Can you be a Democrat and a Christian? For some of our friends in the church, the answer seems to be no.

Recorded live on Substack the Friday before Election Day, with two friends who host shows of their own: Lori Adams-Brown of A World of Difference and Will Chan Wright of Faithful Politics. We get into why candidates like James Talarico and Adam Hamilton have their faith questioned, why a handful of issues soak up so much of the church’s moral attention, and how Christians are doing on empathy. Then come the risky predictions: the House, a Senate lightning round, and whether the polls can be trusted. To close, we ask whether there’s a path forward for the church in America.

Calls to Action

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✅ Know someone who’s been told their faith doesn’t count because of how they vote? Send them this one.

About Our Guests

Lori Adams-Brown is a business and nonprofit executive and host of A World of Difference, a podcast about how our differences make us stronger. She grew up in Central and South America, worked in Indonesia and Singapore, and now leads in Silicon Valley tech.

Will Chan Wright is a U.S. Army veteran and co-host of Faithful Politics. For six years, he and Pastor Josh Burtram, a conservative, have shown that a progressive and a conservative Christian can talk faith and politics together.

Links and Resources

Lori on Substack: loriadamsbrown.substack.comA World of Difference: aworldofdifferencepodcast.comFaithful Politics: faithfulpolitics.us

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Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

“In toxic systems, the person who names the problem becomes the problem.” (Lori Adams-Brown)

Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

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“I’m Denver Riggleman, damn it. That can’t happen to me.” But it did. The man who’s spent his life fighting bullies is now figuring out how to win back the people he’s lost.

Denver Riggleman is back, and this time we did it live on Substack, a few days before the midterms. We start in Apartment A1 in Manassas, where a tiny eight-year-old got locked out of the house and threw his first punch. From there it’s the Air Force, the NSA, Congress, the January 6th Committee, and a distillery in the Blue Ridge Mountains where he says Trump voters tell him things over bourbon that they’d never say to a pollster. Then it gets personal: his mom, the friends who told him he was dead to them, and what it’ll take to build a bridge back.

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✅ Send this one to the person you’ve been meaning to call

About Our Guest

Denver Riggleman represented Virginia’s 5th District in Congress from 2019 to 2021 and later served as an adviser to the House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack. Before that, he was an Air Force intelligence officer who worked with the NSA and helped plan the first strikes in Afghanistan after 9/11. He’s the author of The Breach (with Hunter Walker). He and his wife Christine, the real master distiller, run Silverback Distillery in Afton, Virginia, and East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Married 37 years and counting.

Links and Resources

Denver’s Substack: substack.com/@denverrigglemanDenver on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@thebreachmediaDenver on Bluesky: @denverrigglemanDenver on X: @Denver4VASilverback Distillery: www.sbdistillery.com

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Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

“As much as I hate bullies, I don’t like being one.” Denver Riggleman

Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

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Kevin D. Williamson says the saving grace of Donald Trump is that he’s stupid and lazy. And that’s just one of the things he says on this episode that will make somebody mad.

Kevin D. Williamson of The Dispatch joins Corey to talk about growing up in Lubbock, learning to write from Tom Wolfe and the back pages of National Review, and why his reporting method amounts to “send Kevin someplace he doesn’t belong.” Fresh off a week in the Rio Grande Valley and elsewhere in Texas covering the midterms, Kevin explains why Texas Democrats are courting a new constituency: normal people. Then the conversation turns to impeachment, corruption, Catholic and evangelical America, and why your politics shouldn’t be your religion.

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✅ Share this episode with a friend who treats politics like a religion

Key Takeaways

Texas Democrats changed their slate. Outside of James Talarico, the party nominated boots-and-cowboy-hat Tejano candidates who talk about healthcare and gas prices instead of identity politics.Corruption is becoming a kitchen-table issue. Kevin argues voters connect $6 diesel to the grifting they see from people in power, and it’s showing up in the polls.Impeachment depends on the Senate. If Democrats win the Senate, Kevin expects impeachment plus a long run of oversight investigations, which he calls how the constitutional system is supposed to work.Politics has replaced church for a lot of people. Bitter political tribalism has grown as participation in religious life has declined. If politics is your religion, Kevin says, you should try to fix that about yourself.

About Our Guest

Kevin D. Williamson is national correspondent at The Dispatch, where he writes the Monday newsletter Wanderland. He spent 15 years as a writer and editor at National Review, served as theater critic for The New Criterion, and is writer in residence at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. His books include The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics among several others.

Links and Resources

thedispatch.comBordering on Sanity, Kevin D. Williamson, The Dispatch: thedispatch.com/newsletter/wanderland/texas-democratic-candidates-midterms-talarico-normalWanderland newsletter: thedispatch.com/newsletter/wanderland

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“If Christians believed their own dogma, the world would look different from the way it looks.” Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

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Terms of Service with Future Caucus

A Vermont Democrat and a South Carolina Republican, both young parents in legislative leadership, on what it takes to raise small kids while serving in the statehouse.

Terms of Service is a limited series from Future Caucus and TP&R, hosted by Future Caucus CEO Layla Zaidane. People run for state legislature to serve their communities, then find the fine print. This episode brings together Rep. Mary-Katherine Stone (D-VT) and Rep. Brandon Newton (R-SC), assistant majority leaders in their chambers, on bringing a baby to the House floor, scheduling around daycare pickup, and why legislatures need people living through the issues they vote on.

This series is a partnership between SCAN Media and Future Caucus. Executive Producers: Future Caucus and Layla Zaidane.

CALLS TO ACTION

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✅ Subscribe on Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com

✅ Watch and subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The norms are built around the 90. When only 10 of 100 lawmakers have small kids, defaults like a 5 p.m. call get built for everyone else. In South Carolina, committee chairs now aim to wrap by 5 p.m., a change in culture rather than in the rules.

A baby on the floor lowered the temperature. Stone brought her son Salem to the Vermont House every day of session, starting 10 weeks postpartum. Colleagues from both parties thanked her, and she says it helped her bipartisan bill banning toxic chemicals in baby food.

Fixes for parents help everyone. Vermont lets members vote remotely in committee up to three times a session, and older members used it during flu season as much as parents did. Small changes like that make the job workable for anyone with something else going on.

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Rep. Mary-Katherine Stone (D) represents Burlington in the Vermont House and serves as an assistant majority leader, first elected in 2022. She is an occupational therapist at the University of Vermont Medical Center.

Rep. Brandon Newton (R) represents District 45 in Lancaster County, South Carolina, first elected in 2016 at age 22. He serves as an assistant majority leader and teaches as a college professor. Host Layla Zaidane is president and CEO of Future Caucus.

LINKS AND RESOURCES

Watch on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@FutureCaucus

Future Caucus: futurecaucus.org

CONNECT WITH US

Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com

YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn: @coreysnathan

PARTNERS

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room. Yes, really.

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Two weeks out, Silver Bulletin's forecast gives Democrats a 75% chance to win the Senate. But as our guest reminds us, one in four chances happen all the time.

Corey sits down with Eli McKown-Dawson, senior elections analyst at Silver Bulletin, to look under the hood of the midterm forecast. They cover how polls get weighted, why a four-point lead can mean a 90% chance to win, and go state by state through the Senate map, from Texas and Maine to Kansas and Nebraska.

Calls to Action

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✅ Subscribe on Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com

✅ Watch and subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

✅ Share this episode with the friend who says the polls are always wrong

Key Takeaways

- Polls are snapshots, forecasts are probabilities. A poll captures opinion at one moment. The model combines polls with fundamentals and simulates the election many times.

- Not every poll counts the same. Silver Bulletin weights pollsters by track record, recency, and transparency, and adjusts for partisan house effects.

- The Labor Day shift was real. Once pollsters moved to likely voter models, the generic ballot went from about D+6 to D+9, reflecting Democrats' recent turnout edge.

- Candidates still matter. Maine is competitive mainly because of Susan Collins, and Ken Paxton's weaknesses help explain why Texas leans toward Talarico.

- Try to understand why people believe what they do. Eli's advice is to separate someone's politics from how you feel about them as a person, and to bring some intellectual humility.

About Our Guest

Eli McKown-Dawson is a senior elections analyst at Silver Bulletin, where he writes about polls, politics, and elections and develops polling averages and election forecasts. He previously contributed to YouGov's U.S. politics team.

Links and Resources

Silver Bulletin: www.natesilver.netEli on X: @emckowndawsonVotebeat, "Experts say the midterms could face challenges, but are less concerned than in the spring": www.votebeat.org/national/2026/10/15/fall-2026-election-expert-survey-troops-polls-seize-ballots-voting-fraud/

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Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

"One in four chances happen all the time." – Eli McKown-Dawson

Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

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Twenty years in the pulpit. Ten years of disillusionment. He says he’s better for it.

Pat Kahnke cast his first vote for Ronald Reagan, spoke on behalf of the pro-life movement, and picked his church because he walked in on Pro-Life Sunday. Then 2016 sent him back to rethink all of it. In this Substack Live conversation, Corey and Pat talk about why the “binary choice” argument falls apart in the primaries, what “if love is obedience” says about authoritarian faith, the Somali community and the ICE occupation in Minnesota, and Pete Hegseth’s push to livestream an execution.

Calls to Action

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✅ Share this episode with someone who’s been told voting is a binary choice

Key Takeaways

Disillusionment can be a gift. Pat has lost his illusions about the movement he came from, about the average voter and even about Minnesota. Seeing what actually is helps him get past most of the anger and try to be useful.

