Inquiring Minds Podcast Episode 154: Changing Political Minds – The Deep Story With Arlie Hochschild and Reckonings. (Podcast, 1hr 18min 40s)

“We team up with Stephanie Lepp from the Reckonings podcast and talk to sociologist Arlie Hochschild about whether or not this election is causing more people than usual to change their minds about politics. We then hear from two voters who did in fact make some kind of transformation during this election season – one young voter who was voting in his second presidential election and one long-time voter and political insider who has been voting for 40 years.”

This podcats aired six days ago, a few days before the election. Still, the interviews with the two voters and especially the insights of Arlie Hochschild gave me a lot of insight into how many Americans think about politics and how they decided who to vote for. Recommended!

About Arlie Hochschild, quote from Wikipedia:

“Her latest book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, is based on five years of immersion among Louisiana supporters of the Tea Party. It explores the role of emotion in politics by first posing a paradox. Why, she asks, do residents of the nation’s poorest state vote for candidates who resist federal help? Why in a highly polluted state, do they vote for candidates who resist regulating polluting industry? Her search for answers leads her to what she calls their “deep story,” a metaphorical expression of the emotions they live by. The people she studied may not be voting for their economic self-interest, she found, but they are voting for their emotional self-interest as members of a group which feels marginalized, scorned by coastal liberals, and left behind.”