845: A Small Thing That Gives Me a Tiny Shred of Hope
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Prologue: Prologue
Ira Glass
OK, this isn't news to anybody. Our country is profoundly, cataclysmically divided, disagreeing about so many basic things-- the COVID vaccine, was the last election stolen, was January 6 an insurrection, or as they called it on Tucker Carlson's show, a grandma selfie party? It's two different visions of reality that seem doomed to never reconcile.
[BREATHING DEEPLY] And maybe this is an inappropriate comparison, but somehow, this comes to mind for me. You know that thing in your personal life where you get into a serious fight with somebody who you really care about? And they see it one way, and you see it another way, and you're not seeing eye to eye.
The best outcome, the thing you hope for, is that by talking it through and really listening to each other and trying to sort it out, in the end, you'll either see it the same way, you'll have the same story, or-- this is almost as good-- you won't agree on what happened, but at least you'll get where the other person's coming from and they'll get where you're coming from. And neither of you thinks the other is crazy or has ill intent.
I just wish we could do that with our politics. I understand all the reasons why that's not happening. I understand how some people think we're way beyond that. It's impossible, counterproductive, just a bad idea. But just to say, I wish. I think lots of us wish that. Without that-- and divided so evenly, nobody can predict the outcome of a presidential election-- without that, how are we going to keep functioning as a country?
But who is trying to bridge that gap between red America and blue America and bring us to a common story? I honestly can't name a half dozen people if I try. And so whenever I hear of anybody attempting to do anything like that and doing what seems like a decent job of it, I perk up.
And I heard about somebody like that recently from somebody who used to work here at our show, Brian Reed. They did a story on this new podcast that he started with another former This American Life producer, Robyn Semien. Robyn produces the show. Brian hosts it. And they did a story about somebody doing this.
And Brian knows how I have kind of a bee in my bonnet about this particular thing, and so he sent me a copy. And I am very excited to present a version of their story for you right now because it gave me a glimpse, a very tentative, first step kind of glimpse-- and I know that's a mixed metaphor, but just, whatever-- a first step glimpse of the possibility that people in this country could listen to each other a little bit and look at the facts of something together and understand each other just maybe a little smudge better.
We have some other stories in today's program. They're about couples managing their feelings during this heightened political moment, on the verge of all of us getting one president or another, one future or another. We're going to get to all that after the break. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.
Act One: A Tiny Thing That Gives Me Hope
Ira Glass
It's This American Life. Act One, A Tiny Thing That Gives Me Hope. OK, so like I said before the break, this is a story about somebody trying to bridge the gap in the way that red America and blue America see the world. And like I said, it comes from this new podcast that Brian Reed is hosting called Question Everything.
It's a podcast about journalism. And the person trying to bridge the gap between the two Americas in this story is a journalist. In the story that they did on the podcast, they get to that guy in a little bit. But the story starts with a couple, Dick and Emily, who found themselves unhappily living on opposite sides of the red-blue divide. When they first met, decades ago, he was a Republican. She was, she says, a bleeding heart liberal, but it wasn't a big deal. Then that changed. Here's Brian with one of the producers of Question Everything, Zach St. Louis.
Brian Reed
So, Zach, you're the one who's gotten to know Dick and Emily, this couple that was fighting over the news, right?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah, so their names are Richard and Emily Newton. He obviously goes by Dick. They're in their 70s. They just celebrated their 24th wedding anniversary. It's a second marriage for both of them. They fell in love singing hymns together in the choir at church. She's an alto. He's a bass.
Brian Reed
That's sweet. Where do they live?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: They live in Orange County, California.
Brian Reed
OK.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: And over the last several years, they've found that they've been growing more and more miserable over something that seems so basic, which is what news they would each want to read in the morning.
Dick Newton
We get up and get a cup of coffee. And we sit down, and we start going through our emails. And we sit next to each other when we're doing that. I'd say, Emily, I have an article here. Would you be interested in me sending it to you? And she would say, who's it from? And if I said "Breetbert" News or--
Zach St. Louis
(INTERVIEWER) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Breitbart? Is that what you mean?
Dick Newton
Breitbart, that's it. Yeah, Breitbart. Or Epoch Times. She knew those were really right-leaning and wasn't really interested. I was the same way with her if she found something on Atlantic or New York Times or Washington Post.
Emily Newton
Dick doesn't trust anything, no matter what it is, that comes from The New York Times, The Washington Post.
Dick Newton
The Atlantic.
Emily Newton
The Atlantic.
Dick Newton
MSNBC.
Emily Newton
CNN. That's another one.
Dick Newton
CNN is another one.
Emily Newton
It doesn't matter what they're saying. He just automatically dismisses--
Dick Newton
Well, they've developed their own reputation.
Emily Newton
OK. I realized, we are not reading from the same hymnal here.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: So they told me that they started arguing a lot more when Trump came on the political scene. Dick supported Trump. Emily furiously did not. But then it was after Election Day in 2020 when they had one of their biggest disagreements.
