obviously true. But maybe that means we should into dig some of the science of it. But it strikes me as one of those evolutionary psychology findings as well, where it's like, we're going to be incentivized by evolution to, you up in those ways, to make sure to do certain behaviors that would, like, solidify our relationships with whoever is on our quote-unquote team, and also, like, of vilify the other side, I think.

0:14:38 Joe: Oh.

0:15:11 Joe: Yeah, absolutely. Um, actually a really fun study, this is like the foundational study of group identity in political psychology, and this was back in the 1960s, and one of my favorite little anecdotes was the researcher was talking about this one particular guy that he was interviewing for the study, and what What he found was this guy was hyper conservative, like very, very, very conservative, traditional guy. I think he was like a steel worker or he was something like a blue collar type of job. Then when they asked what his political identification was, he says, oh, I'm a hardcore socialist.

0:15:33 Thomas: Hmm. Huh.

0:15:47 Joe: And the quote that I loved to death was, like, yeah, you I'm socialist because the socialist party works for the working man and I'm a working man. And that was it. That's all he needed to know to figure out who we need to support, because he identified himself as a working man, or as a working class person, and he knew that the particular party that helped that was the socialist party in his mind.

So even though, when they surveyed him on all these other issues, straight conservative ideals down the line, when we talk about any type of, like, identification of political party or anything like that, identity plays the biggest role over anything else. I'm glad you said that as well, Thomas, because it's not just about who you identify as, it's also who you identity against that matters as well. Another actually really cool study done by, I think her name is Dr. Liliana Mason, and they looked at Trump support and and who actually supported Trump in 2016. what they found was the best predictive way of Trump support in at least 2016 at that time, it wasn't partisan identity. It wasn't like whether you were a Republican or not. wasn'T actually like particular issues or ideologies or anything like that. Best way to predict Trump support was actually resentment of minority groups.

0:16:35 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:17:07 Joe: And again, not surprising, right? Right. But the idea of saying how, oh, yeah, Democrats, Republicans, independents, no matter who you are, if you resent particular groups of people, you're probably going to have a particular political worldview.

0:17:08 Thomas: Yeah.

0:17:21 Thomas: That's also was a bit of a change, I think. Right. Because we talked about sorting political sorting in the last episode. And that that's why it's such a common conundrum. I don't find it to be very confusing because of all that I've kind of read and consumed on this. But many people, the main argument against that, that you would get if you ever told anyone that, and I know because this happened to me several times, was, no, they voted for Obama in 2008 2012. So how could it have anything to do, those studies are wrong, how could there be racism?

It's like, well, it's cause it, those, that's elections highlighting those issues as much. You know what I mean? Like they weren't activating those identities at that time or those, you common, um, grievances, I guess it would be. Whereas Trump very much, you build a wall, but you know all that stuff, it activated that more. So someone could go from an Obama voter to a Trump voter. And I don't even think they necessarily got more racist or anything. It's just like before, you elections didn't have the same way of highlighting those or of activating those grievances.

0:17:28 Joe: Yep. Right.

0:18:28 Joe: Well, actually, here's the weird thing about that. Always according to some of the research that I've seen, you'll have to humor me for a second. So you could technically say it's Obama's fault why a lot those racial resentments, um, issues came to be. And when I say his fault, that's the joke. So don't worry. It's not actually Obama's fault, but I always think back to the um the Typical right but right but I think back to like the typical conservative talking point was like, oh, racism didn't exist until Obama came around, right?

0:18:49 Thomas: Obama. Yeah, exactly. He made everything about race. Yeah Yeah, exactly.

0:19:02 Joe: But in a weird way he kind of did, and what I mean by that is by

0:19:02 Thomas: True. Literally everyone but him did, I think is what you mean by that. He didn't do it.

0:19:11 Joe: Right. But Right. And but literally by, by being a black man in power, it actually created a lot of racialized views of a lot of policies. There's a really cool, another, I'm going to just keep listing studies, apparently. There's another really cool study about how, right, about how racialization of neutral legislation takes place. And what I mean by that is you have purely like, we'll say neutral language when it comes to racially based legislation, we'll say things like healthcare was the big thing for Obama, right? It was Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act. And because Obama was the president at that time, a lot of people associate healthcare with black people.

And that's where some studies show actually when they surveyed people between Obama's healthcare plan, and I it was was like a hypothetical plan for maybe it was Reagan and then Bill Clinton's health care plan, which was actually extremely similar. There were negative views of Obama's health plan when they found out the people who had higher senses of white identity and higher levels of racial resentment towards black people. That's why they pushed lower ratings of Obama's health care plan.

So in a weird way, racialization is actually a huge factor of why Donald Trump Trump ran so well on a lot because it was already salient from the Obama administration.