The binary choice is a myth. White evangelicals chose Trump over every other Republican in the primaries. Pat says that blows the “lesser of two evils” excuse out of the water.

Earned authority vs. positional authority. Pat’s biggest fights with his own church elders were over whether authority is owed or earned. He sees an authoritarian kind of Christian who will back anyone willing to exercise power over the people they fear.

Pick one issue. Instead of arguing with friends and family about everything, Pat suggests learning one issue well and discussing it calmly, with facts. For him, that issue is immigration.

About Our Guest

Pat Kahnke is a retired evangelical pastor who spent 20 years in ministry in the Twin Cities, including a church he planted in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood. He’s the author of MAGA Seduction: Resisting the Debasement of the Christian Conscience (2020) and A Christian Case Against Donald Trump (2024), and he hosts Culture, Faith, and Politics on YouTube and Substack.

Links and Resources

Culture, Faith, and Politics on Substack: culturefaithandpolitics.substack.comCulture, Faith, and Politics on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@culturefaithandpolitics“Religious Groups Differ Widely in Their 2026 Midterm Preferences” (Pew Research Center): www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/10/13/religious-groups-differ-widely-in-their-2026-midterm-preferences/

Connect with Talkin’ Politics & Religion Without Killin’ Each Other

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Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

“Find something that you care passionately about.” Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

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Last time we promised unreasonably irresponsible midterm predictions and got sidetracked. This time we actually make the calls.

Chip is back at Doc’s Inn for another round of “To the Republic... To the Pub.” First comes a fight over whether the polls lean left, what Nate Silver actually said in 2016, and whether 2024 Trump voters are staying put. Then the House, and the Senate map race by race, from Georgia to a wild card in Nebraska. Also featured: a Kalshi bet, a Montblanc pen, and a shot riding on the outcome.

On the Map

The House, plus Senate races in Georgia, Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Kansas, Ohio, Maine, Texas, Alaska and Iowa. Corey also brings a wild card: Nebraska. Some calls we agree on. Some we definitely don’t.

Calls to Action

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✅ Share this episode with the friend who already knows exactly how the midterms will go

Connect with Us

Substack: coreysnathan.substack.comYouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligionInstagram, Threads, Bluesky, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn: @coreysnathan

Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

Pull up a stool. Folks we disagree with? It’s more fun to talk to ’em than to talk about ’em.

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He almost never votes for Democrats. This year, he’s making an exception.

Matt K. Lewis has spent his career on the right. He’s won a Buckley Award, he was named CPAC Blogger of the Year, and he once wanted to grow up to be Alex P. Keaton. In this Substack Live conversation, Corey and Matt dig into why he’s voting blue in 2026, how Trump broke up his own coalition, the Senate races worth watching four weeks out, and what both parties could learn from a wave, if one comes.

Calls to Action

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✅ Share this episode with someone who’s rethinking their vote this year

Key Takeaways

A vote meant as a message. Matt sees a blue wave as the lesson Republicans need to finally put distance between themselves and Trump. If the wave doesn’t come, he worries the party decides it has to stick with him.

Connect the dots. Warnings about norms and the rule of law don’t move enough voters on their own. “He’s building a ballroom while you can’t afford gas” does.

Don’t get high on your own supply. Matt argues that a wave won with candidates like Roy Cooper and Mary Peltola isn’t a mandate to move left. He thinks the smarter read is economic populism without the culture-war baggage.

2028 is wide open, his vote included. His 2026 vote is a message about Trump. In 2028, either party has to earn it.

About Our Guest

Matt K. Lewis is a political columnist for The Washington Sun and a former senior columnist at The Daily Beast. He’s a podcaster, YouTuber, and frequent political commentator on television, and he wrote Too Dumb to Fail and Filthy Rich Politicians.

Links and Resources

Matt K. Lewis at The Washington Sun: washingtonsun.com/columnist/matt-k-lewisMatt on Substack: mattklewis.substack.com

Connect with TP&R

Substack: coreysnathan.substack.comYouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligionInstagram, Threads, Bluesky, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn: @coreysnathan

Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

“Help me help you.” Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

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For ten years, Pete Wehner's email subject line for every new outrage was "No bottom means no bottom." Now he and Jon Rauch think they may have found one.

Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner join Corey to talk about their New York Times essay, "Trump Has Finally Lost the Plot." They lay out where Trump succeeded, where his effort to remake American society failed, and why Minneapolis, the courts, and his falling approval numbers made the difference. Jon stayed for some bonus time to talk about when to keep a hard conversation going and when to walk away.

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Key takeaways

Rauch and Wehner put Trump's agenda into three buckets: lowering the country's norms, running the government as a family business (Max Weber's "patrimonialism"), and using federal power to rewire civil society. He mostly succeeded at the first two and failed at the third.They credit the people of Minneapolis, the lower courts, and approval ratings in the 30s with forcing the administration to retreat.Drawing on a sermon by Rabbi Michael Holtzman, Rauch says walking away from someone is sometimes fine. Walking away with contempt is the problem.

About Jonathan Rauch

Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institute, a contributing writer at the New York Times and The Atlantic, and the author of The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth.

About Peter Wehner

Peter Wehner is a senior fellow at The Trinity Forum and a contributing Opinion writer at The New York Times and The Atlantic. He served in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations and is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.

Links

"Trump Has Finally Lost the Plot," The New York Times: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/19/opinion/trump-vance-turning-point-minneapolis.html

Connect with us

Substack: coreysnathan.substack.comYouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligionInstagram, Threads, Bluesky, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn: @coreysnathan

Partners

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Turns out there's a bottom after all.

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Everyone says the polls blew it. Carl Allen says they didn't, and his research shows candidates averaging 49% or higher in well-polled races have won 98% of the time since 2004. Then we go race by race: Texas, Ohio, Maine, and two red states that could shock everyone on election night.

Recorded live on Substack, this conversation with data analyst Carl Allen starts with why polls aren't predictions and ends with a tour of the 2026 Senate map, with real poll averages and prediction market odds pulled up as we talked. Along the way, Carl explains why a one-point lead can be safer than a three-point lead, and why undecided voters in Minnesota aren't the same as undecided voters in Ohio.

Calls to Action

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✅ Share this episode with the friend who refreshes the polls every morning

Key takeaways

Polls estimate a candidate's current support, not the final margin. When late deciders break heavily one way, as they did for David Crowley in Wisconsin's governor primary, that isn't a poll error.Watch the 50% line, not the spread. A candidate near 50% has little room to be overtaken, no matter how many voters are undecided.Undecided voters aren't a monolith. That's why prediction markets give a small Democratic lead in Minnesota 90% odds while a similar lead in Texas gets about 60%.Carl's sleeper races are Kansas and Nebraska. If Democrats have a strong night, he expects those two to move together.

About Carl Allen

Carl Allen is a researcher and analyst of sports and political data and the author of The Polls Weren't Wrong (CRC Press, 2024). His research focuses on inefficiencies in political betting markets and improving polling methods, and his background includes quantitative analysis for University of Louisville Baseball and MLB data work for Stats Perform.

Links

The Polls Weren't Wrong: www.routledge.com/The-Polls-Werent-Wrong/Allen/p/book/9781032483023Carl Allen on Substack and Threads: @RealCarlAllen

Connect with us

Substack: coreysnathan.substack.comYouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligionInstagram, Threads, Bluesky, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn: @coreysnathan

Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

Polls measure support. Elections count votes. Know the difference.

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Joan Blades helped launch MoveOn. Jacob Hess grew up a conservative kid in Utah. Their friendship is the argument.

Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn and Living Room Conversations, and Jacob Hess of the Deseret News join Corey to talk about what happens when political opposites actually sit down together. They cover MoveOn's 1998 start as a one-sentence petition, why these conversations feel scary before they feel fun, and how local pride could rebuild trust in our elections.

Calls to Action

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✅ Watch and subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

✅ Invite one friend who votes differently to a Living Room Conversation: livingroomconversations.org

Key takeaways

Hess traces his turn to a graduate school computer lab, where a classmate held him after he learned his brother was being sent home to die. After that, the culture war rhetoric about "dangerous" people stopped making sense.Hess argues dialogue shouldn't ban persuasion, because people with conviction end up feeling they must leave it at the door. Blades says curiosity and listening build the relationship that makes honest grappling possible.Hess frames this work as public health, since chronic anger is chronic stress. Blades adds that if we're in a loneliness epidemic, human relationships are the obvious remedy.Blades is organizing locally around a principle from Braver Angels' cross-partisan work: voting should be easy, cheating should be hard. Local pride in how elections work, she says, is the path to national trust.

About Joan Blades

Joan Blades is a co-founder of Living Room Conversations, MoveOn, and MomsRising. A mediator and attorney by training, she co-authored The Custom-Fit Workplace and The Motherhood Manifesto.

About Jacob Hess

Jacob Hess writes for the Deseret News and co-authored You're Not as Crazy as I Thought (But You're Still Wrong) with Phil Neisser. A former board member of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation, he teaches mindfulness and researches long-term healing from depression. His upcoming book is Recovering Hope.

Links

Living Room Conversations: livingroomconversations.orgTrustworthy Elections Initiative: ncdd.org/trustworthy-elections.htmlBraver Angels Trustworthy Elections report: braverangels.org/trustworthy-electionsJacob Hess, Deseret News: www.deseret.com/authors/jacob-hessJacob Hess on Substack: publishpeace.net

Connect with us

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Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

Scary in line. Worth the ride.