Emily Newton
From the beginning, I never believed that the election was fraudulently stolen. I have more faith in people and in our democracy. Dick was more open to doubt.
Dick Newton
They were saying that there was a lot of things that were going on that shouldn't have been going on. There was packing drop boxes with ballots. One person would walk up to the ballot box and drop in all kinds of ballots into it.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: So this particular theory Dick's talking about, it's from a movie, one of the many sources that he was turning to at the time. It's called 2,000 Mules. Have you heard of it?
Brian Reed
I've heard of it. Yes, I've had people talk to me about it, as I've been reporting, basically.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah, so this movie, 2,000 Mules, it looks like a documentary, but it's really a propaganda film. It's about a stolen election theory. It's not true.
But for a while, on the right, this movie seemed like it was everywhere. Everyone seemed to be talking about it. Trump actually did a screening of it at Mar-a-Lago. It was in something like 400 movie theaters. I mean, lots and lots of people believed it. It's made by Dinesh D'Souza. He's a right-wing political commentator.
Brian Reed
All right, and what's the gist?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: The gist is that it's about this theory that a bunch of Democratic groups were paying people, who they call mules, to illegally collect ballots and stuff them into ballot boxes in key swing states.
Man
Philadelphia alone, we've identified more than 1,100 mules.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: So there were these talking head interviews, and they're intercut with this grainy surveillance footage that shows this person putting ballots into a box. And they're like, see? There's all the evidence you need.
Brian Reed
But that's not real surveillance footage or--
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: It is real surveillance footage, but it's showing people just dropping off ballots legally.
Brian Reed
And there's scary music under it?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: There's scary music, scary voiceover.
Man
We are not a democracy. We are a criminal cartel masquerading as a democracy.
[OMINOUS MUSIC]
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: And when Dick watched it, like a lot of people, he thought it seemed really plausible.
Dick Newton
It just added to the other stories that I was hearing, things that were happening in Arizona and Georgia. I'm thinking, yeah, there's stuff going on here that shouldn't be going on.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: So Dick is watching this movie. He's reading his sources. And there are so many sources that cite so many stories about election fraud, which is part of what made it so believable.
Brian Reed
And also, he's watching the president, President Trump, say over and over again that the election was fraudulent. It had been stolen from him.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yes, exactly. And then Emily's consuming all of her own sources, and they say the exact opposite. And it all added to this feeling that it wasn't safe for them to talk about politics.
Zach St. Louis
(INTERVIEWER) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Did that feel different from other arguments or disagreements you'd had about non-political things over your marriage?
Emily Newton
It did, because there was no give and take. We can argue about what we're going to spend our money on. And we can argue about our kids. We can argue about the neighborhood. But we usually come to some sort of resolution. This whole thing about Trump, there is no resolution.
Zach St. Louis
(INTERVIEWER) ZACH ST. LOUIS: How did that feel?
Emily Newton
Frustrating. [LAUGHS] Because I know my husband. I know what a smart, sensitive, thoughtful person he is. He's very generous. I know all that about him. And to have him suddenly be aligned to this person who I found absolutely despicable was very troubling.
Dick Newton
She wouldn't talk to me. She basically just-- I don't want to talk about it. I would try. But it wasn't going to happen. And if it did, we'd end up yelling at each other. I got so angry with her one day that I finally-- I just had to walk out of the house and walk down the street to cool off.
And then I started thinking, wow, I'm letting politics get involved in our marriage? Because I was really angry at the time. And I just couldn't stand that. I never thought that politics was important enough to jeopardize what she and I had together.
Zach St. Louis
(INTERVIEWER) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Did you feel like that it could do that, that politics could jeopardize it?
Dick Newton
Yes. I really did. I think, what did I get myself into here? Maybe I did something I shouldn't have done.
Zach St. Louis
(INTERVIEWER) ZACH ST. LOUIS: What's the mistake you're talking about?
Dick Newton
Having someone that was so far left that I couldn't live with.
Brian Reed
Oof.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah, this was a pretty low point in their marriage. And they told me that they really wanted to find a way out of it.
Emily Newton
We were both looking for some sort of-- I don't want to say neutral, but impartial news source.
Dick Newton
I was hungry for something that I could count on to peel the layers away and really show what's in the heart of it.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: They started reading different online news sources that branded themselves as being unbiased, slant-free, that kind of thing.
Brian Reed
Interesting.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: And then they finally landed on something. It was a newsletter. Dick seemed to like it OK. So did Emily.
Emily Newton
We both agreed, oh, yes, let's read Tangle.
Brian Reed
Tangle?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yes, that's the newsletter.
Brian Reed
All right, so tell me about it.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: It's this daily newsletter. It comes to your email. It's, like, a Substack-type thing. It's run by a guy named Isaac Saul. He started it. He writes it. They have about 135,000 subscribers. It comes to your inbox every weekday. And each issue is all about one topic from the news.