0:19:12 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Right, sure. It's what the show is. It's why you're here for. Hmm.

0:20:37 Thomas: Yeah, you know, news and commentators and everybody had eight years to build up those grievances and collectively focus anger on a black man, something that white America is very good at doing, I thing.

0:20:50 Joe: And I would also argue not just a black man, but definitely a black woman in Michelle Obama too. The Bump of hell, where it's like, my God, the first lady and the president did a fist bump on stage. My goodness. Anyone hasn't ever read or watched the Michelle Obama documentary, the Becoming, I think it was, um, a look at that too if you haven't already, it's just good by itself, but she talks a lot about how she had to change herself because she was a black woman in the spotlight this long and had basically a target on her back because she was a Black Woman. It's a very, very good way of putting this type of stuff into perspective.

0:20:55 Thomas: Yeah, for sure. Jeez. Yeah, I enjoyed her book a lot. I read I went through I don't know what it was. It was sometime during during when I just was like, I'm really craving politicians who can form a thought, you know, and I just read all the Obama's books at one time. And I was just like, man, it's and you don't have to hear a worship, like obviously plenty of flaws in everybody, but just that ability to actually have a compelling thought and share it in a way is just like boy, I didn't know that was a thing that I needed to cherish in our politicians, like being able to put two words together in a rational way. It's uh but yeah no those books are very good and let's not spin out. Okay. So, uh, Obama administration activated racial grievances. Yep. That's, that'S all pretty well established, I think.

0:21:30 Joe: It's so good. Yep. Oh. It's so nice. Isn't it?

0:22:14 Joe: I just want people to take away more than anything else we talk about, any type of political belief system, it all comes back down to people and social groups. And you wanna do a fun little experiment with yourselves, think about when you became liberal, woke, progressive, whatever you want call yourselves, and figure out what your journey was and what people you supported on that journey.

Um, actually, I did this with myself, so like, for example, I was conservative growing up most of my life, I actually voted Republican in a couple of different elections when I first started able to vote, and then I became an atheist, an atheist activist, and I became more liberal after that. And what I wanted to say was, oh, I became a liberal and a Democrat because they're the ones who are correct and rational and right.

And I would still say that, because I think that is still true. But what I try to do is a quick step back and realize that my journey to liberalism actually came because I saw that Democrats and liberals were much more sympathetic to people like myself and like the secular community and people who are very pro-science and things like that, which is why I ended up becoming far more liberal. So if you ever want to play a little game with yourself and figure out why exactly you came to the beliefs you did, I highly encourage you, because it's a really fun way to make yourself self-aware of why you

0:23:05 Thomas: Yeah.

0:23:38 Joe: Believe the things you do, yeah.

0:23:38 Thomas: Well, yeah, I was going to say, I mean, I THINK it's very easy to tell stories about. And I imagine there will be a lot of people listening who will perhaps be in denial of that. And obviously there's going to be degrees of this, like there are degrees to which it would be a rational decision. I mean, honestly, I understanding of the psychology that, which is, it's kind of depressing how little of our decisions like that are based on logic and reason. And it to believe, especially for two guys like us who are involved or have been involved with those communities, skeptic community and stuff.

But that's precisely the kind of community that should be able to look at the data and say, oh, yeah, it does look like a lot of those decisions we make are not quite as rational as we think. Because I look at my own story and it's actually pretty much identical to yours. I was conservative, and I would love to say that I won me over to liberalism and all that.

But it actually was, I've said it a lot of times, but just in case it's been a minute since I've set it, believe it or not, it was because the leaders of new atheism identified as more in the Democratic Party than the Republican. I cannot emphasize enough how much of a difference that actually made at that specific time.

And it's a good thing I did it when I did, because if I were to come to those assholes now, I anywhere near the Democratic Party, assuming the same stuff held. Because at that time, they were still involved enough in the kind of the backlash against the Bush administration in to

0:23:49 Joe: Yeah yep

0:25:08 Thomas: Be more favorable to Democrats than conservatives. It's also because, you Were out of power for a while. So it's easier to critique a presidential administration that's, you you know, in power. But anyway, the point is that I will say, though, it's as though that like convinced me of the arguments. It's more like that, it may also have to do with the nature of conservatism in this country. I had more of the negative identity, maybe people who have never been conservative might understand. So like in my upbringing, upbringing, it was less about like I wasn't super into conservative politics per se much, but I was very activated in a negative partisan way against liberals and Democrats.

And so in my mind it was like, well, I don't really agree with a lot of this conservative stuff, because I'm not an idiot, like I, I had a lot of beliefs that were like, I think kind of Republicans are wrong about this because they're obviously wrong, but I still was like, yeah, but all in all, I kind of identify with with them more.