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"Woke 1 was crazy," AOC said on national TV, and then she laughed. Corey wants to know what that laugh leaves out.

This morning, Corey published a new essay on Substack about what the woke era actually cost: friendships, careers, invitations that stopped coming. It's also about the friends who stayed close anyway, across real disagreement. This episode, Corey reads it to you himself.

Calls to Action

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✅ Share this episode with a friend you disagree with and still call on the hard days

Links and Resources

Read the original essay on Substack: Yeah, Woke 1 Was Crazy

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Our Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room. Yes, really.

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Credentials used to be enough. Rachel Kleinfeld and Renée DiResta on what earns trust now.

Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Renée DiResta of Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy join Corey to talk about their new paper, "How to Engage With New Media: A Strategic Guide for Nonprofit Organizations," co-authored with Margot Treadwell. The conversation moves from an institution caught flat-footed when a researcher becomes a target, to why a big following no longer guarantees reach, to how hard disagreements go better when nobody fears being screenshotted.

Calls to Action

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✅ Share this episode with someone who still thinks red versus blue explains anything

Key takeaways

Kleinfeld says academic credentials and a nice institutional home no longer confer legitimacy. Authenticity and trust do, and they come from building a community that listens.The paper cites Meta data showing 41% of posts on the average Facebook feed come from recommended content unconnected to people the user follows. DiResta explains why that means a large following no longer guarantees reach.The paper's four questions come before any posting: who the audience is, what the mission is, which gatekeepers shape the field, and how to create content. Kleinfeld says audiences should be sorted by values and worldview, not demographics.DiResta finds hard conversations work best in private group chats where no one fears being screenshotted. Kleinfeld says the place to start is common values.

About Rachel Kleinfeld

Rachel Kleinfeld is a senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she advises governments, philanthropists, and activists on how democracies make major social change. Raised in a log house on a dirt road in Fairbanks, Alaska, she earned her BA at Yale and her graduate degrees at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

About Renée DiResta

Renée DiResta is an associate research professor at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy and a contributing editor at Lawfare. She is the author of "Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality" and was formerly research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory.

Links

"How to Engage with New Media: A Strategic Guide for Nonprofit Organizations": carnegieendowment.org/research/2026/08/nonprofit-organizations-how-to-engage-social-media-new-media-strategy"For Expertise to Matter, Nonpartisan Institutions Need New Communications Strategies": carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/09/communications-social-media-nonprofit-institutions-new-media-environmentRachel Kleinfeld on Substack: rachelkleinfeld.substack.comRenée DiResta: reneediresta.com

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Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

Expertise still matters. Trust is what makes people listen to it.

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What happens when the people who read your writing talk back?

A couple weeks ago, The Dispatch published an essay Corey wrote about his hometown of Freehold, New Jersey, growing older alongside his friends from high school, and what it means to lose someone who isn't gone. This episode, recorded live on Substack, Corey reads it himself and reacts to comments in real time on Substack Live as well as some that came in at The Dispatch, including one from a stranger that turns into a pretty candid moment.

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Links and Resources

Read the original essay at The Dispatch: "Whatever Happened to Freehold, New Jersey?" - thedispatch.com/article/freehold-new-jersey-springsteen-politics

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Some things deserve disagreement. Few deserve losing a friend over.

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Mike Madrid on why both parties are running on empty, and what's actually filling the vacuum.

Mike Madrid, author of The Latino Century and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, joins Corey to argue that neither party is being reshaped so much as replaced. The conversation moves from a 13,000-person Texas town that could decide the midterms to what it costs a person to spend a career in gladiator politics, and why Madrid traded that fight for painting, pilgrimages, and personal writing.

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Key takeaways

Madrid argues both parties are "zombie parties," hollow shells running on inertia while voters increasingly organize around issues instead of labels.Beeville, Texas, a 70% Hispanic town that went 70% for Trump, is why Madrid calls it the most important town in America for the midterms.State Rep. James Talarico is connecting with Latino voters by framing politics as class, not identity: the working class had the American dream stolen from them.After years of "gladiator politics," Madrid stepped back from the fight and now spends his time writing, painting, and teaching, calling it work that's better for his soul.

About Mike Madrid

Mike Madrid is a longtime Latino GOP political consultant and co-founder of the Lincoln Project. He's the author of The Latino Century: How America's Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy, and co-hosts the Latino Vote Podcast with Chuck Rocha. He writes The Great Transformation on Substack, where most of his reporting and essays now live, and this fall he's teaching courses built around his book at USC and UC Irvine.

Links

"The Latino Century" by Mike Madrid: simonandschuster.com/books/The-Latino-Century/Mike-Madrid/9781668015278The Great Transformation on Substack: greattransformation.substack.com

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The parties aren't just dying. Something else is already replacing them.

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Two megaphones, two drinks, one bar. Corey quits talking about talking and just gets to the talkin'.

Second edition of "To the Republic... To the Pub." Corey sits down with his buddy Chip, a Tea Party guy since the '70s, and it turns into a real fight: Trump's second term, JD Vance, ICE and the Home Depot raids, and whether bipartisanship even means anything anymore. Not talking about people we disagree with. Talking with them.

FOR THE RECORD: Biden's Last Two Years vs. Trump's First 20 Months

Jobs: averaged 216,000/month in 2023 and 168,000/month in 2024 (BLS, revised). Under Trump, growth has slowed sharply, roughly 716,000 jobs added total from January 2025 through June 2026, versus 2 million over Biden's final 17 months.Inflation: fell steadily under Biden, from a 4.1% average in 2023 to 2.9% by December 2024. Under Trump it's climbed back to 3.4% for the 12 months ending July 2026.GDP: grew 2.9% in 2023 and 2.8% in 2024. Grew 2.1% in 2025, Trump's first year, and slowed to 1.5% in Q2 2026.Stock market: the S&P 500 gained roughly 53% and the Dow roughly 31% combined over 2023 to 2024. Since Trump's inauguration, the S&P is up about 26.5% and the Dow about 21%.Consumer sentiment (University of Michigan index): rose from 69.7 to 74.0 between December 2023 and December 2024. Fell to a near-record low of 44.8 in May 2026 and sat around 52 as of August.

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Partners

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Pull up a stool. Folks we disagree with? It's more fun to talk to 'em than to talk about 'em.

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A newspaper editor from East Tennessee on why Dolly Parton was one of the last people almost everyone agreed on, and what that says about faith, place, and the work of editing well.

Michael Reneau, executive editor at The Dispatch, joins Corey to talk about growing up 50 miles from where Dolly Parton was raised, and what her death revealed about a country that still finds a handful of people impossible to dislike. The conversation moves from Appalachia and Hurricane Helene to Bryan College, Flannery O'Connor, and the hardest thing Michael has ever watched his parents live through.

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Key takeaways

Dolly Parton's death pulled praise from across the political spectrum, and Michael sees that as a clue about what Appalachia's isolation and hardship actually produced: solidarity, not the caricature.Editing longer-form work, learned in part from mentor Marvin Olasky, means being ruthless about finding a story's essence, and Michael treats AI strictly as a tool, never as a substitute for that judgment.The formative event of Michael's faith was watching his parents grieve his infant sister's death and hold onto their belief anyway, not any theological argument he later studied.

About Michael Reneau

Michael Reneau is executive editor at The Dispatch, where he oversees editing across the newsroom. Before joining The Dispatch in 2022, he was editor of World Magazine, and prior to that spent several years as editor and writer for an award-winning daily newspaper in East Tennessee. He lives in Greeneville, Tennessee, with his wife and four kids.

Links

The Dispatch: thedispatch.comMichael's tribute to Dolly Parton: thedispatch.com/article/dolly-parton-tennessee-music-philanthropy

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Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

Nobody agrees on much these days. Dolly was the exception.

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A friend's Facebook post asks who's afraid of the truth. Corey wonders if he's who she means.

A couple weeks ago, The Fulcrum published an essay Corey wrote about an old friend's social media post, and what it stirred up about the walls we build online without meaning to. This episode, Corey reads it to you himself.

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Links and Resources

Read the original essay at The Fulcrum: Walling In, Walling OutRobert Putnam, Bowling AloneThe Village Square: villagesquare.us

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Our Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room. Yes, really.

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The theology quietly staffing Trump's cabinet, and why it doesn't need to make sense to work.

Dr. Keri Ladner studies the radicalization of the American religious right, from the Moral Majority to the New Apostolic Reformation. She joins Corey to unpack Christian dominionism, the Seven Mountain Mandate, and how movements with contradictory theologies ended up governing together.

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Key Takeaways:

Contradictory theologies, same movement. NAR, Christian Reconstructionism, and neo-Confederacy don't agree on doctrine, but they've united around Trump and the belief that Christians are called to take dominion over government.

The Seven Mountain Mandate isn't about church. It reframes government, education, and business as spheres apostles are called to control, well beyond the pulpit.

A neo-Confederate is advising the Pentagon. Doug Wilson calls himself "paleo-Confederate." Ladner traces his influence in American Dominion, including his role leading prayer at the Pentagon.

Dr. Ladner's advice is deliberately unglamorous. Vote in the midterms. Turn abstract political fights into stories about real people you already know.

About Our Guest:

Dr. Keri Ladner is the author of Endtime Politics: From the Moral Majority to QAnon (2024) and American Dominion: The Rise and Radicalization of a New Christendom (Bloomsbury). Her work has appeared in Christian Century, Religion Dispatches, and Good Faith Media.

