How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Today, we're re-podcasting the first episode of our 3-part mini-series on Hispanic American swing voters. The series continues into October for National Hispanic Heritage Month. Is a large and growing segment of Hispanic American voters now leaning independent? That’s the operative question in this first episode, featuring three noted experts: former Florida Congressman...
Sep 30, 2022•32 min
How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here for our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Massachusetts has long been a bipartisan enigma at the state level, electing moderate GOP governors for 30 of the past 60 years while seating a Democratic legislature. But the governor’s office is expected to revert to Democrats in 2022 and beyond. In our second MA episode, we discuss this unique history and inflection point with former moderate GOP Lt. Governor, Dr. Kerry He...
Sep 28, 2022•30 min•Season 3Ep. 19
“There are all kinds of ways in which we, as a community, enable the American story,” says Deval Patrick, implying that our success stories overemphasize the individual. Patrick’s own American story is a remarkable one, starting in a tough South Chicago neighborhood, journeying to a planet called boarding school, then onto Harvard and a distinguished legal career, before two terms as Governor. He recounts how then Senator Barack Obama was initially quizzical, though supportive, of his long-shot ...
Sep 14, 2022•33 min•Season 3Ep. 18
Fluent Knowledge, producers of The Purple Principle (TPP), have a new podcast in the health, wellness and medicine realm, My Body Odyssey (MBO). With TPP staff on summer break, we’re introducing TPP listeners to MBO with our second episode, featuring IronWoman Diane. Imagine taking on a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 112 mile cycle, and then a 26.2 mile run. And in a single day, not a week or a month. Now add the additional challenge of type one diabetes. “My entire race plan,” Diane tells us, “co...
Aug 30, 2022•20 min
In our continuing state series, TPP visits the state with the highest percentage of non-partisan voters (58%): vast and varied Alaska. On August 16, 2022, for the first time in the US, Alaskans will use the final four voting system, which combines a unified open primary with ranked choice voting in the general election. Our special guests for this episode, each interviewed by TPP Reporter Dylan Nicholls, offer three perspectives on Alaskan political culture, the new election system, and the majo...
Aug 16, 2022•31 min•Season 3Ep. 17
This week we revisit an episode from 2020, adding some fresh questions and analysis on its lessons in GOP history from a 2022 perspective. Is Donald Trump losing his populist grip on the Republican Party after 6 long years, a failed re-election, a failed campaign to reverse that result, and the January 6 insurrection? According to recent polls, critical editorials from The New York Post and Wall Street Journal, and an abscess of Trump coverage on Fox News, that may be the case. But does this mea...
Aug 02, 2022•38 min•Season 3Ep. 16
On this second episode featuring great American independents, The Purple Principle sits down with Andrew Heaton, political satirist, author, podcast host and small “l” libertarian. “I’m a temperamental moderate who wants to help people,” Heaton confides, “but thinks government is not very effective at it.” Heaton also describes the origins of his dual career track, working as a Capitol Hill Staffer while performing comedy – in his own words, “necktie man” by day and “degenerate pseudo-drunk” by ...
Jul 19, 2022•26 min•Season 3Ep. 15
The Purple Principle celebrates July 4th with its first episode in a miniseries on America’s great independent voices. Amy Chua, known for her bestselling Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, is a Yale law professor and author of Political Tribes. “Every group feels attacked, pitted against other groups not just for jobs and spoils, but for the right to define the nation’s identity. In these conditions, democracy devolves into zero-sum group competition. Pure political tribalism.” In a conversation ...
Jul 04, 2022•30 min•Season 3Ep. 14
The Purple Principle completes its three-episode tour of the great state of California with three uniquely positioned viewpoints on the Golden State. First, Leon Panetta, former Cabinet Secretary and nine-term US Congress member, who questions the one party mindset of Democratic governance in Sacramento and the rightward populist tilt of the California GOP. Our second guest, former State Assembly Minority Leader Kristin Olsen, helped initiate a 2018 effort to reform the Golden State GOP called “...
Jun 28, 2022•37 min•Season 3Ep. 13
If California progressives were tortillas, they’d be delicious but expensive and inaccessible; establishment Democratic tortillas would be ubiquitous, if not so tasty; and Republican tortillas would be pretty tasteless… Is this any way to understand California politics? It is when speaking with LA Times columnist, author and frequent tortilla contest judge, Gustavo Arellano. In discussion with host Rob Pease and guest co-host Barbara Bogaev, Arellano rebuts the idea that California voters sent a...