And and I had this negative view of liberals and Democrats, and it took that, it took having, you know, a of those leaders in new atheism to break that kind of negative view of mine, so that I would start actually looking at the issues in what I think is a more fair way, but I'm, I guess I can't be certain of which is a bigger, your influence, whether it's just the in-group or the feeling of community that you're kind of getting out of identity.

Or if, in my telling you, really I think it's that, but also that allowed me to actually look at things, because a lot of being a conservative requires just not actually looking or thinking too deeply about the problems and the issues, you know, like you just accept what you're told.

0:25:19 Joe: Correct well and that is how conservatives actually do so much much better than Democrats and liberals. Right, because the whole basis of conservatism is is sticking to what you know, and because of that, um, research has shown, fun fact, because even though we have conservatives who deride um identity politics all day long, oh, it's just identity politics, oh, the liberals with their identity politics, um, there's actually really cool research by Liliana Mason, or Dr. Liliana Mason, again, who also showed that conservatives, conservatives and Republicans, because number one, they are more emotionally based than Democrats and liberals, but number two is because they're actually a much more homogenous group, and what I mean by that is usually white Christians, they actually rely on identity politics way, way more than liberals.

And that's been drawn out in a bunch of different research data. So yeah, I completely agree with that. Liberals have a much harder job, because you're trying to win people over with very complex and very nuanced arguments about things, when it's way, way easier to just stick to what you know and what groups you already like. When you have people who are already upset about wokeness all day long, it's what they used to, and they're just already set and ready to be safe with their, I guess you could say, the identities that they already have preformed in their heads. So they don't need anything challenging those identities, because that's a hard process to go through.

0:26:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, of course.

0:28:18 Thomas: All that is to say, I, I, um, when I run that experiment on myself, I actually, I agree, it's, it is, and it was about who was around me for sure, you know. Like that was definitely a huge factor. Well,

0:28:27 Joe: Yeah. Can actually push us to like even the next point, which is, how exactly do we lower polarization? One, I think knowing about group identities and how irrational we are when it comes to our beliefs, allows us to be a little bit more empathetic to the people around us who have what we probably consider very irrational beliefs.

As we just probably said, if we can understand that we came to our believes from a potentially irrational way, even if we think that they are morally correct, or if we can even justify that afterwards, which we can also talk about how most people actually just justify the beliefs they have, of not actually learning much things new. But anyway, we can still try to justify and use evidence-based practices to try to minimize those biases. Cool, great.

Then you can understand that the people around you who, like you just said, are not paying attention. We talked about how most people aren't even paying attention to politics at all in our last conversation. Hopefully it'll allow you to be a little bit more empathetic, know, like, yeah, it's just the environment that they're in right now. Hopefully, I can get them out of that environment, we can decrease that level of polarization.

0:29:35 Thomas: How the hell are we doing that? I do remember we covered a study back in the day that was like, if you pay people to watch CNN instead of Fox News, they actually do, I forgot about that, I mean that is is one way.

0:29:36 Joe: Well, it depends. That's the grade A question, isn't it? I I WERE SOME COOL STUDIES I THINK FROM A COUPLE DIFFERENT PEOPLE WHO SHOWED THAT PEOPLE WERE GIVEN QUESTIONS ABOUT BASic political situations or news and then afterwards they were paying people to ask the same exact things like if you got one right you get like a dollar or two dollars something like that and what they found was those who got paid were incentivized to be more correct

0:30:10 Thomas: Oh this is a different thing, yeah, okay, but that's awesome. I I would love to also look at that, so, so you're saying once, once you put skin in the game of like, all right, yeah, okay, MAGA, blah, blah, blah, etc., but like, okay, money is riding on whether you actually answer or what facts are, and they're like, okay, okay fine, I love that.

0:30:17 Joe: Okay yeah and and i'M NOT GOING TO GO TOO into this because this would be other a no potential topic. But long story short is we have subconscious processing that goes on in our brains. And when we try to go about our days, we try To reduce effort in our brain as much as possible. That's automatic, right? But that leads us to various biases at the end of the day. And what we can do about that is if we put What particular pressure that allows people to sustain intentional, conscious thought on a particular issue, it can overcome those biases. And actually putting money, like you said, getting skin in the game is a part of that. Rabinowitz actually interviewed somebody like a year or two ago who talked about how to combat misinformation online. I think he was a doctor of philosophy, philosophy, and the way he said that he tries to combat people with misinformation was to actually bet them.

0:30:49 Thomas: Yeah right yeah yeah Oh.

0:31:29 Joe: Like, hey, I'll bet you 50 bucks that this is wrong, you want to do it or not? And as he found out, as, as soon as people try to put money in the game, they will immediately back off and stop relying so much on their biases. Yeah.