Links and Resources:

American Dominion, published by Bloomsbury (also on Amazon, or ask your local library to carry it)Substack: "The Boogaloo," by Keri Ladner - keriladner.substack.com

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Partners

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"Just talk to people."

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A Navy SEAL commander on identity, faith, and why we fight the wars we fight.

Captain Robert "Gus" Gusentine spent nearly 30 years in the Navy, commanding SEAL Team 10 and leading special operations forces from the Philippines to the Pacific. He joins Corey to talk about faith, painting, moral injury, and what it means to defend your identity without losing your soul.

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Key Takeaways:

Identity is the last citadel of the soul. Gus argues that when you back someone into a corner over their identity, there's nowhere left for the conversation to go. That's why wars of religion cut so deep.

Faith and religion aren't the same fight. Drawing on a mentor's line, "we never go to war over faith, we always go to war over religion," Gus distinguishes belief itself from the practice and politics built around it.

Moral injury outlasts the battlefield. Gus and Corey discuss what happens when service members carry out orders that conflict with their conscience, and why caring for that wound is a command responsibility.

Art forces you to see differently. Gus talks about painting as a discipline that trained his eye long before it trained his hand, and how that same habit of seeing applies to leadership and writing.

About Our Guest:

Captain Robert "Gus" Gusentine served nearly 30 years in the Navy, including as an exchange officer with Germany's Kamphschwimmer Company, commander of SEAL Team 10, operations chief (J3) for Special Operations Command Pacific, and commander of Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines. After retiring in 2014, he led the Strategic Leaders International course at the Naval Special Warfare Schoolhouse, teaching senior military officers and diplomats from around the world. He is also a painter and writes on Substack alongside Roger Herbert.

Links and Resources:

gusentineandherbert.substack.comrvgusentine-art.comHome Base Veteran and Family Care - homebase.org

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Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room. Yes, really.

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Terms of Service with Future Caucus

A Rhode Island Democrat and a West Virginia Republican, both serving in supermajorities, on why the toughest fights are sometimes within your own party.

Terms of Service is a limited series from Future Caucus and TP&R, hosted by Future Caucus CEO Layla Zaidane. People run for state legislature to serve their communities, then find the fine print. This episode brings together Sen. Tiara Mack (D-RI) and Del. Andy Shamblin (R-WV), two lawmakers serving in supermajority chambers, on building coalitions across factions, pay that doesn't match the job, and what it takes to keep good people in office.

This series is a partnership between Scan Media and Future Caucus. Executive Producers: Future Caucus and Layla Zaidane. 

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

A supermajority has its own fault lines. Both Mack and Shamblin serve in chambers where their own party holds overwhelming control, and both say their fiercest fights happen within the party, not across the aisle.

The fine print of the paycheck. West Virginia delegates earn around $24,000 a year plus per diem, a disruption to career and family that Shamblin says surprises most people who assume lawmakers get rich in office.

Building the next generation of lawmakers. Both point to campaign funds covering childcare as a bipartisan fix that's opened the door for more young parents, especially women, to run.

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Sen. Tiara Mack (D) represents District 6 in Providence, Rhode Island, now in her third term after unseating a 30-year incumbent in 2020 to become the state's first openly queer Black state legislator. She is a former teacher and community organizer.

Del. Andy Shamblin (R) represents District 59 in Kanawha County, West Virginia, now in his second term. He teaches history at Nitro High School and has served on Nitro City Council since 2012. Host Layla Zaidane is president and CEO of Future Caucus.

LINKS AND RESOURCES

Watch on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@FutureCaucus

Future Caucus: futurecaucus.org

CONNECT WITH US

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PARTNERS

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room. Yes, really.

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A buddy at the dive bar hit Corey with "you guys and your TDS." The label stung less than the move behind it: getting turned into a "you guys" in the first place.

This one's a feed drop. Napp Nazworth invited Corey onto the American Values Coalition podcast to unpack a recent op-ed in The Dispatch, "Does Trump Derangement Syndrome Have a Cure?" What opens as a riff on an overused phrase becomes something closer to home. How do you stay in real relationship with people you love when you can't reconcile what they're defending, and why does seeing the human across the table beat winning the point every time?

Along the way: whataboutism at the bar, getting shown the door at Bible study for "getting political," collective narcissism, and a piece of advice borrowed from Al-Anon. Didn't cause it, can't control it, can't cure it. What's left is steadfast, loving presence and a better question than the one you walked in with. 

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Links and Resources

Corey's op-ed in The Dispatch: "Does Trump Derangement Syndrome Have a Cure?" - thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-faith/maga-christianity-donald-trump/ 

Connect with us

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Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room. Yes, really.

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"Nobody I know voted for George Bush." Michelle Cottle has heard that line her whole career, and it explains almost everything about the mess we're in. A New York Times columnist on the bubbles we live in, the family we love anyway, and why the stereotype falls apart the moment you actually know someone.

Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for New York Times Opinion and hosts the Times podcast The Opinions. She and Corey trace her path from humor columnist at the Vanderbilt Hustler to covering Washington since the Clinton administration, get into what the capital feels like right now and where the 2026 primaries are heading, and land on the father she loved and could never talk politics with. The through line: the caricatures almost always break the second a real person walks into the room.

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Key Takeaways

The bubble is the real problem. After decades in Washington, Cottle's rule is simple: if you don't know a single person who votes the other way, that's on you, not them. The media landscape pays the people ginning up our fear of each other, and the bubbles make us easy to work.

You can love someone whose politics you find appalling. Her late father was a Trump voter she adored and, eventually, could not discuss politics with. Knowing him made the caricature impossible to believe. That, she argues, is the way out for the rest of us.

The 2026 fundamentals favor Democrats, but the brand is toxic. A rough economy and midterm gravity cut against the party in power. Yet Democrats are radioactive enough in rural America that they're backing independents like Nebraska's Dan Osborn to take seats they otherwise couldn't.

About Our Guest

Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for New York Times Opinion and is a host of the Times podcast The Opinions. She has covered Washington since the Clinton administration, with earlier stops at The New Republic, the Washington Monthly, Newsweek and The Daily Beast, National Journal, and The Atlantic. A Chattanooga native, she holds a BA in English from Vanderbilt.

Links and Resources

Michelle Cottle at New York Times Opinion: nytimes.com/by/michelle-cottle
The Opinions podcast: www.nytimes.com/column/the-opinions

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Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com
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Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

More conversation, less accusation. Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

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Two megaphones, two drinks, one bar. Corey quits talking about talking and just gets to the talkin'.

First edition of "To the Republic... To the Pub." Corey and his buddy Brandon post up at Doc's Inn and get into it: Iran and the case for the strikes, the $100K access Trump's charging on Truth Social, and three Senate races that tell you where 2026 is headed. Not talking about people we disagree with. Talking with them.

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Connect with Us

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Our Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

Pull up a stool. Folks we disagree with? It's more fun to talk to 'em than to talk about 'em.

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The 20 percent who love the fight own the microphone. This is a conversation about how the other 80 take it back.

Manu Meel runs BridgeUSA, a student-led movement for constructive dialogue now on college campuses across the country. Liz Joyner founded The Village Square and has spent two decades rebuilding civic trust hometown by hometown. Together they make the case that the sharpest divide in America is no longer left against right, but open against closed, and that the most countercultural act available to any of us is a real conversation with someone we can't stand.

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Key Takeaways

The new divide isn't left versus right. Meel argues the real split is temperament: builders versus breakers, open versus closed. Politics maps onto it poorly, which is why so many people feel homeless in the current fight.

The exhausted majority is the whole game. Twenty percent love the conflict and control the mic; everyone else is worn out by it. Whether that 80 percent checks out or takes the mic back is the question that decides things.

The rebellion is the conversation. Meel describes Bridge chapters filling with first-time students the night of Charlie Kirk's assassination, and the organization adding tens of thousands of followers with no ad spend. Outrage is the establishment now; curiosity is the counterculture.

About Our Guests

Manu Meel is the co-founder and CEO of BridgeUSA, a student-led movement that brings young people across the political spectrum into the same room for honest conversation. A 2020 UC Berkeley graduate and Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, he serves on the boards of Braver Angels, Convergence, and American Promise, and hosts the podcast The Hopeful Majority.

Liz Joyner is the founder and president of The Village Square, a nonprofit that rebuilds civic trust between neighbors who don't look or think alike. Based in Tallahassee, she has led the organization for close to two decades and helped pioneer the community-level model much of the bridging field now draws on.

Links and Resources

BridgeUSA: bridgeusa.org
The Village Square: villagesquare.us
The Hopeful Majority, Manu's podcast: www.thehopefulmajority.com

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Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

More conversation, less accusation. Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

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Most people vote the policy first. Corey saves it for last.

Ethical, legal, wise. Those are the three questions David French asks of any law or action, and Corey turns them on the candidates themselves. Character and personal ethics come first, fidelity to our democratic institutions second, policy positions after all that. He runs the test through three Senate races, Maine, Texas, and Michigan, to show why disagreeing on policy is not the same as calling someone evil, and why Michigan is the one he still can't call.

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Connect with Us

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Our Partners

Proud to be part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room. Yes, really.

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Richard Parker has spent his life reading America through two lenses most people keep apart: economics and religion. The throughline is that faith, money, and power did not grow up in separate rooms. They grew up together.