What they try to do is summarize two or three of the best articles and arguments from right-leaning sources about that topic, and then they do the same thing with left-leaning sources. And the whole premise of the newsletter is that there are people out there like Dick and Emily that are reading completely separate sources, and why not put all of those in one place?
Brian Reed
So that's what the newsletter is? It's just like, here's this topic-- here are a few stories from the left, here are a few stories from the right?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah, so you can actually read what those arguments are.
Emily Newton
I think probably the first thing that astounded me was the transparency, that when they make a mistake, they correct it as soon as they realize it, and they put it right up front.
Brian Reed
How is that different than corrections in a newspaper?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: A little bit, it's the way that they do it. So corrections in a newspaper, traditionally, they are at the end of the article. There will be a little footnote. Actually, we got this wrong. It's been changed above. We regret the error, in little print italics at the bottom.
Brian Reed
Mm-hmm.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Tangle's approach to corrections, it's a bit different.
Brian Reed
Can you show me?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yes. This is from August 21. And at the very, very top, the very first thing that you see is "correction," period, in big letters.
Brian Reed
Mm-hmm.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: "In our coverage of the Medicare drug pricing negotiations yesterday, we said that four of the Medicare Part D drugs for which the government had negotiated lower prices were overprescribed in the United States. That was false. We misread the abstract of a study and rushed our review process when we included it. A sincere thank you to the 10 or so readers who caught the error."
And then, in italics right below that-- "This is our 114th correction in Tangle's 263-week history and our first correction since August 13. We track corrections and place them at the top of the newsletter in an effort to maximize transparency with readers."
Brian Reed
So this is different than a newspaper. I see.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah.
Brian Reed
What else did Dick and Emily notice about Tangle?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah, so they noticed that it wasn't so sensational. It was more measured or even-handed in their language. So for instance, Tangle noticed that readers on the right would sometimes unsubscribe from the newsletter after reading a phrase like "undocumented immigrant." But they also didn't think it was right to call someone "illegal" or an "illegal alien." So they did this big internal review, and they settled on the term "unauthorized migrant."
Emily Newton
We really liked that approach, trying to filter out all the trigger words or the words that were very highly volatile emotionally, which helps both of us then consider the issue with less emotion about it. I'm not going to say with no emotion. [CHUCKLES] We would still argue, but with less emotion about it. And then we loved Isaac's take.
Brian Reed
What's Isaac's take?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: So Isaac's take-- Isaac refers to Isaac Saul. He's the founder and writer of the newsletter.
Brian Reed
Mm-hmm.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: And at the end of every issue, he spends a long time writing his opinion. And these can be long. And he says exactly how he feels about the issue after having researched it and just describes his own feeling about it.
Brian Reed
Wait, do you have an example of this?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah. Here, I'll send one to you. We can look at it.
Brian Reed
All right. This was earlier this month. "Hurricane Helene and the Disaster Relief Efforts."
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yes. The first part is just the topic. Then they summarize what the right is saying. They summarize what the left is saying. But then at the end, you see "My Take." And so I'm obviously not going to read this whole thing. It is--
Brian Reed
Yeah, this is long. Wow.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: --2,200 words. I looked.
Brian Reed
It's, like, a whole essay. But what's his take on Hurricane Helene?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah, so before we get to his take, I think you need to understand what he's responding to here. There have been a lot of attacks on the Biden administration from the right saying that they're doing nothing to help people who've been affected by this hurricane.
Brian Reed
Like, actually nothing?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Well, that they failed to rise to the occasion, basically. So Isaac, he really puts a stake in the ground and says, there's a big problem with this narrative. It's all nonsense. It's all a lie. And then he writes, "I hate writing pieces like this. It's not my job to defend the federal government from lies. And it's hard to write a piece like this without reading it like I'm openly shilling for Harris or Biden. I am not. I'm not here to do their PR or protect their reputations.
However, I do care about our information ecosystem. I care about reliable, accurate information being shared widely. I also care about the North Carolinians in danger right now, not just because they're Americans and it's a state I love, but also because my mom, my aunt, my brother and his family, my sister-in-law, and my niece, they all live in North Carolina. So the horrors we're all witnessing on the news hit close to home.
Here's the truth, though. Biden and Harris have actually pulled every lever federal executives can in a situation like this. None of the critics that I posted above can say exactly what they want them to do that they aren't already doing. And if you're planning on writing in to tell me that I am shilling for Harris or being a left-wing hack by calling out lies online, you'd better be prepared to tell me exactly what I've gotten wrong here." And then he goes on for several more paragraphs.
Brian Reed
Oh, wow. Interesting. I can feel his resentment at having to defend the Democratic administration.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah, he's like, I don't want to do this just to defend them. But in this case, they're doing everything they can. And that's what the facts show. And so I'm going to say that.
