What makes a stand-up comedian wake up one day and decide comedy needs more science? A road comic for 13 years, Shane Mauss made this enlightened decision 5 years ago in launching his science podcast, Here We Are, and then expanded it by creating Stand Up Science comedy shows, inviting local professors around the country on stage to discuss their research. We asked Shane about the origin of his scientific interests, as well as the challenges of doing regular and Stand Up Science shows around our...
Oct 13, 2020•27 min•Season 1Ep. 11
How much trust can independent-minded voters place in polling this 2020 election season? It seems not a day goes by without multiple new poll results blaring from cable networks and rebounding across the Web. But how accurate are these polls? What’s been learned from the 2016 polling fiasco where many polls predicted a large Clinton for President victory? And how much more difficult is election polling in our highly partisan age? The Purple Principle asks these questions of veteran pollster and ...
Sep 29, 2020•19 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Let’s say, for the sake of Episode 9: The Brain on Partisan Politics, that identical twins are separated at birth and raised in different families, politically speaking: one deep blue, the other deep red. They’re bound to have different political leanings as adults, correct? Actually, probably not, according to Dr. Jay Van Bavel, NYU Neural Scientist and our featured guest in Episode 9, The Brain on Partisan Politics. Genetics account for nearly half of our political inclinations. Then what abou...
Sep 17, 2020•29 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Ok, Comedians, make America laugh with surprising, original jokes that offend absolutely no one and work equally well in our very blue, very red and very antagonized parts of the country... To the Purple Principle team, that seemed a near-impossible challenge in today’s partisan environment. With Episode 8, The Purple Principle begins a series of related discussions with comedians starting with Myq Kaplan, who has performed on Conan, The Tonight Show, The Late Show and put out 7 solo comedy albu...
Sep 03, 2020•22 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Did you hear the one about bipartisanship? Two opposing congressmen walk into a town hall…and civil discussion breaks out. Hard to believe in the current climate, but former three-term Congressman Jason Altmire recounts the origin and unfortunate demise of these bipartisan town halls in Episode 7, Congress and Partisanship. Author of Dead Center: How Political Polarization Divided America, Altmire was rated the most centrist member of the U.S. Congress during his three terms, 2007-2013. The Purp...
Aug 20, 2020•26 min•Season 1Ep. 7
How do social media algorithms feed us news, entertainment, advertisements, even suggesting friends and lovers? By grossly simplifying human nature, according to featured guest Dr. Robert Elliott Smith, Research Fellow in Computer Science at University College London and author of Rage Inside the Machine: How to Prevent the Internet from Making Bigots of Us All. Dr. Smith details how the same Artificial Intelligence (AI) that reaps engineering benefits has disastrous consequences for civil socie...
Aug 06, 2020•30 min•Season 1Ep. 6
What the heck happened to broadcast news in recent decades? That is the burning question we ask of Dr. Dominik Stecula, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Colorado State University and expert on broadcast media trends in the US over the past fives decades. Dr. Stecula contrasts the more fact-based, consolidated and regulated broadcast news industry of the 1970’s and 80’s with the highly fragmented, largely partisan news environment of today. And what’s an independent-minded American to ...
Jul 31, 2020•6 min•Season 1Ep. 5
In this interview-based episode, Dr. Marsh explains the centrality of fear in human behavior, which motivates any social species (whether musk ox or democrats or republicans) to cluster together against perceived threats. The unfortunate result is the formation of tribes, demonization of others, and the filtering of information leading to stark, unhealthy divisions. In Part I of the interview, staff reporter Emily Crocetti queries Dr. Marsh on how the US became so partisan. In response, Dr. Mars...
Jul 23, 2020•23 min•Season 1Ep. 4
By most measures, the US has over 40 million independent or unaffiliated voters representing a third or more of the electorate. Yet despite large and growing numbers, independents are often missing from the national conversation. Independents have no cable channel or national newspaper. You rarely encounter independent viewpoints on major networks or opinion pages. And there’s a surprising lack of scholarship on independents as well. Who are American’s prominent, politically-engaged political in...
Jul 09, 2020•24 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Our Episode 2 guests include a former Republican speechwriter, a former centrist Democratic congressional candidate, a former Economist Magazine correspondent, a current Professor of Public Policy (Dartmouth College) and the founder of the non-partisan group, Unite America, working to bridge our partisan divide. Lots of voices for one podcast? In fact, each of these perspectives come from a single featured guest this episode, Dr. Dr. Charles Wheelan (a.k.a. all of the above), who has been workin...
Jun 19, 2020•23 min•Season 1Ep. 2
How did these United States get so thoroughly partisan? How do we get less partisan? Can independent-minded Americans help bridge the divide? These questions lie behind this first and every episode of The Purple Principle, a podcast about the perils of partisanship in US politics, society and daily life. Episode 1 is a fast-paced lap around the subject, introducing upcoming guests from the fields of psychology, computer science, politics and political science, as well as non-partisan activists a...
Jun 19, 2020•12 min•Season 1Ep. 1