An Oxford-trained economist who has taught at Harvard's Kennedy School since 1993, Parker co-founded Mother Jones, helped build Greenpeace USA, and helped Norman Lear start People for the American Way. This conversation runs from an abolitionist ancestor who helped fund John Brown's raid, through the Reformation's long shadow over capitalism and the corporation, to a president reaching into the economy in ways the country has not seen since it had kings.

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Key Takeaways

The abolitionist in the family tree. Richard's ancestor, the Rev. Theodore Parker, was one of the Secret Six who bankrolled John Brown's raid. He also coined lines later borrowed by Lincoln ("of the people, by the people, for the people") and Martin Luther King ("the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice").

Not since kings. When a president takes government equity stakes in companies like Nvidia, Parker argues, he folds the state into his own person and pushes presidential power into the economy in a way America has not seen since it had monarchs.

Only about six presidents. Borrowing from political scientist Stephen Skowronek, Parker says just a handful of presidents ever reset the country's governing terms. He does not think Trump is one of them.

The same fights in new costumes. Most of our arguments recur generation after generation. Parker's aim is not to win them but to help people see the landscape they are arguing from, which is how a divided country starts talking instead of accusing.

About Our Guest

Richard Parker is an economist, author, and Senior Fellow and Lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School, where he has taught since 1993. He co-founded Mother Jones, helped build Greenpeace USA, helped Norman Lear launch People for the American Way, and has advised figures including Senator Edward Kennedy. He serves on the boards of The Nation and the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics.

Links and Resources

Richard Parker and Diane Winston (USC) at Faith Angle West in Park City, Utah (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFNCAbZIKjo&t=139s

Faith Angle Forum, which helps journalists cover religion in public life: https://faithangle.org/

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More conversation, less accusation. Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

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Terms of Service with Future Caucus

Two Minnesota lawmakers, one Democrat and one Republican, on what public service costs and what it took to keep going after tragedy.

Terms of Service is a new limited series from Future Caucus and TP&R, hosted by Future Caucus CEO Layla Zaidane. People run for state legislature to serve their communities, then find the fine print. Recorded at Future Summit, this first conversation brings together two young Minnesota representatives, Andy Smith (D) and Isaac Schultz (R), on political violence, pay, staffing, and what it takes not just to serve but to stay.

This series is a partnership between Scan Media and Future Caucus. Executive Producers: Future Caucus and Layla Zaidane.

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Key Takeaways

A House split 67 to 67. An evenly divided chamber meant building trust across the aisle before any bill had a chance. Relationships came first, legislation second.

Coming together after political violence. The assassination of Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and the wounding of a colleague, changed how these two think about safety and each other. Shared grief pulled them closer across party lines.

The fine print of serving. Pay that runs about $10,000 below the average worker, little to no staff, and months living out of a hotel away from family. Both still call it worth doing.

About Our Guests

Rep. Andy Smith (D) represents Rochester, Minnesota, is in his second term, and runs a used bookstore with his wife. Rep. Isaac Schultz (R) represents a rural district, is in his second term, and works as an auctioneer and small business owner. Host Layla Zaidane is president and CEO of Future Caucus.

Links and Resources

Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=Nkbhx-o4FY0

Future Caucus: futurecaucus.org

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Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room. Yes, really.

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Barbara Bradley Hagerty has spent a career asking why people do the things they do. The hardest answer she found runs through a wrongful conviction, thirty-four years lost, and a friendship between two men who had every reason to stay enemies.

A New York Times bestselling author and contributing writer for The Atlantic, Barb covered criminal justice and religion at NPR for nearly twenty years. This conversation runs from a kindergarten report card that called her whole life, to a cycling accident that took away her fear of death, to Ben Spencer and Jay Young, the wrongly imprisoned man and the victim's son, who somehow became friends.

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Key Takeaways

Enemies, then friends. Ben Spencer chose to forgive and pray for the victim's family, and Jay Young chose to believe Ben might be innocent and show up for him. What made it possible was simple and hard: each stood in the other's shoes, then listened.

Two sets of victims. Every exoneration wrecks two families, the prisoner who lost his years and the victim's family, often told for decades that the right man was locked up. Jay Young was twelve when his father was killed.

The system isn't broken. People are. The prosecutors who fought Ben's release didn't make the original mistake. They just couldn't bring themselves to admit one had been made.

Losing the fear of death. A car hit Barb at thirty-five miles an hour while she was cycling. She came out of it with the sense that life is precious and can't be about her anymore.

About Our Guest

Barbara Bradley Hagerty is a New York Times bestselling author and contributing writer for The Atlantic. She spent nearly twenty years at NPR covering criminal justice and religion, including as lead Justice Department correspondent during 9/11. Her books include Fingerprints of God, Life Reimagined, and Bringing Ben Home.

Links and Resources

Barbara Bradley Hagerty and Bringing Ben Home: barbarabradleyhagerty.com

"The Other Victims of a Wrongful Conviction" in The Atlantic: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/07/wrongful-conviction-family/687394

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Stand in the other person's shoes, then listen to their story. Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

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The essay ran in The Dispatch. Then a few hundred readers wrote back, and a few of them changed my mind.

There is such a thing as Trump Derangement Syndrome. It just isn't what most people mean when they say it. This one goes behind the essay: the passages that got cut, the third man who never made it into the print version, and the comment section that turned out to be the best part of the whole thing.

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Links and Resources

"Does Trump Derangement Syndrome Have a Cure?" - thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-faith/maga-christianity-donald-trump

The Dispatch - thedispatch.com

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Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room. Yes, really.

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Carl Cannon came up in newsrooms where editors challenged you word by word, and nearly fifty years on he's still keeping score on who gets the quote right. His one rule, for reporting and for arguing in general: describe the other side so faithfully they'd claim it as their own.

The Washington bureau chief of RealClearPolitics learned the trade from his father, Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, and came up the old way: small papers, police and courts, editors who challenged every word. This conversation runs from fake quotes and the reporters who hunt them, to the Yellowstone wolves as a lesson in fairness, to why doing your own thinking tends to leave you independent of both parties. 

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Key Takeaways

The Carl Cannon Rule. Describe someone's position so faithfully they'd claim it as their own, or you're just knocking down straw men.

Fair and accurate, not objective. The honest standard was never neutrality. It's doing the work, getting the quote right, and giving the other side its say.

Why the wolves matter. He dropped the ranchers' case into a pro-wolf story, and both sides came away sure he was secretly with them. That's the job.

Never needlessly make your own behavior the issue. His rule of life, and a fair test for anyone trying to argue in good faith.

About Our Guest

Carl Cannon is the Washington bureau chief of RealClearPolitics and executive editor of RealClear Media Group. The son of Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, he has covered national politics for nearly five decades at the Baltimore Sun, National Journal, and Knight Ridder, and is the author of several books.

Links and Resources

RealClearPolitics: realclearpolitics.com

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Give the other side its say, and get the quote right. Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

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Something a little different this week. This is a Village Squarecast episode, shared here in full, and you'll hear Corey host the top before turning it over to Liz Joyner, founder and president of The Village Square. Steve Seibert moderates.

The guest is Dr. Yuval Levin, director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute, founder and editor of National Affairs, and author of American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation and Could Again. He has been on TP&R before. And we just loved hearing him with our good friends at the Village Square.

The argument that makes this worth your ninety minutes: we don't disagree too much in this country. We disagree too little. We spend our days talking about each other instead of to each other, and the Constitution was built less to make us agree than to help us act together when we don't.

In this conversation:

✅ Why the left and right at their best are both telling part of the truth, one a politics of formation, the other a politics of liberation

✅ Why unity was never meant to mean thinking alike

✅ How a system built to be slow and frustrating trades speed for legitimacy

✅ The case for growing the House by 150 members, and why it would only take a law

✅ Why term limits for Congress would hand the institution to lobbyists

✅ Martin Van Buren, party systems, and a tip of the cap to nobody's favorite president

About the guest

Yuval Levin serves as a senior editor at The New Atlantis and a contributing editor at National Review. He served on the White House domestic policy staff under President George W. Bush. He holds a master's and a PhD from the University of Chicago and is the author of seven books.

More from The Village Square

This conversation closes out UNUM: Democracy Reignited, The Village Square's series with Florida Humanities marking America at 250. Subscribe to Village Squarecast wherever you listen, and support their work at villagesquare.us/donate.

Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Watch on YouTube. Leave a review at lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion.

Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room. Yes, really.

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The press is the only industry the Constitution protects. Hugo Balta thinks too many newsrooms forgot why, and he walked out to prove it.

Hugo Balta spent three decades in newsrooms at NBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, CBS, ABC, and ESPN before leaving mainstream media for independent journalism. He now serves as executive editor of The Fulcrum and publisher of the Latino News Network, and he remains the only person in the history of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists to serve twice as its president. This conversation runs from a Paterson, NJ childhood as the son of Peruvian immigrants to why he rejects objectivity as a marketing tool, what a free press is actually for, and the morning he flew the flag upside down.

Calls to Action

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Key Takeaways

Objectivity is a marketing tool. No journalist checks their identity at the newsroom door, and pretending otherwise is what audiences have stopped believing. The honest standard is fair and accurate, built on transparent methods and undisputed facts.

The math flipped, so he left. Early in his career, journalism was 70 percent of the job and business pressure 30. A decade later that ratio inverted toward clicks and presidential tweets, and that was the moment he chose independence.

Diagnosing a problem is only half the work. Solutions journalism holds that reporters owe readers more than a spotlight on what's broken. The turn toward what right looks like, backed by evidence and a few action items, is what separates informing from educating.