Brian Reed
Right.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: And this part of the newsletter was something that Dick and Emily really came to appreciate.
Emily Newton
He was very clear about what his biases were. That made him extremely trustworthy. More often than not, when we get to the end and we read "My Take," we look at each other and say, yeah, that's how I feel.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: They started realizing that they actually agreed with each other on a lot of things, and they were able to talk about it. And eventually, something pretty remarkable happened. So remember how Dick was totally convinced the election had been stolen? He watched 2,000 Mules. He read all of those conspiracies about it.
Brian Reed
Mm-hmm.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: So as Dick and Emily were starting to have this shared understanding of the news again, Tangle did the thing for Dick that no other source seemed to be able to do, that Emily wasn't able to do, and that was prove to him that the 2020 election had not been stolen.
Dick Newton
The only thing that changed my mind completely was the fact that I started reading Tangle. And it's only because I trust Isaac and his team so much.
Isaac Saul
It's incredibly fulfilling, to be honest.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: This is Isaac Saul. He's the guy who writes Tangle.
Brian Reed
Yes.
Isaac Saul
Just, it's actually so rewarding, because the election fraud stuff in particular was one of the most difficult times of my life as a reporter. The month after that election was dark, stressful, really, really hard work. And hearing that somebody had that reaction, that their mind was actually changed, even one person, it's like, yeah, it makes me want to cry. [LAUGHS]
Brian Reed
So am I getting this right? It seems like Isaac and this newsletter, Tangle, they seem to have done something that I feel like so many journalists, myself included, have been banging our heads against the wall, trying to figure out what to do, which is, how do you get people to believe the evidence that the 2020 election was not stolen from Donald Trump?
Something like a third of Americans believe that it was. It's really threatening our ability to function. How do you present those facts and get people to believe them? I mean, we did a whole episode of our show about Barton Gellman, one of the greatest investigative reporters of our time, I'd say, who quit journalism because of this problem.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah.
Brian Reed
And you're saying Tangle did it.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: In this case, Tangle did it. Yeah, for Dick, Tangle did it.
Brian Reed
All right. So how did Tangle do this? How did Isaac, the guy who runs this, do this?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah, so Isaac did a ton of work around this whole election denialism issue. It wasn't just one newsletter. Every time a new claim about how the election may have been stolen surfaced, he would spend all this time running it down, explaining in detail why it was false. He did that in the days and weeks immediately following the election. He continued doing it as new claims surfaced in the years since.
Brian Reed
But a lot of news sources have done this, looked at these different claims about how the election was stolen and showed why they aren't true, and looked at the court cases where no evidence surfaced and all this stuff, right?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: They did. But Isaac was doing a lot of research. Like, for example, in the weeks following the election, right after, he did this 400-tweet-long thread that was going in detail into each claim. He was really, really deep on this.
But I don't think it was only the research that helped convince Dick. There's something else that Isaac did. And it was in his tone and how he approached this whole issue, especially around the claims that seemed more persuasive. He didn't just write them off. He assessed them seriously. He presented them seriously. And that didn't make Dick feel stupid. Here's Isaac.
Isaac Saul
Some of the stuff was really convincing. And proving that they were wrong was not as simple as saying, oh, this is just conspiracy nonsense. Like, the ballot stuffing thing, that was a plausible way to steal an election.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: In 2022, he actually dedicated an entire newsletter, a deep dive, into 2,000 Mules, that movie we were talking about.
Isaac Saul
So when that movie came out and everybody just laughs at Dinesh D'Souza, I was kind of like, I'm going to watch it and take some of these allegations seriously and see what's up. It turned out they were all bullshit, but you only know that if you actually do some of the work.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Can I actually just read you what he wrote at the top of that newsletter?
Brian Reed
Yeah, please.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: So the title of the newsletter is "An Honest Look at 2,000 Mules, the New Stolen Election Theory." And this is how he opens it. "I consider myself to be both a skeptic and an open-minded person. I am deeply cynical about our government, believe intelligence agencies are covering up the truth about UFOs, and don't feel any particular loyalty to any major political parties. I generally distrust authority, government agencies, and politicians.
But I do believe it's wise to consult expert opinions and advice. I love a good conspiracy, a good cover-up, and a great story. A stolen presidential election would be an all-timer in every regard, a story so gigantic, a conspiracy of corruption and power so unthinkable that the idea alone is tantalizing enough. I almost want to believe it." And then he goes on to dissect every point made in the film and show why it's inaccurate. But that's how he starts.
Brian Reed
Interesting. OK, so that's the presentation difference you're talking about?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah. And I'll just say that that framing, it's really different from how other outlets covered this film. Like, for example, there's a New York Times headline about the movie. It was, quote, "A Big Lie in a New Package." There was a Washington Post headline that was, quote, "2,000 Mules Offers the Least Convincing Election Fraud Theory Yet."
