Episodes

Everyone says the polls blew it. Carl Allen says they didn't, and his research shows candidates averaging 49% or higher in well-polled races have won 98% of the time since 2004. Then we go race by race: Texas, Ohio, Maine, and two red states that could shock everyone on election night. Recorded live on Substack, this conversation with data analyst Carl Allen starts with why polls aren't predictions and ends with a tour of the 2026 Senate map, with real poll averages and prediction market odds pu...

Joan Blades helped launch MoveOn. Jacob Hess grew up a conservative kid in Utah. Their friendship is the argument. Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn and Living Room Conversations, and Jacob Hess of the Deseret News join Corey to talk about what happens when political opposites actually sit down together. They cover MoveOn's 1998 start as a one-sentence petition, why these conversations feel scary before they feel fun, and how local pride could rebuild trust in our elections. Calls to Actio...

"Woke 1 was crazy," AOC said on national TV, and then she laughed. Corey wants to know what that laugh leaves out. This morning, Corey published a new essay on Substack about what the woke era actually cost: friendships, careers, invitations that stopped coming. It's also about the friends who stayed close anyway, across real disagreement. This episode, Corey reads it to you himself. Calls to Action ✅ Leave a rating and review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion ✅ Subscribe on Substack: cor...

Credentials used to be enough. Rachel Kleinfeld and Renée DiResta on what earns trust now. Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Renée DiResta of Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy join Corey to talk about their new paper, "How to Engage With New Media: A Strategic Guide for Nonprofit Organizations," co-authored with Margot Treadwell. The conversation moves from an institution caught flat-footed when a researcher becomes a target, to why a bi...

What happens when the people who read your writing talk back? A couple weeks ago, The Dispatch published an essay Corey wrote about his hometown of Freehold, New Jersey, growing older alongside his friends from high school, and what it means to lose someone who isn't gone. This episode, recorded live on Substack, Corey reads it himself and reacts to comments in real time on Substack Live as well as some that came in at The Dispatch, including one from a stranger that turns into a pretty candid m...

Mike Madrid on why both parties are running on empty, and what's actually filling the vacuum. Mike Madrid, author of The Latino Century and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, joins Corey to argue that neither party is being reshaped so much as replaced. The conversation moves from a 13,000-person Texas town that could decide the midterms to what it costs a person to spend a career in gladiator politics, and why Madrid traded that fight for painting, pilgrimages, and personal writing. Calls...

Two megaphones, two drinks, one bar. Corey quits talking about talking and just gets to the talkin'. Second edition of "To the Republic... To the Pub." Corey sits down with his buddy Chip, a Tea Party guy since the '70s, and it turns into a real fight: Trump's second term, JD Vance, ICE and the Home Depot raids, and whether bipartisanship even means anything anymore. Not talking about people we disagree with. Talking with them. FOR THE RECORD: Biden's Last Two Years vs. Trump's First 20 Months ...

A newspaper editor from East Tennessee on why Dolly Parton was one of the last people almost everyone agreed on, and what that says about faith, place, and the work of editing well. Michael Reneau, executive editor at The Dispatch, joins Corey to talk about growing up 50 miles from where Dolly Parton was raised, and what her death revealed about a country that still finds a handful of people impossible to dislike. The conversation moves from Appalachia and Hurricane Helene to Bryan College, Flan...

A friend's Facebook post asks who's afraid of the truth. Corey wonders if he's who she means. A couple weeks ago, The Fulcrum published an essay Corey wrote about an old friend's social media post, and what it stirred up about the walls we build online without meaning to. This episode, Corey reads it to you himself. Calls to Action ✅ Leave a rating and review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion ✅ Subscribe on Substack: coreysnathan.substack.com ✅ Watch and subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/...

The theology quietly staffing Trump's cabinet, and why it doesn't need to make sense to work. Dr. Keri Ladner studies the radicalization of the American religious right, from the Moral Majority to the New Apostolic Reformation. She joins Corey to unpack Christian dominionism, the Seven Mountain Mandate, and how movements with contradictory theologies ended up governing together. Calls to Action ✅ Leave a rating and review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion ✅ Subscribe on Substack: coreysna...

A Navy SEAL commander on identity, faith, and why we fight the wars we fight. Captain Robert "Gus" Gusentine spent nearly 30 years in the Navy, commanding SEAL Team 10 and leading special operations forces from the Philippines to the Pacific. He joins Corey to talk about faith, painting, moral injury, and what it means to defend your identity without losing your soul. Calls to Action ✅ Leave a rating and review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion ✅ Subscribe on Substack: coreysnathan.substa...

Terms of Service with Future Caucus A Rhode Island Democrat and a West Virginia Republican, both serving in supermajorities, on why the toughest fights are sometimes within your own party. Terms of Service is a limited series from Future Caucus and TP&R, hosted by Future Caucus CEO Layla Zaidane. People run for state legislature to serve their communities, then find the fine print. This episode brings together Sen. Tiara Mack (D-RI) and Del. Andy Shamblin (R-WV), two lawmakers serving in superm...