Jun 21, 2022•33 min•Season 3Ep. 12
“I always point out to people that California is still a two-party state,” says Dan Schnur, former independent candidate for Secretary of State. “It just so happens they're both Democratic parties.” So starts a series of TPP episodes on our largest and bluest of states this primary season. Schnur’s outline of factions within Democratic Party are all the more vital, as are the economic insights of Joel Kotkin, the noted author and professor at Chapman University. “In the past, middle class and wo...
Jun 07, 2022•37 min•Season 3Ep. 11
How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey All political roads lead to Georgia these days. The Peach State was so pivotal in the 2020 election of Joe Biden and the 2021 runoff election of two Democratic senators. Georgia’s again on our minds in 2022 as Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger battle primary challenges from the GOP’s “Stop the Steal” wing. TPP is fortunate to have three infor...
May 24, 2022•34 min•Season 3Ep. 10
How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Is a large and growing segment of Hispanic American voters now leaning independent? That’s the operative question in this first episode on Hispanic swing voters, featuring three noted experts: former Florida Congressman Carlos Curbelo, UT San Antonio political scientist Dr. Sharon Navarro, and former four-term San Antonio Mayor and Clinton Cabinet member, Dr. Henry Cisn...
May 10, 2022•32 min•Season 3Ep. 9
How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Our TPP guest this episode, Mónica Guzmán of Braver Angels, is a fascinating conversationalist who knows how to stop a conversation, particularly among blue-leaning Seattle friends discussing politics. Guzmán merely mentions that her Mexican immigrant parents avidly supported Donald Trump and the room goes silent. We kick off Episode 8 of Season 3, “Like Family, Like Na...
Apr 26, 2022•30 min•Season 3Ep. 8
How’d you hear about The Purple Principle?: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey The Purple Principle brings its seven-part series on politics and identity in the already huge, yet fast-growing Lone Star State to conclusion with a guided tour of key insights from our notable “Texperts” in all six episodes. Is our nation’s red vs blue infighting eroding what was once a more distinctive, cohesive Texas identity? Jason Whitely, senior news reporter at WFAA Dallas and co-host of the podcast Y’all-...
Apr 12, 2022•29 min•Season 3Ep. 7
How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Purple Principle listeners know these not so United States need a new political operating system. But who’s going to code it? Based on a great new book, American Reboot (just out from Simon & Schuster), and our TPP conversation, it’s clear former three-term, centrist Texas Congressman Will B. Hurd should be a part of that “U.S. 2.0” development team. Hurd was far fr...
Apr 01, 2022•25 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Our special guests for this fifth episode on Lone Star State identity are two authors with Texas-sized reputations: Lawrence Wright (The Looming Tower, God Save Texas) and Stephen Harrigan (The Gates of the Alamo, Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas). Wright, a New Yorker staff writer, wastes no time in spinning around our hypothesis that polarized national politics might erode that rather famous, not shyly-held Texas state identity. “Texas is taking over the country,” states Wright emphatic...
Mar 29, 2022•34 min•Season 3Ep. 5
The Purple Principle is visiting the Lone Star State throughout the month of March 2022 and wondering if the famously strong Texas identity is holding up under the powerful forces of red vs. blue throughout our nation. In Polarized Politics & Hispanic Identity, we focus the discussion on Hispanic Texans and, particularly, the large Tejano community (Texans of Mexican descent) in South Texas. Two respected commentators weigh in on this and related issues. Former four-term San Antonio mayor, H...
Mar 22, 2022•36 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Is democracy still democracy when one party wins all the elections? That’s a question we’ll be asking around the country on our state-level identity and polarization series, since 37 state “trifectas,” or one-party governments, are now in office. It’s also a major point of discussion with Dr. James Henson, Director of The Texas Politics Project, in our third episode on the biggest and proudest of the Republican trifectas: Texas. “The Democrats have gone from being the disadvantaged party to a st...
Mar 15, 2022•34 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Texas has long had one of the most powerful and vocal identities of any American state. But how’s that unique Texas pride faring under the homogenizing power of polarization? In this TPP episode, Strongest Identity of Them Y’all, Texas Monthly Editor-in-Chief Dan Goodgame argues that the social and cultural identities of Texans writ large remain intact despite zero-sum maneuverings of Texas politicians writ small. “I'm gonna read a short series of numbers and let you guess what they represent: 2...
Mar 08, 2022•31 min•Season 3Ep. 2
The Purple Principle kicks off its extended Season Three series on state level polarization with a mini-series on the great state of Texas. And who better to discuss Texas politics than the co-hosts of the artfully named podcast, Y’all-itics: Jason Wheeler (Senior News Reporter) and Jason Whitely (News Anchor) of the ABC Dallas affiliate, WFAA. Both Jasons concur that polarization has been eating away at that powerful Texas identity in recent times. “People do like to maintain that they have tha...