0:31:37 Thomas: I love that yeah Okay, I was probably thinking of something else. You know, they'll come up with some excuse. Yeah, but that's really funny. Yeah, the one we covered was, uh, it, if you pay people to watch CNN instead of Fox News, it changes their views just by you being, being exposed to, I think, a different media source, which I still found surprising because I would have thought that people would just like be Fox News viewers and be like, sure, I'll take the money and, you know, but I know what I'm doing, you but, I, I think it really can't help, but engage their, their, critical faculties a little more. And they, and even if they go into it as diehard Fox News viewers, just paying them to watch Fox News less did actually help, which I think is funny. Like, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure if you paid me to watch Fox News instead of, well, I don't watch any cable news, but,

0:31:46 Joe: It's so cool. But yeah oh

0:32:27 Thomas: Or something, you know, if youpaid me to listen to some sort of conservative thing instead of the liberal thing I listen to, Idon't think it would make a huge difference. Maybe it would, butI think, I Don't know if that goes both ways, basically, because I think it would matter what the issues were. And given that, in my view, it's not a, a symmetric left and right, or not symmetrical in my opinion, in this country, it's not like, well, it's just a question of looking at it a different way. Like, there is actually a fact of the matter, and more often that fact of matter is held by the left, but I'm sure it couldn't help but influence you somewhat over time. You're

0:32:39 Joe: Yeah Oh, god, I'm not gonna know who this is either. Um, he's a journalist on YouTube, he's, I think he's like a former Vox journalist, now he does like independent stuff, and he kind of went around, um, the liberal no I don't think so, god, I hope, if not, no, um, I don't think so. But basically he, guy went around on YouTube for a while and got recommended by a bunch of liberals and whatnot because he watched like every episode of the Joe Rogan Experience to understand where Joe Rogan came from, and it's kind of actually what you were talking about, where as he documents his entire journey, and you'll just have to like Google or YouTube. Like, um, I watched every episode of Joe Rogan, and his, the way I came out with, he's a super liberal who could not stand Joe Roggan, but way he talked about it was, yeah, as I watched more Joe Roghan, I didn't agree with him on a bunch of things, but I definitely started humanizing with him way

0:33:13 Thomas: Not talking about Matt Iglesias are you okay yeah yeah yeah

0:33:57 Joe: More. Person he brings up particularly particularly was Candace Owens, who came on Joe Rogan a lot. And Candace Owens is a bumbling idiot. At my personal opinion about it. And he said he watched her a bunch of times and could not stand her at all. But towards the end, he started to realize, even though he disagreed with her, he could at least empathize where she was coming from a little bit more often.

0:33:57 Thomas: You Hmm. Interesting.

0:34:20 Joe: And that's kind of where all starts with when it comes to trying to reduce polarization. Polarization, we a huge problem right now. And I'm sure many of us are fully aware of this. And we're kind of also a part of the problem while we're also talking about the problem, which is have huge issue with media fragmentation in this country.

0:34:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:34:38 Joe: Well, not just in this country, but the entire world. And we are just not exposed to the viewpoints that we used to be anymore. We don't have to be. I don't need to watch Fox News at all to learn any information. You don't have to either. We don't need to listen to Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, and conservatives don't need to Listen to us. Why would a hardcore Trump supporter necessarily want to listen to this show that's far more liberal? Don't have to do that. And because of that, we actually push ourselves far, far more into our own echo chambers, into our little bubbles, which I think we talked about a little bit in our last episode.

0:35:12 Thomas: Yeah. I think we did. And it is a trade -off, you know, cause I don't, I don'T think the answer is that I don't think, you KNOW, it was like, there are definite downsides to that, which was if the whole media environment got behind the Iraq war, which they did, then 90, whatever percent of the American people were also behind the Iraqi war. I DON'T THINK IT'S, I I don't think it can be a cause of polarization that we have, you know, a fragmented media environment could be a cause of problems, but also the opposite is not like the solution. I don't think if that makes sense.

0:35:44 Joe: Right. So, I mean, by the, the media fragmentation, is it's not necessarily saying that, oh, if we listen to more Fox News we're going to be more moderate, like I'm not saying that, but because we are much more segregated by our media coverage or by our meteor, um, we'll say diets, we don't have to actually talk to these people like we used to anymore and and

0:36:00 Thomas: Diet. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah! You're not forced to, you're not forced to see any other point of views, points of view much.

0:36:12 Joe: Because of that, we, and this is, is where it is, um, documented, because of media fragmentation, what we call false polarization has been on the rise dramatically, and what I call false globalization is misperceptions of the other side have increased. And ever had a an experience with somebody where you just talked to them, or you saw someone, even like Ben Shapiro, and like you just go, god, have you, you talk to a liberal once, like, Jesus Christ.