A buddy at the dive bar hit Corey with "you guys and your TDS." The label stung less than the move behind it: getting turned into a "you guys" in the first place. This one's a feed drop. Napp Nazworth invited Corey onto the American Values Coalition podcast to unpack a recent op-ed in The Dispatch, "Does Trump Derangement Syndrome Have a Cure?" What opens as a riff on an overused phrase becomes something closer to home. How do you stay in real relationship with people you love when you can't rec...

"Nobody I know voted for George Bush." Michelle Cottle has heard that line her whole career, and it explains almost everything about the mess we're in. A New York Times columnist on the bubbles we live in, the family we love anyway, and why the stereotype falls apart the moment you actually know someone. Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for New York Times Opinion and hosts the Times podcast The Opinions. She and Corey trace her path from humor columnist at the Vanderbilt Hustler to...

Two megaphones, two drinks, one bar. Corey quits talking about talking and just gets to the talkin'. First edition of "To the Republic... To the Pub." Corey and his buddy Brandon post up at Doc's Inn and get into it: Iran and the case for the strikes, the $100K access Trump's charging on Truth Social, and three Senate races that tell you where 2026 is headed. Not talking about people we disagree with. Talking with them. Calls to Action ✅ Leave a rating and review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsan...

The 20 percent who love the fight own the microphone. This is a conversation about how the other 80 take it back. Manu Meel runs BridgeUSA, a student-led movement for constructive dialogue now on college campuses across the country. Liz Joyner founded The Village Square and has spent two decades rebuilding civic trust hometown by hometown. Together they make the case that the sharpest divide in America is no longer left against right, but open against closed, and that the most countercultural ac...

Most people vote the policy first. Corey saves it for last. Ethical, legal, wise. Those are the three questions David French asks of any law or action, and Corey turns them on the candidates themselves. Character and personal ethics come first, fidelity to our democratic institutions second, policy positions after all that. He runs the test through three Senate races, Maine, Texas, and Michigan, to show why disagreeing on policy is not the same as calling someone evil, and why Michigan is the on...

Richard Parker has spent his life reading America through two lenses most people keep apart: economics and religion. The throughline is that faith, money, and power did not grow up in separate rooms. They grew up together. An Oxford-trained economist who has taught at Harvard's Kennedy School since 1993, Parker co-founded Mother Jones, helped build Greenpeace USA, and helped Norman Lear start People for the American Way. This conversation runs from an abolitionist ancestor who helped fund John B...

Terms of Service with Future Caucus Two Minnesota lawmakers, one Democrat and one Republican, on what public service costs and what it took to keep going after tragedy. Terms of Service is a new limited series from Future Caucus and TP&R, hosted by Future Caucus CEO Layla Zaidane. People run for state legislature to serve their communities, then find the fine print. Recorded at Future Summit, this first conversation brings together two young Minnesota representatives, Andy Smith (D) and Isaac S...

Barbara Bradley Hagerty has spent a career asking why people do the things they do. The hardest answer she found runs through a wrongful conviction, thirty-four years lost, and a friendship between two men who had every reason to stay enemies. A New York Times bestselling author and contributing writer for The Atlantic, Barb covered criminal justice and religion at NPR for nearly twenty years. This conversation runs from a kindergarten report card that called her whole life, to a cycling acciden...

The essay ran in The Dispatch. Then a few hundred readers wrote back, and a few of them changed my mind. There is such a thing as Trump Derangement Syndrome. It just isn't what most people mean when they say it. This one goes behind the essay: the passages that got cut, the third man who never made it into the print version, and the comment section that turned out to be the best part of the whole thing. Calls to Action ✅ Leave a rating and review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion ✅ Subsc...

Carl Cannon came up in newsrooms where editors challenged you word by word, and nearly fifty years on he's still keeping score on who gets the quote right. His one rule, for reporting and for arguing in general: describe the other side so faithfully they'd claim it as their own. The Washington bureau chief of RealClearPolitics learned the trade from his father, Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, and came up the old way: small papers, police and courts, editors who challenged every word. This conversa...

Something a little different this week. This is a Village Squarecast episode, shared here in full, and you'll hear Corey host the top before turning it over to Liz Joyner, founder and president of The Village Square. Steve Seibert moderates. The guest is Dr. Yuval Levin, director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute, founder and editor of National Affairs, and author of American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation and Could Again. He...

The press is the only industry the Constitution protects. Hugo Balta thinks too many newsrooms forgot why, and he walked out to prove it. Hugo Balta spent three decades in newsrooms at NBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, CBS, ABC, and ESPN before leaving mainstream media for independent journalism. He now serves as executive editor of The Fulcrum and publisher of the Latino News Network, and he remains the only person in the history of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists to serve twice as its pr...