A podcast that I don’t even remember subscribing to but which I really enjoy for its unusual topics and insights on political and economic topics is titled, “What Happens Next in 6 Minutes with Larry Bernstein.”
In reading through the transcript of today’s episode, “White vs. Black Working Class Voters,” I suddenly realized that this podcast would be a great thing to share with you, especially if you’re also interested in these general topic areas. Serendipity brings so many odd things into my life, and whatever “sticks” is usually stuff that’s quirky, relevant, and smart.
Example: The first time I forwarded links from this podcast to someone was last December, a two-part “conspiracy theory” episode titled:
You think you know who killed JFK? You think you’ve exhausted all the conspiracy-theory books, articles, movies, etc.? Well, let me tell you, you listen to these podcast episodes (or read the transcripts, like me 🙂 ), and you’ll learn something you didn’t already know, I guarantee. There’s LOTS of new information and insight in these episodes, which surprised me. I don’t know how “relevant” it was, other than to make you wonder if maybe the conspiracy theory nut jobs are right, but it was definitely quirky and smart.
The current “What Happens Next” episode was particularly interesting to me in light of our upcoming Presidential election: “White vs. Black Working Class Voters.”
There are different approaches to studying political science. My own preferred ways of understanding political behavior are at odds with the quantitative modeling, data-driven, statistical analysis approach that it seems many in the field of political science favor. I’m interested in systems, especially in the ways in which things not easily turned into “data” can have an outsized influence on political, economic, and social behavior, often transferring over into seemingly unrelated areas. I’m a dot connector; that is, I read and observe widely, I take note of arcane details, and then I begin fitting these pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together to get an idea of the big picture.
The guests on this podcast episode both have an approach that’s more similar to mine, focusing on interviews and ethnographic observations rather than statistical analysis. I’m not quite of the “three kinds of lies” school (“lies, damned lies, and statistics,” as per Mark Twain and Harry S. Truman), but I do think our society places far too much faith in “statistics,” especially when the more you learn about statistical analysis (how was the study designed, how was the data collected, how clean is the data, what model did you choose to run the analysis and why, etc.), the more you realize how “unfixed” the supposed certainty of statistics actually is.
Only in writing my blog post just now did I realize all this (the prevailing trends of political science versus who I am and why I feel like such an outsider). I must say, it’s satisfying to understand myself a little more clearly and to put my finger on exactly why I liked today’s podcast episode so much.
Long story short, I don’t know what’s going to happen next Tuesday. I have an idea, but I’m happy to wait and see how right (or wrong!) I am. No matter how the election is decided, I think we’ll all be okay and are probably far more in sync with each other than the media would have us believe. Voter behavior is driven by far more complex factors than the surface-level “issues” given primary importance status by mainstream media and social media algorithms.
If you agree, then you may also enjoy either checking out this specific “White vs. Black Working Class Voters” episode or exploring the entire “What Happens Next” archive.
Katherine Wikoff 