0:36:12 Thomas: Um, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, now now I'm playing a game, a mini game of can I guess the studies that Joe's going to reference next? Because I do know these studies, too, where it kind of go both ways. Unfortunately, I don't think it's as bad for us, but it is a little bit because Republicans think that Democrats like, you know, like 50 percent of us are gay and stuff like they just, you Know, I'm exaggerating, but they think these absurd percentages of Democrats or liberals are, you know, whatever, they, they vastly overestimate the proportion. Whereas I think the other way we assume that all conservatives are like rich or something like we, Like tend to assume that, which in my mind, I think there's like definitely moral differences between who you demonize. Like if you demonized rich people, I think you are, uh, a better thing than if you're demonizing gay people or black people. So I don't think there is a symmetry there, but at least in terms of the factual matter of who constitutes the opposing party, um, sides do get that wrong.

0:36:58 Joe: Yep. Yeah. Yep.

0:37:38 Joe: And I guess we should also clarify it. You kind of said it a couple of times, but I just want to make sure I clarify like explicitly as well. There is asymmetry in politics and polarization. I need to make that very clear. We can talk about like, oh, MSNBC sucks. Like, yeah, it does suck. Is it anywhere near Fox News? Absolutely not. Can we also show through our own research that Fox News is worse than MSNBC? Yeah, we can.

0:37:44 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

0:38:06 Joe: So I want to make that very clear that while we're just talking about the processes at play and why I'm trying to do a both sides thing because I want your audience, because obviously your audience is liberal. I don't expect there's tons of conservatives in your audience. And what I want them to realize is, oh, it's not just the conservatives who are doing it. They're just as susceptible to any of these pitfalls as anyone else. You can't out-rationalize these things very well. You are just kind of in for it. You just kind of have to go along for the ride because this is the brain matter we have. So that's all I'm trying to get at is there is definitely an asymmetry when it comes to politics, polarization, effective polarization. Polarization. We talked about affective polarization, which is how we feel about the other side. Republicans and conservatives tend to hate liberals more, but I just want to make sure that your audience knows, like reason why I keep doing the both sides thing is not just say like, Oh, both sides are just as bad. It's just, you

0:38:11 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of

0:39:01 Joe: Are susceptible to as well.

0:39:02 Thomas: Course but it does get frustrating, especially a lot of these conversations after 2016, where it's one side is trying to think of solutions to a problem that mainly the other side is doing. And drives me nuts to no end, the New York Times, like it's like I hate to listen to The Daily, um, I get a lot of news out of it, but it is so frustrating to see the pointless both sides, and they do, when it's, they're both-sidesing for an audience of one side. And it's like I don't know who that's for, because the people who you think that's four are not listening to you. It's so, it's so frustrating, but yeah. Okay. Point taken.

0:39:12 Joe: Yeah.

0:39:35 Joe: What are my other favorite perpetrators of that is actually like the NPR Politics Podcast, um, not sure if you ever listened to them much, but they like will talk about the news in such like a happy, like go lucky tone, and It'd Be like, oh yeah, Donald Trump said that everyone we, who's not as our vermin, we need to execute them immediately, that's crazy, right? Oh yeah, that's really crazy. Like, and It would just be like Well So I always enjoyed, enjoyed hearing like liberal, a couple of NPR reporters who would like say screw that, and they just like are not here for the bullshit, and it would just say, oh, no, he's the worst thing ever, he needs to go immediately.

Um, yeah, no, I completely get what you're talking about, and I think that's where we have a huge issue with media that we do have that's reputable, because you only, do you have a fragmentation of media between like we'll say liberal conservative media, but now we have a huge war, I guess, and I hate this term, but on mainstream media as well.

So you have a lot of these sources like NPR, New York Times, Washington Post, and a lot others who are so terrified of being considered a liberal mainstream media source when they're just reporting facts of

0:39:47 Thomas: Yeah, I know it's not, not doing a good thing.

0:40:40 Thomas: Yep.

0:40:41 Joe: What's happening, that they have to placate to the conservative base. And that's what I think also drives a lot of this nonsense as well, because that we just, we can no longer just call things out for what they are, because we have to play it to People

0:40:55 Thomas: Drives me nuts. And I, the, my biggest problem with it is they're not even placating a quote-unquote conservative base. There is no conservative base of New York Times readers. Like it's the people that they're trying to placate don't listen. And so they're They're just trying to placate other people who see it as a rational minded thing to be a centrist. You know, there's like I Something, there's a term now, radical centrist, which I'm glad somebody came up with, which really describes a lot of that. Like people. And honestly, this was me for part of my life, for sure. Like as I transitioned to it was like, well, you know, the right answer must be somewhere in the middle. Like there are people who genuinely will just say that, like they believe that must be true.

