The Depolarizers

Jan 21 2025 9 ep. 45 mins 3
The Depolarizers Podcast artwork

It’s the most common gripe about American politics: why is everything so polarized, and how do we fix it? While pundits frequently talk about polarization, few focus on identifying and replicating success stories in actually reducing polarization. In The Depolarizers, a new podcast series from Welcome, Lauren Harper Pope dives into the history of polarization and the people dedicated to moving past our era of intransigence. Each episode explores a theme of polarization featuring both political professionals and academic experts. Additionally, each installment has an accompanying essay at WelcomeStack.org exploring the themes in more depth and strengthening the community of depolarizers in the middle.

  Society & Culture  News  Science
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The Depolarizers: Marshall Kosloff on Big Political Shake-Ups

Jan 21 2025 53 mins  
American political parties go through periods of upheaval about once a generation. Since around 1980, we’ve been in the sixth party system. But that system, sparked by Southern whites leaving the Democratic Party, appears to be coming to an end. What happens next will tell the story of a generation and a new chapter for America. In this episode of The Depolarizers, Lauren Harper

Josh Barro on Democrats' Next Steps

Dec 22 2024 44 mins  
On this episode of The Depolarizers podcast, Lauren Harper Pope is in conversation with Josh Barro about what went wrong for Democrats in 2024, how to address the problems, and who can lead us out of the wilderness. Josh is an independent journalist who writes the publication Very Serious on Substack. He previously wrote for The New York Times, New York Magazine, and Business Insid

On Gen Z

Dec 17 2024 38 mins  
A member of Gen Z herself, Rachel Janfaza is a Gen Z expert and researcher focused on youth culture and the evolving civic engagement of her generation. In this episode of The Depolarizers, Lauren and Rachel discuss insights on Gen Z from the 2024 election cycle, and what to expect from America's youngest voters in the years to come.

The Dissent

Sep 23 2024 36 mins  
Yair Zivan, author of the recently-published The Center Must Hold, joined me in conversation for Episode Six of The Depolarizers podcast to talk about why centrism is the “antidote” to upholding liberal democracy and fighting extremism. Throughout the episode, Zivan offered crucial insight into why it’s not enough to simply reside in the center; the center must offer a v

The Way Out

Sep 17 2024 49 mins  
Stanford’s Polarization and Social Change Lab has been analyzing, testing and creating solutions for America’s polarized political climate. I sat down with Robb Willer, Director of the Polarization and Social Change Lab and Co-Director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society to discuss ways to emerge out of the most toxic partisan polarization in America as well as how

The Case for Strong Parties

Sep 08 2024 41 mins  
Episode Four of The Depolarizers podcast features Didi Kuo, a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She oversees the program on American democracy and comparative perspective, which seeks to bridge academic and Policy Research on American democracy. She's the author of The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave a

The Decline of Racial Polarization

Sep 02 2024 46 mins  
The Trump era has seen a reduction in racial polarization, driven largely by an increase in education polarization. But with Trump’s core policy win being a massive tax cut for the wealthy, can Republicans really become the Working Class Party?Episode Three of The Depolarizers features guests Patrick Ruffini and Ruy Teixeira. Ruffini is a Republican pollster, author of Party of t

How the Red Dogs Turned Blue

Aug 25 2024 39 mins  
Episode Two of The Depolarizers features The Lincoln Project co-founder Reed Galen and political scientist Eitan Hersh. Galen courageously left the Republican Party to help elect Biden in 2020. An alumnus of campaigns for John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger and George W. Bush, Galen is the quintessential example of a depolarizer. Hersh coined the term “political hobbyism

How We Got Here

Aug 18 2024 57 mins  
It’s a complaint we hear endlessly about American politics: why is everything so polarized? Our new podcast series, The Depolarizers, discusses how we got here and, more importantly, how we get out of it. Our first episode features Matt Yglesias, writer of popular Substack publication Slow Boring and Sam Rosenfeld, author of two books about polarization (