Episodes

"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...

She left the church at twenty-five. She never stopped praying, and she still doesn't know who's listening. Lauren Jackson writes Believing, the New York Times newsletter about how people practice faith and doubt now, and she came to the beat by way of her own departure from the Mormon church she was raised in. Corey talks with her about what secularism can't replace, what AI is quietly taking from us, and the question she brings to every hard conversation. Calls to Action ✅ Subscribe to Lauren...

The founders weren't just the names in the history books. You count as one, and citizenship is something you practice. Lindsey Cormack studies how members of Congress actually talk to the people they represent, and she wrote the book on why civics belongs at home long before it reaches a classroom. Corey sits down with her on what it takes to raise a citizen, why disagreement is where the learning happens, and how a new podcast makes the case that government doesn't always have to suck. Calls t...

Through Psalm 74 and the firebombing of a New Jersey synagogue in 1984, a bar mitzvah season becomes a reckoning with the places we call hallowed and what survives once they've been defiled. A solo reflection on desecration, spectacle, and the unglamorous work of redemption, from an old tavern's charred remains to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the year of America's 250th. ✅ If this one landed, leave a quick review so others looking for conversations like it can find them too: lovethepod...

A doctor once told Rich Harwood's mother to face it, her son was a lemon. He's spent his life proving no one is disposable, and that even the most divided towns in America can build something together. Two minutes. Real impact. Leave a review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion What does it take to heal a divided town? Less talking, says Rich Harwood. After almost 40 years running the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, he's watched the poorest community in America and some of the most ...

An off-the-cuff solo update on two essays in the works: one on the sacred spaces we share and what survives their desecration, the other on the real derangement in our politics, told through three men Corey loves and has watched change. Plus the launch of something new for the show, taking the mission to a local pub, the divier the better, to talk politics and religion on camera, over a drink, with friends who see the world differently. ✅ If you're into where this is heading, leave a quick revie...

Some state lawmakers drive Uber to afford the job. The best of them are walking away. Layla Zaidane runs the largest nonpartisan organization for young lawmakers in the country, and her team's "Exit Interview" found that the most promising bipartisan legislators are leaving office over problems that are entirely fixable. This conversation launches Terms of Service, a new collaboration between Future Caucus and TP&R that takes you inside what it actually costs to serve. Key Takeaways The math d...

Through the lens of the Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie, a morning walk through Washington, from DuPont Circle to the Jefferson Memorial, becomes a reckoning with what we've made of our civic sacred spaces. A solo reflection on desecration, devotion, and a faith in the American experiment that proves harder to walk away from than intended. ✅ If this one landed, leave a quick review so others looking for conversations like it can find them too: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion...

“It’s easy to hate things you don’t understand.” Two minutes. Real impact. Leave a review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion Kristin Wilson spent three decades producing Washington coverage, including a decade running CNN’s Capitol Hill unit, with stops at NBC, CBS, Nightline, the BBC, and Fox News. Now she’s co-founder and executive producer of 535, a journalist-founded, nonpartisan newsroom built to cover the policy of Congress. The conversation gets into what gets lost when the cameras c...

This was one of our most listened-to conversations of the past year. If you missed it the first time, here's your second chance. She moderated the fly debate. She interviewed Stephen Hawking. She covered 12 presidential campaigns and sat down with the last 10 presidents. And she spent years inside Queen Elizabeth’s extraordinary vantage point on American democracy — one that no American journalist could ever fully replicate. Two minutes. Real impact. Leave a review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsa...

What if the way we talk about "the other side" isn't just rude — it's something closer to dehumanization? Consumer and social psychologist Lura Forcum has a precise vocabulary for what's happening, and a clear-eyed prescription for what to do about it. Two minutes. Real impact. Leave a review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion Lura writes the newsletter How to Human and co-hosts We Made This Political with political scientist Lauren Hall. Her work sits at the intersection of human behavior,...

When the theological scrutiny is ferocious for the Democrat and nonexistent for the Republican, you're not watching theology. You're watching idolatry. Two minutes. Real impact. Leave a review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion Ken Paxton won the Republican primary for the Texas U.S. Senate seat. He was impeached 121-23 by a Republican-controlled House, divorced on biblical grounds, and caught on video pocketing a thousand-dollar pen. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, attends Princeto...

She's a Republican who won't back Trump, and she has no interest in yelling — just winning. Two minutes. Real impact. Leave a review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion Susan Del Percio is a crisis communications expert, political analyst, and MS NOW columnist who has publicly opposed Trump since 2015. Corey and Susan dig into the Texas Senate race, how vulnerable Republicans navigate a MAGA world, what polls actually tell you, and why listening might be the most radical political act left. ...

In 2024, just 18% of Americans said religion is gaining influence. Then came the double-digit jump. Pew Research's Chip Rotolo has the numbers — and they're striking. Two minutes. Real impact. Leave a review: lovethepodcast.com/politicsandreligion Chip Rotolo is a research associate at Pew Research Center studying religion's role in public life. His team's latest report finds a sharp reversal in how Americans view religion's influence — and raises harder questions about Christian nationalism, wh...