Well, you got people who Seem to be really mad on the left, and you have people who seem to be really mad on the right, and so if, if they're both mad, then you are calm, and then you go between them, and then you're right. And it's like, no, that has no bearing. One important lesson To learn is that emotion doesn't dictate whether or not you're wrong. And I think we will never learn that lesson. So, and like, people associate if one side or both sides are yelling, then that must mean they're, they're both extreme. And it's like, well, no, one side is yelling, you know, racist shit, and the other side is really don't be racist. It doesn't equal out. You know, you don't, you don't meet in the middle.

0:40:55 Joe: Yeah Yeah Yeah Yep. Right. Right.

0:42:12 Thomas: Do we do, though? OK, you know, we're kind of already somehow close to out of time. What can you give us for a solution? I know you're not going to solve it for us. But like, what people working on this? What do we do?

0:42:23 Joe: So One of my, um, projects I did was actually trying to figure out how to solve polarization when I was in my grad program, and you're going to be sorely disappointed with what I came up with, um, big problem we have right now with solutions to polarization is scalability. If you want to see what actually works with people on a psychological level, one-on-one talking to people.

0:42:37 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Yeah.

0:42:45 Joe: That's it. Kind of actually mentioned this before, but there have been numerous studies by two guys named Ruckman and Kawa. Actually, they had a really cool thing that they call deep canvassing, and what this is is a specially designed way for people to go door-to-door, so these are four political activists who are going door-to-door and basically cold knocking on people's doors to persuade them for something, and what they found was attitudes of people that they've talked to, using it's basically almost like a Socratic and like method of questioning, it's Like, well, what Makes you Feel, what makes you feel that way about something?

0:43:16 Thomas: Mm hmm, mm hmm.

0:43:20 Joe: Found that it reduced polarized attitudes those people significantly. It also showed that those attitudes actually persisted months later. So these experiments, they'd go back to these same people that they've talked to, and they would have the similar opinions about these issues at that point. And this was actually a really cool way they've done it to reduce transphobia, particularly.

0:43:42 Joe: So they talked about what it's like to be transgender. They talked about their own stories of what it's like to being transgender, or people they know and care about who are transgender, and then kind of flipped it onto them, saying, or so how would you feel if you were kind of bullied for just being who you are and how, for how you identify? And usually they'd say, well, that would really suck. And, yeah, transphobic attitudes sharply decreased in people that they talked to. And not only did the people that were, like, being knocked to and talked to at these doors, showing signs of depolarization, the people who were doing the questioning and the door knocking were actually showing lower levels of polarization and attitudes. And that both goes in quantitative and qualitative studies that just simply talking to people who disagree with you in a meaningful, honest way will drastically depolarize you.

0:43:30 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah, that's interesting.

0:44:33 Thomas: Yeah?

0:44:34 Joe: That sucks because number one, I think we talked about this before, like in our last episode, number one's that and would I also expect people to, like, it's very easy for me to say as a straight white guy to to say to other people, hey, by the way, you need to go like justify your existence to people who hate you. I I would never say that to somebody else, but that's kind of what it is if you really want to actually change people's minds about things and make them more empathetic with you. When I was working on a campaign with, for Joe Biden's campaign actually, in 2020, that's how I actually, actually coached all my volunteers to talk to people. I didn't care about what facts they were going to bring to the table because, oh, and actually a fun little side tangent, never be afraid to like volunteer and go canvassing, and I go knocking and calling people. There's a lot of people who are like, oh, I don't know enough about politics. Bullshit, yes you, if you're listening to this podcast, oh,

0:44:37 Thomas: Who wants to talk to these assholes? Am I I right? Yeah. Yeah. Mm. -hmm. Yeah.

0:45:28 Thomas: Jesus.

0:45:28 Joe: My my God. Yes, you do. But, trust me, like facts don't matter anyway. So all all you need to do is tell your story and give a very good, positive experience. And what I would train my volunteers to go do is say, Hey, knock on this person's door and tell me how the experience was for them. Did you smile and have a friendly conversation? It feels like five or 10 minutes with this person. And they would come back. Not only were they happier. This is anecdotal. Were far more empathetic to what people were saying. And They said people's attitudes towards them were far More empathetic. And then they always come back with the question.

Well, I actually change their mind? Oh, I don't know. And I said, I don't care because you weren't going to change their mind anyway. What I want you to do is create the association that a group of people, we talked about the beginning of this episode, groups and people, people, a group of people that they thought were bad are actually pretty cool, and that will take lasting changes over time. And if you really want to get into it, lower polarization all comes from actually just talking to people. And I mean, if you're really want us to get onto it too, we need to blow up our media environment.