And look, I mean, that's all true. It is a lie. But Isaac realized he's probably not going to convince someone who already believes the lie by leading with that. So instead, he levels with people, explains where he's coming from and all the research he did, and then explains what he found about the claims. And so this was what Dick was reading.
Dick Newton
After reading his article, what I realized was-- and he even admitted there were some things that were happening that shouldn't have been happening in some of the polls. But it wouldn't have changed the dynamics of who won and who lost at all. That was actually the first time I really realized it for sure. And that really opened my eyes to how corrupt that was. That really sold me on the fact that the election wasn't stolen.
Isaac Saul
What I was thinking in my head was, like, I want to bring all these people in my life under one roof, and I want them to be able to read a news source that the Trump MAGA bro will trust and the left-wing Bernie bro will trust.
Brian Reed
What was the origin story for Tangle for Isaac? He was a reporter before this?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah, he was a reporter. He worked for Huffington Post, a couple of other places. And he told me that he's always been the type of person that's brought together people from different backgrounds in his personal life. Maybe they don't agree, and he's often mediating between those people. But really, the inspiration for Tangle came out of his own news consumption.
Isaac Saul
The idea for Tangle basically came from the Trump era of, Trump proposes a border wall, and I'm like, he's proposing a 2,000-mile border wall. This sounds totally insane. I can't imagine the best argument for this. But I really want to understand, is this something that would actually work?
And in order to grasp what was actually happening, my day would be like, I'm going to go read The New York Times editorial board. I'm going to read their immigration reporting about it. Then I'm going to go to Fox News and scroll through their opinion page and search for Trump's border wall.
And then maybe I'll listen to a Ben Shapiro podcast, and then I'll go listen to Pod Save America. And then I'll watch The Daily Show do a bit about it, or watch John Oliver. And then I'll spend an hour on some Tucker Carlson special about it.
And then I'll do 10 hours of all this consuming of the news. And I'll sit down, and I'll be like, OK, I think I now have a really good understanding of everybody's perspective, positive and negative, about this policy proposal. Why can't I just find that one place? That should exist somewhere.
Brian Reed
Do you know who's reading the newsletter?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: I kind of do, based on a reader survey of Tangle subscribers. So a little bit over half of the subscribers are men, around 57%. It skews very white, just below 90% of readers. It's US-based, but Isaac says it does reach something like 55 other countries. And about a third of the readers say that they're on the left, a third on the right, and the last third are either center or independent.
Brian Reed
Wow, so it's pretty evenly politically split.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah, pretty even split politically. And I did talk to some other readers of the newsletter who said that it had an impact on them, similar to Dick and Emily.
Brian Reed
Like who?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: I met this one guy at a political event in New York, and he told me it's basically the only news that he reads. I talked to a new reader of Tangle-- a journalist, actually-- and he said that there were some arguments from the right that he'd just written off. But reading Tangle actually helped him see that they had a point. And I even spoke to another guy who, like Dick, had his mind changed about the 2020 election.
Rick
I assumed that Donald Trump was telling me the truth, that they had firm evidence that it was definitely manipulation of the ballots.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: This is a guy named Rick.
Brian Reed
Wait, Rick and Dick?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Rick and Dick.
Brian Reed
OK.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Both Richard, if you want to be technical about it.
Brian Reed
Got it. Go on.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: It's a really similar story to Dick and Emily's. Rick was a big Trump supporter, voted for him twice. Rick's son is on the left politically. They were arguing about the news a lot. And the son started forwarding Rick the newsletter, including issues that were about the stolen election claims.
Rick
They weren't just laughing it off. I have a trust in their news gathering and presentation abilities head and shoulders above any other news gathering source. I have a trust level there that's unequaled.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: And again, like Dick and Emily, Rick and his son have mended their relationship. They can talk to each other about the news again. And now, he doesn't think the election was stolen. And that feeling of being lied to, it's actually convinced him not to vote for Trump this year.
Brian Reed
Really?
Rick
Yeah. The only reason I wouldn't vote for him is because he made me look foolish in front of my son.
Brian Reed
Zach, you mentioned the importance of striking the right tone when we're presenting evidence, especially evidence that's contrary to what someone believes. And that does seem important. But also just hearing the story of Rick and his son alongside the story of Dick and Emily, his wife, I do just wonder, does a person have to be motivated to get along with someone they love to repair a relationship, essentially, in order to change their mind?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah, it's a good question. Wanting to see something from someone else's perspective, the perspective of someone you love, it seems like that doesn't hurt.
Brian Reed
It's interesting, thinking about it. It's not exactly that Tangle moved both of them towards the center, and they met in the middle. But it moved Dick more towards Emily, basically.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah, I mean, obviously, it would make for a better story if they each moved toward the center. I think that's sort of--
Brian Reed
Met in the middle.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: --what we want from a story like this. Exactly, met in the middle. But it's really more like Dick believed something that wasn't true. And then he was the one that moved toward facts.