Understand the motivation, not just the position. Most disagreements are about the path, not the destination. Asking what drives someone's stance humanizes them and opens the ground where real debate can happen.

About Our Guest

Hugo Balta is executive editor of The Fulcrum and publisher of the Latino News Network, which has grown under his leadership to ten local and national digital news sites. A three-decade veteran of network and public media, he is an accredited Solutions Journalism Network trainer and teaches at Columbia College Chicago.

Links and Resources

The Fulcrum: thefulcrum.us
Latino News Network: latinonewsnetwork.com
Hugo Balta on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/hugobalta

Connect with Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other

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Partners

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Fair and accurate beats objective every time. Now go talk some politics and religion with gentleness and respect.

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She left the church at twenty-five. She never stopped praying, and she still doesn't know who's listening.

Lauren Jackson writes Believing, the New York Times newsletter about how people practice faith and doubt now, and she came to the beat by way of her own departure from the Mormon church she was raised in. Corey talks with her about what secularism can't replace, what AI is quietly taking from us, and the question she brings to every hard conversation.

Calls to Action

✅ Subscribe to Lauren's newsletter, Believing, at The New York Times
✅ Follow her on Instagram: @laurenchristinejackson
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Key Takeaways

Ask what if they're right. Before a hard conversation, Lauren puts that question to herself, then listens. Your position may not move, but you get closer to the humanity of the person across from you, and that turns out to matter more.

Secularism won, and it still can't do everything. Religion delivers beliefs, belonging, and behaviors in one place, and nothing secular offers all three at once. The absence shows up as a hunger for community that people describe to her constantly.

Belief is spiking. Attendance isn't. Gallup finds a sharp jump in young men under thirty who call religion very important, without the matching rise in showing up anywhere. Religion is increasingly a piece of a packaged identity rather than a practice.

Resist the doctrine of efficiency. Father James Martin's phrase, and Lauren's working rule. We lose to machines on volume, so the only place left to win is quality, which requires the slowness that AI is designed to eliminate.

She will always seek to humanize. Not condone, and not valorize. Understand what real, human motivations produce behavior we find contestable, which is harder to sit with than a verdict.

We are the times. A friend gave her Augustine's line from the sacking of Rome, and it landed as an assignment. Despairing about the age is a way of pretending we are not participants in it.

About Our Guest

Lauren Jackson is deputy editorial director for newsletters at The New York Times and the host of Believing, a weekly newsletter about how people live religion and spirituality now.

Links and Resources

📩 Believing at The New York Times - www.nytimes.com/newsletters/believing
📷 Instagram — @laurencristinejackson
📖 Letters and Papers from Prison — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room. Yes, really.

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The founders weren't just the names in the history books. You count as one, and citizenship is something you practice.

Lindsey Cormack studies how members of Congress actually talk to the people they represent, and she wrote the book on why civics belongs at home long before it reaches a classroom. Corey sits down with her on what it takes to raise a citizen, why disagreement is where the learning happens, and how a new podcast makes the case that government doesn't always have to suck.

Calls to Action

✅ Grab Lindsey's book, How to Raise a Citizen (And Why It's Up to You to Do It): howtoraiseacitizen.com
✅ Follow her new podcast, Government That Doesn't Suck
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Key Takeaways

Every American is a founder. Lindsey reframes citizenship as something you practice, not something performed on you. The question she puts to students of every age, "what kind of founder are you," turns civic life from a spectator sport into a personal responsibility.

Two classes is not a civic education. Most Americans get one social studies class in middle school and one government class in high school, then nothing. That's too little, too late for a subject this size.

Open with "what have you heard?" Since there's no shared set of facts anymore, that question sets the table without a fight. From there, "what do you think" and "what do you know" move things toward learning instead of scorekeeping.

Winning is the wrong goal. The point of talking across difference is to learn why someone thinks the way they do, not to convert them. The pressure drops the moment you stop keeping score.

Government doesn't always have to suck. Lindsey's new show with Greg Jackson studies the times American government got things right, on the logic that you can't repeat a success you never bothered to examine. Grounded optimism holds up better than either blind cheerleading or constant despair.

About Our Guest

Lindsey Cormack is an associate professor of political science at Stevens Institute of Technology, creator of the DC Inbox database of congressional e-newsletters, author of How to Raise a Citizen (And Why It's Up to You to Do It), and co-host of the podcast Government That Doesn't Suck.

Links and Resources

📘 How to Raise a Citizen (And Why It's Up to You to Do It)
🎙️ Government That Doesn't Suck — podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/government-that-doesnt-suck/id1896938110
🗂️ DCinbox Insights on Substack — dcinboxinsights.substack.com
📸 Instagram — @howtoraiseacitizen
🦋 X and Bluesky — @DCInbox

Connect with Us

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Our Partners

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Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room. Yes, really.

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Through Psalm 74 and the firebombing of a New Jersey synagogue in 1984, a bar mitzvah season becomes a reckoning with the places we call hallowed and what survives once they've been defiled. A solo reflection on desecration, spectacle, and the unglamorous work of redemption, from an old tavern's charred remains to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the year of America's 250th.

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Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can fix it together.

The buckets and the steel wool. That's the work of redemption.

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A doctor once told Rich Harwood's mother to face it, her son was a lemon. He's spent his life proving no one is disposable, and that even the most divided towns in America can build something together.

Two minutes. Real impact. Leave a review:  lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

What does it take to heal a divided town? Less talking, says Rich Harwood. After almost 40 years running the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, he's watched the poorest community in America and some of the most divided places in the country do what most of us have stopped believing is possible: build something together, across every line that's supposed to keep them apart. The conversation runs from Moses and Lincoln to a synagogue firebombing to the three working men who saved his life as a sick kid, and lands on a deceptively simple idea about what we owe one another.

A few takeaways:

Pull issues out of the political frame and people agree more than they think. Harwood works the reddest and bluest places in the country and says he can't tell who voted for whom. Ask people what they care about instead of who they voted for, and the same concerns surface everywhere: youth, seniors, mental health, belonging.

Start small. Big comprehensive plans tend to collapse under their own weight. Real change starts with one modest step that catalyzes a chain reaction, the way practice dinners at a single church spread across an entire county in Reading, Pennsylvania.

Turn outward. Sharing space begins with a posture, not a technique. Physically turn toward the other person, choose to see them, and lead with curiosity about what matters to them.

About our guest: Rich Harwood is president and founder of the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation and the author of several books, most recently The New Civic Path: Restoring Our Belief in One Another and Our Nation (2024).

Find Rich:
The Harwood Institute: theharwoodinstitute.org
Rich Harwood on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/richardcharwood

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Rich wants the sequel over a beer. We're holding him to it.

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An off-the-cuff solo update on two essays in the works: one on the sacred spaces we share and what survives their desecration, the other on the real derangement in our politics, told through three men Corey loves and has watched change. Plus the launch of something new for the show, taking the mission to a local pub, the divier the better, to talk politics and religion on camera, over a drink, with friends who see the world differently.

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Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts examining what's broken in our democracy and how we can fix it together.

Pull up a stool. We're just getting started.

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Some state lawmakers drive Uber to afford the job. The best of them are walking away.

Layla Zaidane runs the largest nonpartisan organization for young lawmakers in the country, and her team's "Exit Interview" found that the most promising bipartisan legislators are leaving office over problems that are entirely fixable. This conversation launches Terms of Service, a new collaboration between Future Caucus and TP&R that takes you inside what it actually costs to serve.

Key Takeaways

The math doesn't work. The average state lawmaker earns about $20,000 less than the average American worker. That pushes good people toward second jobs or out of office entirely.

The best ones are quitting. The legislators most willing to work across the aisle are resigning at high rates, and the reasons are solvable: pay, staff, scheduling, safety.

State houses are less broken than you think. Smaller chambers and retail-scale politics let lawmakers build the trust that gridlocked institutions can't.

Violence brought out the worst and the best. As threats against officials rose, some of the most powerful responses came from bipartisan pairs refusing to let it become normal.

About Our Guest

Layla Zaidane is president and CEO of Future Caucus, the largest nonpartisan organization for young lawmakers in the United States, working with Gen Z and millennial legislators across 36 states to govern across party lines.

Links and Resources

Future Caucus: futurecaucus.org | @futurecaucus Layla Zaidane: @lzaidane TP&R is proud to be part of The Democracy Group podcast network.

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The Terms of Service series is a partnership between Scan Media and Future Caucus. Executive Producers: Future Caucus and Layla Zaidane. Learn more about Future Caucus at www.futurecaucus.org.

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Through the lens of the Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie, a morning walk through Washington, from DuPont Circle to the Jefferson Memorial, becomes a reckoning with what we've made of our civic sacred spaces. A solo reflection on desecration, devotion, and a faith in the American experiment that proves harder to walk away from than intended.

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Beautiful, impossible, and ours anyway.

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“It’s easy to hate things you don’t understand.”

Two minutes. Real impact. Leave a review:  lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

Kristin Wilson spent three decades producing Washington coverage, including a decade running CNN’s Capitol Hill unit, with stops at NBC, CBS, Nightline, the BBC, and Fox News. Now she’s co-founder and executive producer of 535, a journalist-founded, nonpartisan newsroom built to cover the policy of Congress. The conversation gets into what gets lost when the cameras chase conflict, why bipartisan work still happens when no one is looking, and how seeing legislators as people makes them harder to write off.