0:45:32 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

0:46:34 Joe: But the big thing comes to actually just talking to who disagrees you in a very friendly, respectful way. So,

0:46:40 Thomas: It really does suck that it's, there's no, seems to be no shortcut. Like it's just, it's humanization. I mean, it's, it's the most obvious thing really when you think about it. I mean, it's like, obviously when you consume a media diet, no matter what it is, of all of any coverage that demonizes anyone, which is easy to do, and it's more entertaining and more, because it activates you fears and emotions that would lead us to engage more, and everything is fucking engagement now, and it is so easy to to be mad at a group of people that you don't know and you haven't talked to. It's like incredibly easy. And the antidote is just talking to them and getting to know them, apparently.

0:46:50 Joe: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And And this is not a necessary a plug for my own podcast here. But so

0:47:25 Thomas: Oh, feel free to plug your own podcast here.

0:47:26 Joe: Oh, Well, thank you anyway. I do a political podcast called Think Progressively. And while I do enjoy the academic side of these things, I'm still a crazy liberal who needs to vent about all things politics all the time because I am a junkie at the end of the day. And I am more than aware that my show is a part of that exact problem. It is a liberal show for liberal audiences who are ranting about conservatives and policies that no one probably knows about or cares about all day long. We're not having conservatives on the show. We're hard to like steal man what they're trying to say for arguments and then tear those arguments down and then probably make fun of them for it. But we're not actually like having people on to have real conversations. And that's a part of the problem for polarization. So in a way, my own show is actually the part of problem that we're talking about right now. That sucks because that's what I want to talk about. But then at the same time, I'm making the problem worse.

0:47:47 Thomas: I don't know. Yeah, I mean, is it making the problem worse or it's just not a solution to the problem? Not sure. I mean your

0:48:31 Joe: Say In a funny way, I guess you could say I'm not probably actually making the wrong words because we don't have much of an audience, but I will say for for my own belief system, I can see myself, I don't want to say radicalized, but we'll use radicalization for a lack of a better term right now, I can see myself being more radicalized and being more resentful of conservatives. I am finished doing the show sometimes and And here's the other problem too, is when you look at surveys of me, what you think of when you think of a conservative or a liberal, and people will say elites, right?

They'll say Nancy Pelosi, AOC, Joe Biden, or Donald Trump conservative's for sake, we do stuff like that and we interact with the elites who are influencing what's going on at the top level of things, which is good. That's what we're supposed to be doing for this type of work, not actually paying attention to the typical voters that We probably would end up talking to our neighbors, our friends, people who probably have like just really shitty, inconsistent beliefs about things. They don't really care about what's going on, and we're lumping those people into people who are like, at least the phonic. That's where it really sucks for me, where I'm trying very hard to fight my own biases to make sure that that I am actually recognizing that I could be making myself more polarized than anything else.

0:48:56 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, but I but that's the kind of thing where it's like it depends on what you're trying to do, because if you look at polarization in and of itself as a thing you're trying to fix, then sure. But I think that a of points and I'm just trying to, you know, let you off the hook emotionally. You know, I'm trying to assuage.

0:50:12 Thomas: No, I'm trying to assuage your guilt over your own show, you know.

0:50:11 Joe: So Oh, no, challenge me, man. Let's go. Oh,

0:50:16 Thomas: Here's the thing. We don't know that this problem is going to be solved. And if this problem isn't going to be solved, then we cannot unilaterally, ourselves. You, you're telling me the solution is we all have to personally talk to someone, which I very much believe you. I think that that is the only thing that really would help this kind of thing. That might just not happen.

Like, it might be that our incentives are so messed up that on any grand scale, we're not going to be able to accomplish that. In which case, what we have to do is continue the arms race and we have have to continue activating as many people toward what we view as wanting good outcomes to, in order to offset the shitty people that in our view want shitty outcomes for people. Like it might be that we just need to do that and it sucks, but think it's a pretty big risk to try to at all unilaterally disarm and say, well, okay, we're going to kind of try to calm things down over here. And then that, that doesn't activate the left as much and then perhaps we fall behind and then, you know, we lose the ability to even fucking have elections. So it's

0:51:01 Joe: Yeah.

0:51:22 Thomas: Hard because it all feels like it's so high stakes all the time, yeah.