Brian Reed
How does Emily say it changed her? Does she say it changed her?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: So she told me that she didn't have as dramatic a change as Dick. It wasn't like she believed something that wasn't true and had her mind changed. But she says she does read the news differently now. For instance, she told me that hearing some of Kamala Harris's policy proposals and how, before, she would have taken some of them at face value as good ideas. Now, she says she's thinking more critically about them.
Brian Reed
Hmm. How are they doing these days?
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Yeah, the last time I spoke to them, they really did seem to be in a better place. I think on the surface, it seemed like their problem was that they'd been talking across this political divide. But their real problem was that they weren't agreeing on facts. They weren't agreeing on what was true. That's what made it so bitter.
Emily Newton
It's a huge relief. Dick and I can now agree on more or disagree based on the same information, at least.
Dick Newton
I don't feel like I'm walking on eggshells if I want to mention something to her. I mean, she's her own person. I'm not going to tell her who to vote for. And she wouldn't listen to me anyway.
Emily Newton
Now, we're on the same handbook, more or less, although he might be reading a different page than me at the time. But it's generally the same handbook.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: But I mean, agreeing on the same set of facts, being in the same book, that's only going to get you so far.
Brian Reed
Who's Dick voting for?
Dick Newton
As far as I'm concerned, I don't like Trump as a person. The way he handles himself, the things he says-- it bothers me a lot. But the one thing that I did like about him was his policies. And so I'm definitely leaning towards Trump still.
Emily Newton
OK, that's Dick's--
Dick Newton
That's my take.
Emily Newton
That's the first time that he's verbalized to me that he's thinking about voting for Trump. My heart just stopped.
Zach St. Louis
(HOST) ZACH ST. LOUIS: Emily and Dick Newton in Orange County, California.
Ira Glass
So that's Brian Reed and Zach St. Louis of the podcast Question Everything, which is produced by KCRW and Placement Theory. The story was edited by Jonathan Goldstein and Robyn Semien. Coming up, other couples muddling their way through this election using slightly more extreme tactics. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.
Act Two: Till Death Do Us Partisan
Ira Glass
It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, A Small Thing That Gives Me a Tiny Shred of Hope. OK, so it was Act One and the Tangle newsletter that inspired that name for today's episode.
Now, in the second half of the show, the thread from that story that we're going to pick up and keep pulling is what is happening with couples during this election, which is interesting, because as you probably heard, there's a real gender gap between men and women this time out. Men prefer Trump by 8 percentage points. Women prefer Harris by 9. With that, we turn to Act Two of our show. Act Two, "'Til Death Do Us Partisan."
OK, so if you remember Emily and Dick, who we heard in Act One, they talk openly between them about their political differences. One of our producers, Aviva DeKornfeld, spoke with a woman who is taking a different tactic with her husband.
Aviva DeKornfeld
It's been hard to find a time to talk with June. She's on a three-week road trip with her husband, and they have almost no time apart. So we look for little cracks in her schedule to sneak in a call.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Do you have a sense of how much time we have right now?
June
Probably about a half an hour. He's in the shower.
Aviva DeKornfeld
OK. Wow, half an hour. Long shower. Luxurious. [CHUCKLES]
June
Oh, well, he has a whole routine-- teeth and everything. [LAUGHS]
Aviva DeKornfeld
Yeah, yeah.
June
He's like a teenage girl in that way.
Aviva DeKornfeld
OK, do you mind if I record this call?
June
I don't mind, but I'm a little bit concerned about-- I don't want to get in trouble.
Aviva DeKornfeld
The trouble June's trying to avoid is an argument with her husband. They're both conservatives. But after voting Republican for her entire life, this election, June will be secretly voting for Kamala Harris. Her husband doesn't know about her plans.
June
And so that's sort of why I'm a secret voter, is because I'll vote however I want to vote. But having the conversations about it is where things get just uncomfortable.
Aviva DeKornfeld
While we talk, June is pacing around the backyard of their rental house, where her husband can't hear her. It's not like she's scared of him. She just doesn't want to fight with him, which is why we're using a pseudonym. June's not her real name.
The Harris campaign is counting on the idea that there are lots of Junes out there. They're marketing to these women specifically, sending Republicans like Liz Cheney all over the country to talk to them. And there's a whole grassroots effort of people sticking Post-It notes in public restrooms, reminding these women their vote is private.
I wondered what it was like for people in this situation. Is it really possible to keep a secret like this from the person you share a house and a life with? How do you do that? What are the consequences?
On our call, June made a point to say it wasn't always this way. She's been with her husband, who I'll call Rick, for 20 years now. They first met in an online group for single parents. June had three little kids from a previous, pretty rough marriage. Rick had two kids. And their courtship started over the phone.
