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purple principle episode artwork with headshot of podcast guest Michael Smerconish

Voice of Reason for Independent Minds

Voice of Reason for Independent Minds Talking Media & Polarization With CNN’s Michael Smerconish “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…
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purple principle episode artwork with headshot of podcast guest sarah longwell

Wait, I’m Not the Crazy One!

Wait, I’m Not the Crazy One! Sarah Longwell, Conservative Watchdog Of Republican Sanity “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…
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purple principle episode artwork for part I of season finale featuring the top guest insights for 2021

Speaking Truth in Polarized Times

Top Guest Insights From 2021 Speaking Truth In Polarized Times 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…
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purple principle episode artwork with headshot of podcast guest david mandel

Hollywood Presidents for a Partisan Nation, Part 3

Hail the Flip-Flopping Egomania of Veep Hollywood Presidents for a Partisan Nation, Part 3 HBO’s Veep, starring Julia Louis Dreyfuss, is quite likely the most successful American political satire in television history. Yet, in seven seasons, the show never mentions the party labels “Democrat” or  “Republican,” instead using terms like “the enemy camp” or,  more…
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purple principle episode artwork with headshots of podcast guests Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers

Amazing Grace For Our Partisan Times

Amazing Grace For Our Partisan Times Sarah and Beth, Creators of Pantsuit Politics Is it possible to have grace-filled conversations during these ingracious times of ours?  After 500 episodes heard by hundreds of thousands of listeners, Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers, the Kentucky-based creators of Pantsuit Politics, can decisively say that it is. In…
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purple principle episode artwork with headshots of podcast guests Michael Moffett, Laura Hammack, Hannah McCarthy, and Nick Capodice.

A Civic Way to Reverse Polarization?

A Civic Way to Reverse Polarization? New Vitality In Education & Legislation Is civics education in the U.S. having a moment, as in a long overdue upgrade, for a topic essential to our democracy? And will that moment translate into more substantial education on the rights and obligations of our citizens and voters-to-be at the…
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purple principle episode artwork with headshot of podcast guest Thomas Edsall

Woking up to Backlash

Woking up to Backlash New York Times Columnist Thomas Edsall on Reason & Responsibility in Polarized Politics “The rise of the conservative movement on the right and the decline of liberalism on the left have been  a preoccupation of mine for 40 years or more,” Thomas Edsall confides in our latest Season Two episode, “Woking…
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purple principle episode artwork with headshot of podcast guest Chris Bail

Nicest Troll in Town

Nicest Troll in Town On- and Offline identity, Extremism, and Polarization Social media is not fundamentally a source of information or a competition of ideas, but a competition of identities.  With that and other provocative findings, Dr. Chris Bail, Director of the Duke University Polarization Lab and author of Breaking the Social Media Prism (Princeton…
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purple principle episode artwork featuring headshot of podcast guests Daniel Clark and Nick Andert

Online Conspiracies & Virtual Cults

Online Conspiracies & Virtual Cults Part 2: Celebrity Makes The World Go Flat Do we live in an age where online conspiracies and cults proliferate ever more frequently and powerfully? We continue to explore this question, focusing this episode on the tremendous growth of the flat earth movement in “Online Conspiracies & Virtual Cults, Part…
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purple principle episode artwork with headshot of podcast guest Dr. Jeanine Guidry

What combats Vax Skepticism?

What combats Vax Skepticism? An Interview with Dr. Jeanine Guidry, Director of VCU’s Health & Media Lab Battling the COVID pandemic has been a war on many fronts – disease management, the race to develop safe, effective vaccines, and now the equally trickly public relations battle against vaccine misinformation and committed skeptics of all kinds….
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purple principle episode artwork with headshots of podcast guests Avinash Bakshi and Tyler Swanson.

Civil Society and Campus Politics

Civil Society and Campus Politics Two Collegians Take on Polarization Colleges have come to be known as havens for divisive politics, cancel culture, and trollism, all miserably co-existing with academic stress, social pressure and stale pizza. In Episode 18, “Civil Society and Campus Politics.” The Purple Principle profiles two college students pushing back against the…
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purple principle episode artwork with headshot of podcast guest paul muldoon

The Second Coming Turns 100

The Second Coming Turns 100  A Discussion of W.B. Yeats’ Classic Poem of Polarization with Pulitzer winner Paul Muldoon How does a century-old poem written in Ireland as European civil wars erupted in the aftermath of  World War I still resonate as if written for our own partisan era? That is the central question The…
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purple principle episode artwork with headshot of podcast guest Shane Mauss

Science, Comedy & Partisanship

Science, Comedy & Partisanship  Shane Mauss Stands up and Speaks Out What makes a stand-up comedian wake up one day and decide comedy needs more science? Or science needs more comedy?  A road comic for 13 years, Shane Mauss made one or both of these enlightened decisions five plus years ago in launching his science…
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Artwork for Purple Principle Episode 8, featuring Myq Kaplan

Comedy & Partisanship

Comedy & Partisanship The Transcendent Laugh With Special Guest, Myq Kaplan 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. …
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episode artwork for purple principle episode 6. head shot of dr. robert elliott smith and purple principle logo.

Social Media & Partisanship

Social Media & Partisanship Polarizing Algorithms And A Blind Date With Dividends 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…
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episode artwork purple principle season 1 episode 5. headshot of dr. dominik stecula of university of colorado. image is of his headshot, name and title, and the purple principle logo

Broadcast Media and Partisanship

Broadcast Media and Partisanship Side of Spin with Your Nightly News, with Dr. Dominik Stecula 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…
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episode artwork for the purple principle season 1 episode 2, titled the front lines of partisanship with charles wheelan. features dr. wheelan's photo and the purple principle logo

Front Lines of Partisanship

Front Lines of Partisanship With Dr. Charles Wheelan from Unite America In Episode 2, our 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…. Lots of guests for one podcast?…
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