0:51:21 Joe: No, you, yeah, and for the record, you are 100%. Oh, my God, you just gave me the perfect, like, little segue to, I think, finish up with this last point here. So that is, like. One way to reduce polarization. The other way is systemic change in our political system. Point blank. End of story. And when I talk about that, we have to talk about the filibuster in the Senate. We have to talk about the Electoral College. We've got to talk winner-take-all states. Things like that. Or ranked-choice voting. I have lots of friends who, okay, am I going to do the, I have centrist friends, I guess you can say, but I have lots of People who are centrist and they lean liberal, but they hate what's going on with the both sides thing.

And granted, yes, the reasoning is bad and I'm going to be empathetic towards that. But what I always try to tell them is, if want better political systems and better political outcomes and less polarization, then we should have a better political system that lessens our polarization. If you want not the, like, um, your poison style politics that we have with our two -party system, and you want rigged choice voting, cool, then let's push for those policies right now to our dying breath. And what side's far more likely to accept those policies, I can tell you right now, it's not the Republicans, it's

0:51:39 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

0:52:35 Joe: Going to be Democrats, at through and throughout. Is it going to be all Democrats? No, absolutely not, which means we have more fighting to do on that end too. But I always try to tell people, until we get these systems in place, you're going to have this problem at the end of the day, because polarization is a large scale systemic problem. And, like we just talked about, getting everyone to try to talk to their friends and neighbors who disagree with each other is a lot to ask. So think that's probably a good, good place to end it on. Like, how to solve polarization is fight like hell for actual systemic reforms that will actually fix our political system like

0:52:35 Thomas: To real democracy. You can, you can't do like, like we've seen with very visible examples, like whether it's Andrew Yang or some, some of these other people try. You can't put the cart before the horse. Like you can't just decide, well, we should have a viable third party before we change the system to make that actually a thing. You just can't. It doesn't work. All you're going to do is help whatever side anyone you pull over would have voted for. You're helping the opposite side. That's all.

0:53:33 Joe: Right. Right.

0:53:39 Thomas: That's it is. And so I agree with you. And remember that a lot of these things maybe can be done on a state level or whatever through like ballot initiatives or other, you don't even have to say like, well, you have to support the Democrats, although I think you should. And I think that's the way better way. We can also do things on a like ballot measure level. And a lot of those things may actually appeal to both sides voters. Voters. Now, I agree with you that Republican people in power are not going to do this. Like, I think there's just no chance that Republicans in power will do anything to give up any power. I think Democrats don't as well, but to a lesser degree.

So And you may be able to get some Republican voters, though, if you're doing something like a ballot initiative that kind of cuts through that and says, hey, should we change our electoral system and let's say the this state or whatever, you know, level you want to look at, should we change it to make it that so third parties would be more viable? Yes or no. And I think you could get that to work. And only after you've done that, can you start voting for third parties? Because it's just

0:53:39 Joe: And it sucks yeah yes

0:54:38 Thomas: Not going to work before that.

0:54:40 Joe: Or As I tell a bunch of those same friends I mentioned earlier is, I guess I can kind of do the both sides things when it comes to stuff, stuff like this. And I'm not really like, as like, oh, like Republicans are just always bad all the time and liberals are always good all the time. I can kind of see where the pitfalls on both sides can be. Let's be real here. There's a reason why I still work for Democrats, that I think that's the big thing at the end of the day.

0:55:00 Thomas: Well, there you go. It was a fun conversation. You plugged your podcast. Is there anything else you'd like to plug?

0:55:03 Joe: Yeah, no, not too much. I guess if you really, really, really want to deal with X or Twitter still, you could find me on Twitter at That's PoliSyJo, which is P-O-L-I-P-S-Y-J-O-E. I know it's the worst spelling of a handle you'll ever see in your life.

0:55:20 Thomas: I love it. It's my favorite is objectively the worst Twitter handle. And I've, I've had some bad ones probably, but like, that's pretty bad. Like love it. Keep it.

0:55:28 Joe: I'm too lazy to change it.

0:55:30 Thomas: Yeah. Never change.

0:55:30 Joe: Yeah, right. It's so bad. I'll be like, right, but

0:55:34 Thomas: Several different spellings that you could not possibly guess if you wanted to in a million years. That's great.

0:55:40 Joe: But yeah, other than that, like I said, I would just check our show, Think Progressively. You can find it on any other platform. We actually just dropped a new episode today about whether or not the left has an anti-Semitism problem and all the chaos of, you know, um, protests and what, or are trying to paint those protests as, tell me What, Thomas

0:55:58 Thomas: Yeah, boy, that's, I'll have to check that out. That'S a, that'S a hot button issue. I love it, Joe Magestro. Destro, thanks so much. Can't wait for next time when we might get another Wisconsin update and more Poly Sci Talk. Was great as always and hope to see you again soon.

0:56:13 Joe: Thank you so much, I really do appreciate it, that