June
Yes, I mean, like being in middle school. Like, you'd spend all day with your best friend in middle school and then immediately come home and get on the phone with her. We would just talk for hours and hours and hours. It just felt like the easiest, most natural connection.
Aviva DeKornfeld
By the time June and Rick actually met in real life a few months later, they were basically already a couple. A year later, they got married, and Rick raised June's kids as his own-- calls them his kids. June says Rick was totally apolitical when they met, had never voted, wasn't even registered, which did not sit right with June. She's always been very politically engaged, makes a real effort to vote in every election, not just the big ones.
Since June was a lifelong Republican, Rick also registered as a Republican. And in 2016, they both voted for Donald Trump together. But June immediately regretted it. She never liked Trump, but it felt wrong to her not to vote, and she assumed he wouldn't win anyway. After the election, June started to lean away from her political party. But Rick reached towards it. He started watching Fox News every day.
June
And it's just stirring something up inside of him that makes him afraid, or just angsty, or whatever. And it just comes bubbling out. He's not a big talker to anybody else. I'm the main person that he talks to. So I think if he talked to a lot of people, maybe I wouldn't be getting so much of it down the barrel.
But because I'm his main person, I think I get it all, because I think it makes him very anxious. Like, if you heard and believed every day that you're going to lose your freedom, you're going to lose your job, you're going to lose your way of life, all these terrible things are going to happen, I think it's natural that you would be anxious.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Does he have friends?
June
No. [CHUCKLING]
Aviva DeKornfeld
Not even one?
June
I mean, he has-- so one of the pastors at my church really likes him. But no, he doesn't really like people very much. [CHUCKLING]
Aviva DeKornfeld
Rick used to ask June about her opinion on politics. She would read articles, and he would ask her to summarize them for him. That was the dynamic. She researched and came to an opinion, and he trusted her opinions. But these days--
June
The longer that Donald Trump has been on the picture, the sort of more like him my husband becomes. Just, I'm not allowed to have my own opinions. And I'd better not vote this way or that way, or I'm going to go with you and vote, and just really getting very hostile about it.
And I guess Donald Trump just made it easier, or more acceptable, or more popular to act like that. And it's the only area where he's like that. But if we have a big confrontation about it, then it becomes everything, you know? It's just--
[DOG BARKING]
Aviva DeKornfeld
Oh, I hear a little dog in the background.
June
Yes, yes. We have the puppies with us, too. [LAUGHS]
Aviva DeKornfeld
June is having this disagreement with her husband during a moment when election coverage is nonstop. Ads are everywhere. Both campaigns are relentlessly calling and texting and emailing, all while she's stuck in a car with her husband. And this is all he wants to talk about. She said they planned this trip a year ago, when things were calm. And now, she can't believe she did this to herself. It's been very tense.
But June's got a couple strategies for dealing when politics comes up. Sometimes, she tries something called gray rocking, which is basically just being as boring as possible in conversation so Rick has nothing to seize on or react to. Other times, she tries for a classic maneuver-- the dodge.
June
I dodge a lot. No, I'm pretty good at dodging, because I'm very busy. Honey, I'm very busy making dinner. I'm very busy with the cleaning, or I have to do some work, or whatever. So I'd say maybe once every 10 days to two weeks do I let my guard down.
Aviva DeKornfeld
And when her guard drops, a fight ensues. They have a big fight every 10 days to two weeks because he keeps bringing politics up. He wants to talk to her about all this stuff. And it unsettles him when they're not on the same page. He wants her to engage. And so her refusal itself becomes a kind of fuel.
June
It ends up being very pushy, you know. Like, why aren't you talking to me? Why don't you answer me? He'll say things, and I just take the bait, you know. He'll say, you're a liberal.
Aviva DeKornfeld
And what do you say?
June
I say, I've been a conservative longer than you've been a conservative.
[LAUGHTER]
What are you talking about?
Aviva DeKornfeld
Uh-huh.
June
I am a conservative. Donald Trump stole my party. [LAUGHS]
Aviva DeKornfeld
Do you regret getting him politically engaged, given how things have turned out?
June
Totally.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Really?
June
Totally, yes.
Aviva DeKornfeld
I talked to a bunch of people like June, women who plan to vote for Kamala, but are going to all sorts of lengths to avoid telling their family and friends about it. They're all lifelong conservatives. But then, for a lot of them, January 6 crossed a red line they didn't even know they had until it happened. And now, they can't bring themselves to vote for Trump again.
I talked to one woman in Louisiana who told me her parents knew she wasn't going to vote for Trump. They assume she's going to write in another Republican, which she's happy to let them think. She said it's inconceivable to her parents that she could possibly vote for a Democrat.
Another woman in Missouri told me that once Kamala entered the race, she tried to test the waters with her family, said she was thinking that maybe she would vote for Kamala. Her family's reaction was so strong-- they said she was going to hell, that she was a communist-- that she had to backtrack. They haven't talked about it again since. I mentioned all this to June.