Mar 01, 2022•29 min•Season 3Ep. 1
What’s it like to represent one of the very few remaining swing districts on the U.S. Congressional map, and be virtually the only Republican member at that time to publicly address climate change? Former Congressman Carlos Curbelo from Florida’s 26th district (including southwest Miami and the Florida Keys) fields these questions in a season-ending Purple Principle episode entitled, Heard the One About a Centrist Congressman? Curbelo also recounts some telling anecdotes from his time in the U.S...
Feb 22, 2022•29 min•Season 2Ep. 26
“I have been paying attention for thirty years,” CNN and SiriusXM host & commentator Michael Smerconish tells us. “And during that time the country has been driven into a partisan ditch.” A well-known visage from his CNN show, Smerconish is also a widely recognized voice, having started on “terrestrial” AM radio two decades before migrating to his current SiriusXM show and podcasts. The Purple Principle wanted to know more about Michael Smerconish, the individual, who features more indie-min...
Feb 08, 2022•30 min•Season 2Ep. 25
“If we believe democracy has failed us,” writes author and scholar Tom Nichols in his latest book, Our Own Worst Enemy, “we should first ask ourselves whether we have failed the test of democracy.” In this Purple Principle episode entitled “The United States of Narcissism,“ co-hosts Rob Pease and Jillian Youngblood ask Nichols why many Americans seem to be enthusiastically failing that test in recent times. A longtime Soviet Union—then Russia expert—Nichols points back to the US triumph at the e...
Jan 25, 2022•31 min•Season 2Ep. 24
“I'm watching everybody slowly turn into a pro-Trump zombie that I've ever worked with or been around; everyone's doing their rationalizations.“ So recalls special guest this episode, Sarah Longwell, conservative strategist turned watchdog of Republican populism as Executive Director of the Republican Accountability Project and Publisher of The Bulwark. “The fact that there were a bunch of people that I respected who I had been intellectually interested in for many years — when those people saw ...
Jan 11, 2022•30 min•Season 2Ep. 23
Cast your votes here! The year 2021 would certainly be worth forgetting if its worst elements weren’t so clearly continuing on into the New Year 2022 and very likely beyond: the Omicron surge, the worst U.S. inflation in decades, and the maelstrom of misinformation swirling around the clear benefits of vaccination and the equally obvious outcome of the 2020 election. In this episode entitled Speaking Truth in Polarized Times, we ask what TPP guests in 2021 speak most insightfully to the challeng...
Dec 28, 2021•20 min•Season 2Ep. 22
Support us on Patreon! Can a German town be socially divided by sneakers? Or the Canadian landmass united by a beer commercial? And is US individualism more a group identity than its individualistic citizens would ever admit? Tune into the third and final episode in our Holiday Survival Kit, Identity with All the Trimmings, featuring Psychology Professor Dominic Packer of Lehigh University for answers to these and other important questions around the topic of social identity. Dr. Packer is the c...
Dec 14, 2021•29 min•Season 2Ep. 21
It’s tempting to think of anti-science sentiments, such as the current pushback against COVID vaccination, as the disparate sum of misinformed individuals. But Lee McIntyre, author of the recent book, How to Talk to a Science Denier, has found otherwise. “All science denial is really organized. It’s a campaign,” explains McIntyre. “And as a campaign it deserves some pushback, which is what I do.” In this Purple Principle Part Two of our Holiday Survival Kit, we learn from Lee McIntyre how artful...
Nov 30, 2021•29 min•Season 2Ep. 20
Are we Americans trapped in our end zones of polarized bubbles ever more motivated to reason away conflicting information or viewpoints? Our featured guest, psychologist Tania Israel, thinks not and should know. Dr. Israel has been holding workshops over the past two decades to help participants bridge political and social divisions. In this Purple Principle episode, the first in a three-part series on holiday survival amidst polarization, co-hosts Rob Pease & Jillian Youngblood speak with T...
Nov 16, 2021•29 min•Season 2Ep. 19
Our Purple Principle series on Hollywood Presidents would not be complete without a stroll back in time through that show of all Potus shows, The West Wing, featuring Martin Sheen as President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet. We speak with award-winning West Wing writer, Paul Redford, a former Shakespearean actor turned screenscribe, who recalls: “West Wing came along and...filled a need that nobody knew was there… a need to believe again.” Canadian writer and cultural critic, Luke Savage, thinks the show ...
Nov 02, 2021•38 min•Season 2Ep. 18