Calls to Action

✅ If this episode resonates, consider sharing it with someone who might need a reminder that disagreement doesn’t have to mean dehumanization.

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Key Takeaways

Policy is the story. 535 covers the appropriations fights, committee work, and behind-the-scenes deals that move real money and shape real lives.

It’s harder to dislike people up close. Watch members talk about what they care about, and the cartoon version gets harder to hold onto.

The aisle still gets crossed. From steak invitations to co-sponsored bills, members find ways to work together when they decide to.

Ask, then listen. Kristin’s whole craft comes down to asking a real question and actually hearing the answer.

About Our Guest

Kristin Wilson is co-founder and executive producer of 535, a new kind of newsroom for the policy of Congress. Over nearly 30 years she led CNN’s Hill coverage and produced for NBC, CBS, Nightline, the BBC, and Fox News.

Links and Resources

535 - 535.news Kristin Wilson - @kristin-wilson Grateful to our friends at The Democracy Group - www.democracygroup.org Connect on Social Media

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Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room. Yes, really.

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This was one of our most listened-to conversations of the past year. If you missed it the first time, here's your second chance.

She moderated the fly debate. She interviewed Stephen Hawking. She covered 12 presidential campaigns and sat down with the last 10 presidents. And she spent years inside Queen Elizabeth’s extraordinary vantage point on American democracy — one that no American journalist could ever fully replicate.

Two minutes. Real impact. Leave a review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief of USA TODAY, joins Corey to discuss her latest book, The Queen and Her Presidents: a sweeping account of Queen Elizabeth II’s relationships with every American president from Truman to Biden. But this conversation goes well beyond the book. Susan reflects on a career that began in a converted car dealership on Long Island, the lessons she learned covering her first president (and how badly she blew it), what it really takes to develop sources across decades of political reporting, and why — from a Kansas girl’s perspective — the people on both sides of our divide love America more than we give them credit for.

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✅ If this conversation resonates, consider sharing it with someone who believes connection across difference still matters.

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Key Takeaways

Preparation is a framework, not a script. Susan goes into every major interview with a plan — what she wants to get, how to get it, what to do if the answer goes sideways. But the goal is to inform the conversation, not control it. The worst thing an interviewer can do, she says, is fail to listen to the answer.

Great sourcing is built on respect and fairness, not on pulling punches. Rich Bond, the young Long Island operative she profiled in 1979, became a top Republican official and a reliable source for decades — not because she went easy on him, but because he trusted her to be fair. She would not have softened a story about him, and he knew it.

Books and daily journalism use the same muscle, differently. The skills transfer directly — the sourcing, the curiosity, the nose for a good detail — but the bar is higher and the time horizon is longer. Writing a book means people are paying thirty dollars and spending real time. You owe them something they couldn’t get from clicking a link.

The best research rewards patience. Sifting through archival files at eight presidential libraries and the National Archives in Britain yielded moments that almost nobody else has read. The sarcastic cables British ambassadors sent back about LBJ as vice president confirmed everything LBJ already suspected they thought of him.

They love America. Whether she’s at a No Kings rally or a MAGA rally, Susan hears the same thing: people who care deeply, who revere the Constitution, who think they’re fighting for the country. The polarization isn’t about love of country — it’s about a failure to extend basic respect across the divide.

Queen Elizabeth perfected the art of getting people to talk. Her small talk strategy — chatter briefly, then turn the question back — was especially effective with men, who, as Susan notes diplomatically, tend to enjoy talking about themselves. Susan has consciously adopted the technique and credits it with making her better at navigating rooms full of strangers.

About Our Guest

Susan Page is the Washington Bureau Chief of USA TODAY and one of the most respected political journalists in America. She has covered 12 presidential campaigns and interviewed the last 10 presidents. She moderated the 2020 vice presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence — yes, the one with the fly — and is the bestselling author of biographies of Barbara Bush, Nancy Pelosi, and Barbara Walters. Her latest book, The Queen and Her Presidents, chronicles Queen Elizabeth II’s relationships with every American president from Truman through Biden.

Links and Resources

The Queen and Her Presidents by Susan Page — susanpagedc.com Grateful to our friends at The Democracy Group: www.democracygroup.org Connect on Social Media

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“Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room.” Yes, really.

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What if the way we talk about "the other side" isn't just rude — it's something closer to dehumanization? Consumer and social psychologist Lura Forcum has a precise vocabulary for what's happening, and a clear-eyed prescription for what to do about it.

Two minutes. Real impact. Leave a review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

Lura writes the newsletter How to Human and co-hosts We Made This Political with political scientist Lauren Hall. Her work sits at the intersection of human behavior, civic life, and the social cognition we're outsourcing to screens, algorithms, and AI.

Calls to Action

✅ If this episode resonates, consider sharing it with someone who might need a reminder that disagreement doesn’t have to mean dehumanization.

✅ Check out our Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com

✅ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen:  lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

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✅ Watch the full conversation and subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

Key Takeaways

Infrahumanization is the dehumanization we don't notice. Calling people vermin is rare and widely rejected. But treating the other side as interchangeable, simple, or incapable of real suffering? That's everywhere — and it's the mental move that makes cruelty psychologically possible.

Politics is relational, and we've been pretending it isn't. Civic life is built from relationships that require reciprocity. We've convinced ourselves the normal rules don't apply when the subject is politics. They do. Broken relationships have to be repaired.

We evolved for face-to-face. We didn't evolve for this. Online, you never have to reckon with being wrong about someone. In person, you're stuck with them — and that's the point.

About Our Guest

Lura Forcum is a consumer and social psychologist, strategic advisor, and former professor. She writes How to Human on Substack and co-hosts We Made This Political with Lauren Hall.

Links and Resources

How to Human: luraforcum.substack.com We Made This Political: wemadethispolitical.substack.com Lura on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/luraforcum Grateful to our friends at The Democracy Group: www.democracygroup.org

You evolved to do this. You've just been out of practice.

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When the theological scrutiny is ferocious for the Democrat and nonexistent for the Republican, you're not watching theology. You're watching idolatry.

Two minutes. Real impact. Leave a review:   lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

Ken Paxton won the Republican primary for the Texas U.S. Senate seat. He was impeached 121-23 by a Republican-controlled House, divorced on biblical grounds, and caught on video pocketing a thousand-dollar pen. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, attends Princeton Seminary and talks openly about his faith. Prominent evangelical voices have published multiple pieces questioning Talarico's Christian credibility. You won't find comparable scrutiny of Paxton. This episode is about what that asymmetry actually reveals, and why refusing to traffic in fear and anger is the harder road.

Calls to Action

✅ If this episode resonates, consider sharing it with someone who might need a reminder that disagreement doesn’t have to mean dehumanization.

✅ Check out our Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com

✅ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen:  lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

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✅ Watch the full conversation and subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

Key Takeaways

The scrutiny follows the letter, not the life. The asymmetry between evangelical treatment of Talarico and Paxton isn't theological. It's tribal.

Love is obedience, not an optional add-on. Kindness and humility aren't the soft edges of the faith. They're the point.

The Pew data draws the line clearly. Most Americans are open to religion's influence in their lives. Nearly eight in ten say churches shouldn't endorse candidates. People know the difference between faith and partisanship.

Links and Resources

Pew Research: pewresearch.org Grateful to our friends at The Democracy Group: www.democracygroup.org Connect on Social Media

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Horse hockey has a theological address, and this episode found it.

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She's a Republican who won't back Trump, and she has no interest in yelling — just winning.

Two minutes. Real impact. Leave a review:  lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

Susan Del Percio is a crisis communications expert, political analyst, and MS NOW columnist who has publicly opposed Trump since 2015. Corey and Susan dig into the Texas Senate race, how vulnerable Republicans navigate a MAGA world, what polls actually tell you, and why listening might be the most radical political act left.

Calls to Action

✅ If this episode resonates, consider sharing it with someone who might need a reminder that disagreement doesn’t have to mean dehumanization.

✅ Check out our Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com

✅ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen:  lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

✅ Subscribe to Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other on your favorite podcast platform.

✅ Watch the full conversation and subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

Key Takeaways

Threading the needle in 2026. Vulnerable Republicans need MAGA voters to turn out and independents to cross over. The playbook: show up with Trump once, deliver locally, and pick your fights carefully.

Don't take the bait. Susan's advice for James Talarico: ignore the culture-war attacks and make every answer about the economy. Gas prices, cost of goods, cost of doing business. Nothing else.

What polls actually tell you. They're snapshots, not predictions. Susan ignores the horse race and looks for trends and cross-tabs — specifically, who's gettable.

Respecting the office. Susan called Trump a piece of garbage on air and has never forgiven herself. Not because she supports him — because the office demands a baseline the person in it doesn't.

Just listen. Stop preparing your rebuttal long enough to hear what someone is actually saying. Then ask why. It costs nothing.

About Our Guest

Susan Del Percio is a crisis communications expert and political analyst for MS NOW. A lifelong Republican, she has publicly opposed Donald Trump since 2015 and previously served in both the Giuliani and Cuomo administrations.

Links and Resources

Follow Susan: x.com/DelPercioS Latest on MS NOW: www.ms.now/opinion/trump-republicans-irs-settlement-lawfare-polling-distraction-budget Grateful to our friends at The Democracy Group: www.democracygroup.org Connect on Social Media

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Clarity, charity, and conviction can live in the same room. Yes, really.

