Are We Really Hopelessly Divided?

More from Not Another Politics Podcast All episodes →

1. 

   E145 · 12 Sep 2025 · 1 hr 10 min

   Should Unelected Judges Be Deciding National Policy?

   Every week, headlines tell us that a single federal judge has blocked a presidential order—sometimes halting major policies for years. But should that be possible? Is it democratic? In this episode, we dig into the rise and fall of universal injunctions—a little-known legal tool that allowed one judge to freeze nationwide policy. With a recent Supreme Court decision, those injunctions are now off the table, but the ruling raises bigger questions: Has the Court consolidated power for itself? What does this mean for the balance between the executive branch, lower courts, and the justices in…

2. 

   E144 · 21 Aug 2025 · 54 min

   Do Politicians Really Have A Conservative Bias?

   Political scientists have long argued that legislators believe the public is more conservative than it really is—potentially shaping policies that don’t align with what voters actually want. But what if that story is incomplete? In this episode, we talk with University of Chicago political scientist Adam Zelizer, who challenges the conventional wisdom. His new research suggests that politicians may not be systematically biased to the right, but rather exhibit something he calls “midpoint bias”. We unpack why this matters: How do politicians perceive their constituents? Are surveys of public…

3. 

   E143 · 7 Aug 2025 · 54 min

   Do We Understand Members Of The Other Party?

   Do Democrats and Republicans really misunderstand each other as much as we think? This week, we dive into a surprising new experiment that puts that idea to the test — literally. Psychologist and researcher Adam Mastriani created a kind of “political Turing test,” asking people to write persuasive statements from the perspective of the opposite political party. Then, he tested whether others could tell the real from the fake. The results? Most people couldn’t. We unpack what this means for our understanding of polarization, partisan animosity, and political identity. Is the problem really…

4. 

   E142 · 24 Jul 2025 · 57 min

   MechaHitler and The Political Bias of AI Chatbots

   When you ask ChatGPT or Gemini a question about politics, whose opinions are you really hearing? In this episode, we dive into a provocative new study from political scientist Justin Grimmer and his colleagues, which finds that nearly every major large language model—from ChatGPT to Grok—is perceived by Americans as having a left-leaning bias. But why is that? Is it the training data? The guardrails? The Silicon Valley engineers? Or something deeper about the culture of the internet itself? The hosts grapple with everything from “Mecha Hitler” incidents on Grok to the way terms like…

5. 

   E141 · 10 Jul 2025 · 42 min

   Does The Supreme Court Need Term Limits?

   We're taking some time off to regroup over the summer, but we’re not just dusting off this older episode for no reason. When we first released it, we were grappling with what Supreme Court reform might look like—specifically, whether we should rethink lifetime appointments and move toward term limits. Now? The stakes feel even higher. In just the last few weeks, we’ve seen the Court issue decisions that fundamentally reshape presidential power—often in ways that don’t reflect where the broader public seems to be. Once again, the question has come roaring back: should nine unelected justices…

6. 

   E139 · 12 Jun 2025 · 55 min

   The Surprising Political Consequences Of Emigration?

   Migration policies shape not only the economies of countries but also their politics. In this episode, we dive deep into how letting people leave—or restricting their exit—can have surprising ripple effects on collective action and political reform in their home countries. Yale political scientist Emily Sellars reveals why migration might weaken the power of ordinary people to organize and push for change—and why even those who leave might ultimately lose out. Could closing borders paradoxically strengthen democracy abroad? We unpack a provocative new model that challenges our assumptions…

7. 

   E138 · 28 May 2025 · 58 min

   Is Trump Copying Obama’s Playbook on Universities?

   What if the recent crackdown on elite universities didn’t start with Trump—but with Obama? In this episode, we trace a surprising through-line connecting Obama’s Title IX enforcement to Trump’s Title VI threats. Harvard Law Professor Jacob Gersen joins us to reveal how both presidents used informal bureaucratic tools to reshape higher education—often without Congress. What does this say about presidential power and academic freedom in America? Papers discussed: “The Sex Bureaucracy”: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2750143 “The Six Bureaucracy”:…

8. 

   E137 · 8 May 2025 · 41 min

   Is This the Most Unexpected Voter Turnout Strategy Ever?

   What if one of the most powerful tools to boost voter turnout isn’t a flashy campaign or a new voting law—but being randomly forced to work the polls? In this episode, we explore a surprising study of women in 1930s Spain who were randomly assigned to serve as poll workers—just after they gained the right to vote. The results? A massive, 30-point increase in future voting behavior. Is this just a historical curiosity—or a window into how habit, exposure, and civic experience shape democracy? We speak with researcher Toni Rodon about his paper Working for Democracy: Poll Officers and the…

9. 

   E136 · 25 Apr 2025 · 51 min

   Should Judges Be Elected Like Politicians?

   Hello listeners, we're taking a much-needed spring break here at the podcast, but we want to re-share one of our episodes that has become increasingly salient. One of the defining features of the Trump administration so far is its entanglement with the courts. The legality or illegality of many of its actions are currently being decided by federal judges. Which means that judges suddenly have a lot of say over our politics. Is that good? There is a long running debate in political science: do we get better judges by letting the public vote in elections or by giving our leaders the power to…

10. 

    E135 · 10 Apr 2025 · 56 min

    Can Meritocratic Hiring Fix the Bureaucracy?

    Led by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s DOGE, Americans are debating once again how our government should hire civil servants, but are we asking the right questions? In this episode, we dive into a compelling new study on the Pendleton Act, one of the most significant bureaucratic reforms in U.S. history, which introduced merit-based civil service exams to combat corruption and incompetence. But did it work? We speak with economist Santiago Perez about his paper “Civil Service Exams and Organizational Performance: Evidence From The Pendleton Act” and his surprising findings that…