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In 2024, just 18% of Americans said religion is gaining influence. Then came the double-digit jump. Pew Research's Chip Rotolo has the numbers — and they're striking.

Two minutes. Real impact. Leave a review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

Chip Rotolo is a research associate at Pew Research Center studying religion's role in public life. His team's latest report finds a sharp reversal in how Americans view religion's influence — and raises harder questions about Christian nationalism, what "Christian values" actually means to different people, and why the data looks so different depending on which party you ask.

Calls to Action

✅ If this episode resonates, consider sharing it with someone who might need a reminder that disagreement doesn’t have to mean dehumanization.

✅ Check out our Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com

✅ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

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✅ Watch the full conversation and subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

Key Takeaways

A genuine vibe shift. After hitting an all-time low in 2024, the share of Americans who say religion is gaining influence has jumped sharply — now matching levels last seen in 2002. Christian nationalism is contested territory. Pew doesn't label anyone a Christian nationalist, but the questions associated with those views consistently land around 15% of Americans — while a much larger share wants Christian values to play some role in public life. Party drives everything. On nearly every question in this survey, the most striking splits are by political affiliation, not religion. How you ask matters as much as what you ask. Question wording, sequence, and consistency over time are what make trend data trustworthy — and Chip pulls back the curtain on how Pew gets that right.

About Chip Rotolo

Chip Rotolo is a research associate at Pew Research Center, where he studies religion's role in public life, religious engagement over time, and the intersection of religion and politics. He holds a PhD in sociology from Notre Dame, an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a BA from UNC Chapel Hill.

Links and Resources

Pew Research Center: pewresearch.org Chip on Instagram: @chip.rotolo Leave a review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion Connect on Social Media

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The data has opinions. So does God. Turns out, so do we.

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Originally aired in January, back by popular demand.

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What happens when a nation debates whether it has a moral obligation to intervene in the suffering of others — and who gets to decide?

Corey is joined by Pulitzer Prize–finalist historian and bestselling author H.W. Brands, Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin, to explore the moral, political, and human tensions behind one of the most consequential debates in American history.

The conversation centers on Professor Brands’ latest book, America First: Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the Shadow of War, which examines the clash between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Charles Lindbergh as the United States wrestled with whether to enter World War II — and what role America should play in the world.

Professor Brands unpacks how personal biography shapes public history, introducing his framework of “big history” and “little history” — the intersection between sweeping geopolitical forces and the intimate human decisions that quietly steer them. From Lindbergh’s unlikely rise as a celebrity political figure to Roosevelt’s strategic ambiguity and political maneuvering, the discussion reveals how persuasion, fear, power, and moral reasoning collide in moments of national consequence.

Corey and Dr. Brands explore the ethical tension at the heart of American leadership: When does power create responsibility? Is it moral for leaders to deceive in pursuit of what they believe is the greater good? How should a nation weigh human suffering abroad against the risks borne by its own citizens? The conversation also examines Lindbergh’s controversial views on race, antisemitism, and isolationism — resisting caricature while reckoning honestly with their implications. 

Along the way, Brands reflects on his craft as a historian — how he uses diaries, speeches, correspondence, and press transcripts to reconstruct interior lives while remaining faithful to documented sources — and why narrative storytelling remains essential to understanding political power and human choice.

The episode closes by turning forward: What questions should we be asking now that future historians will use to understand our moment? How should Americans grapple with a changing global balance of power, rising geopolitical instability, and the enduring tension between national interest and moral responsibility?

Calls to Action

✅ If this episode resonates, consider sharing it with someone who might need a reminder that disagreement doesn’t have to mean dehumanization.

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✅ Watch the full conversation and subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

About Our Guest

H.W. Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin and is the author of numerous acclaimed histories and biographies, including Founding Partisans, The First American, Traitor to His Class, and America First: Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the Shadow of War. Two of his biographies were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.

Brands writes regularly on Substack at hwbrands.substack.com, where he publishes A User’s Guide to History. His forthcoming biography of George Washington, American Patriarch, will be released this spring.

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Talking across differences doesn’t require agreement; it requires courage, curiosity, and the willingness to stay human.

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Two minutes. Real impact. Leave a review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion

What if the outrage itself is the addiction? In this solo episode, Corey Nathan draws on scripture, neuroscience, Dr. Seuss, and two very personal stories to ask a harder question than who’s right: are we more hooked on the fight than committed to what the fight is supposed to be about? From a son’s vaccine hesitancy to a buddy who loves Pete Hegseth, Corey makes the case that the heavy lift of staying in the room with people we deeply disagree with isn’t just good manners. It’s the whole ballgame.

Calls to Action

✅ If this conversation resonates, consider sharing it with someone who believes connection across difference still matters.

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Connect on Social Media

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Hard conversations, conducted with honesty and care. That’s the whole project.

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“Often predictions try to pass as descriptions of the world or facts when actually they are something like power plays in disguise.” — Carissa Véliz

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When a tech executive declares that AI will transform everything, are they describing the future, or commanding it? Carissa Véliz, Associate Professor at Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI, argues that prophecy and prediction have always been instruments of power, from the Oracle of Delphi to the algorithm in your pocket. In her new book Prophecy, she traces how surveillance and prediction became the twin original sins of digital technology, why predictions are never facts, and what philosophy offers as an antidote. It’s a conversation that is as timely as it is ancient.

Calls to Action

✅ If this conversation resonates, consider sharing it with someone who believes connection across difference still matters.

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✅ Watch the full conversation and subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

Key Takeaways

Predictions are never facts. They can be educated guesses, wishful thinking, warnings, or veiled commands — but the future is unwritten. The moment someone presents a prediction as inevitable, that’s a signal worth interrogating.

Surveillance and prediction are the two original sins of digital tech. They work in sync: data is gathered to predict behavior, and prediction is used to influence it. The pattern is ancient — a lion watches its prey before it hunts — and the data economy runs on the same logic.

AI is the ultimate prediction machine. Machine learning does one thing: project patterns from past data onto an unknown future. The big assumption baked into every model is that the past looks like what’s coming. It often doesn’t.

Philosophy arose as an antidote to prophecy. Ancient Greece was obsessed with divination. Philosophy was the countermovement — grounded in facts and logic rather than manipulation. That critical stance is exactly what we need now when tech executives make proclamations that get reported as news.

Predictions about people are different from predictions about things. When you predict rain, the clouds are unbothered. When you predict a person’s failure, you shape their fate. Carissa’s call: when predictions about human beings are necessary, make them at the population level, not the individual.

Increase your serendipity. The more we let algorithms decide what to watch, who to meet, and what to read, the more constrained we become. Talking to strangers, reading widely, and taking a walk without a destination are small acts of resistance with real consequences.

About Our Guest

Carissa Véliz is a writer, keynote speaker, and Associate Professor at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford. Her work spans AI ethics, privacy, business ethics, and public policy. She advises companies and governments around the world, serves on the board of the Proton Foundation, and is a member of UNESCO’s Women for Ethical AI. She is the author of Privacy Is Power and her new book Prophecy. Her TED Talk, Beware the Power of Prediction, is available on YouTube.

Links and Resources Prophecy — www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/759692/prophecy-by-carissa-veliz/ TED Talk: Beware the Power of Prediction (YouTube): www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS4wHmKtH-Q Connect on Social Media

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Substack LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter Threads Bluesky TikTok Thanks to our Sponsors and Partners Thanks to Pew Research Center (pewresearch.org) for making today’s conversation possible. Proud members of The Democracy Group The future is unwritten. How we get there is up to us.

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Sometimes you're in a room full of people you love — and all you can hear is the wind.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. This episode is a solo one — no guest, no debate, no conversation across political or religious difference. Just Corey, a piece he wrote in the middle of some darkness, and the motorcycle he never really got off.

"A Thousand Miles Away" is an essay about Bipolar disorder, about the particular loneliness of being a million miles from the world even when your body is present in it, and about the cultural and religious messages that told him to keep his mouth shut about all of it. It's also about what has helped — meditation, neuroplasticity, and the odd grace of still being on the road.

The full essay is on Corey's Substack. If it lands for you — or for someone you love — he'd be glad to hear from you.

Calls to Action

✅ If this conversation resonates, consider sharing it with someone who believes connection across difference still matters.

✅ If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7. Call or text 988.

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✅ Watch the full conversation and subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@politicsandreligion

Key Takeaways

The aloneness isn't metaphor. Being a thousand miles away while your body moves through an ordinary day — brushing teeth, running meetings, cleaning the kitchen — is a specific, describable experience. Naming it matters.

"What do you have to be depressed about?" is the wrong question. Suffering doesn't have an income threshold. The cultural reflex of tallying someone's blessings in response to their pain doesn't help. It silences.

Religious communities can do real harm here. The diagnosis of "a sin issue, not a depression issue" is a failure of pastoral care with real consequences. Faith and mental health are not competing explanations.

Practices matter. Meditation, neuroplasticity, building new neural pathways — these aren't cures, but they shift the ratio. More good seasons than bad is worth something.

Shared memory runs deep. The weight of inherited trauma — pogroms, displacement, the unspoken cost of survival — shapes how families receive (or refuse to receive) a descendant's pain. That inheritance is real, even when it's used against you.

Thanks to our Sponsors and Partners Thanks to Pew Research Center (pewresearch.org) for our ongoing partnership. Proud members of The Democracy Group Connect on Social Media

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Civic life starts with showing up. Sometimes that's enough — just staying on the road.

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