Aviva DeKornfeld
I've talked to a bunch of people who are in different versions of your situation, and everyone tries to avoid talking about politics with their family because they obviously want to maintain close relationships with their family. And they avoid talking about it in service of the relationship. But actually, they just can't be as close with their family as they want to be if they can't really share this part of their life with them.
June
Right. I think we sort of watch movies and TV shows where one explosive thing happens that ends up destroying a relationship or whatever it is. But I think in actuality, those kinds of deteriorations happen little by little over time. And it's these small, small things that chip away at any family relationship, or any kind of relationship. And so I think I probably just make a short-term, easy decision to avoid it. And it probably does have longer-term consequences.
Aviva DeKornfeld
I want to be clear. June and Rick still have nice parts of their marriage. They still go on their daily walks. They have those two little dogs that they both obsess over. Rick does this whole routine with the dogs during their nightly snack time, which delights June. But with the wall-to-wall election noise, politics is increasingly crowding out those other, more peaceful parts of their lives.
June
I have an older sister who's married to a like-minded man, and their relationship is just so different. There's just so much more back and forth between the two of them. And there's so much less just angst about-- she can be who she wants to be, and he's just more secure in that. She can voice her opinion. And it just doesn't ever seem like she's looking over her shoulder.
But I definitely feel like I need to look over my shoulder, obviously. I'm sitting in my backyard. [LAUGHS] I just feel like I have to look over my back shoulder, not because something necessarily bad will happen to me, but it's just too exhausting to keep explaining myself, I guess. I just don't really want to keep doing that.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Who does your husband think you're voting for?
June
[LAUGHS] I think he's afraid that I'm going to vote for Kamala. I think he has a clue that I'm a never-Trumper. But I wouldn't say he knows for 100% sure.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Tell me if this is way off base--
June
Sure.
Aviva DeKornfeld
--because I don't mean to overstep-- but it sounds kind of lonely being in a--
June
Oh, my gosh. It's terrible.
Aviva DeKornfeld
--marriage--
June
Oh, my gosh. It's terrible. Don't make me cry. [LAUGHS] Yes, he's not who I thought he was, or he's becoming somebody that-- yes, it's like I'm not fully who I am with him. And it's sad.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Yeah. Do you have a-- I don't know-- a plan for if it keeps going down this road, or do you have any red lines? Or you're just hoping, once the election is over, then you can go back to talking about other stuff?
June
Yeah, it sort of steams up and then cools off, steams up and then cools off. Yeah, I probably am not going to do anything. I mean-- I'm on the phone. I'll be done in just five minutes, OK? Yeah, it's not a fun life to talk about Donald Trump. [LAUGHS] I just want to forget about him.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Was that your husband who came out just now?
June
Yeah. [LAUGHS]
Aviva DeKornfeld
OK. Just, it sounds like you should go?
June
I should probably wrap it up, yeah.
Aviva DeKornfeld
OK, well, I'll let you go. I really appreciate you talking.
June
Sure, sure. Thank you. It was good to talk with you. Thank you.
Aviva DeKornfeld
OK.
June
All right. Bye.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Bye.
A few days after our call, I got a text from June. She was home from her trip and had gone to vote early with her daughter. She sent me a selfie of the two of them, beaming with their matching voting stickers. They both voted for Kamala.
June said she felt relieved to have cast her vote, because now, no one could take it away from her. And more than that, she actually feels excited about the prospect of a Harris presidency. She thinks she'll do a good job. After they voted, June and her daughter celebrated, hugged goodbye. And then June peeled her sticker off and went home.
Ira Glass
Aviva DeKornfeld is one of the producers of our show.
Act Three: Let Me Be Frank
Ira Glass
OK, so the biggest gap between men and women in this election is with younger voters, people under 30. An NBC News poll found that 59% of young women in that group support Harris, compared to 42% of men, which got us wondering, how is a person that age supposed to find love? Those numbers, if you are straight and under 30 and looking for somebody of the same party, they are not great. And that question brings us to Act Three of our show. Act Three, "Let Me Be Frank."
So when Aviva DeKornfeld was reaching out to couples looking for people to interview for the story that you just heard, one of the people she came across was a guy named Frank Filocomo. He's trying to navigate his way through the rocky shoals of this gender divide. So she talked to him, too, about what that's like.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Last year, Frank had a date that went exactly the way you hope a first date goes. The conversation felt easy. They made each other laugh. And at the end of the date, they said good night-- no kiss-- Frank doesn't kiss on first dates-- and went home.
Frank Filocomo
And then she was texting me right after the date-- had such a great time. When do we get to do this again? And we're exchanging ideas for what our next date is going to be. And then the morning of the second date, she messages me, and she said, I did some thinking. And I would not like to go out with you again. And--
Aviva DeKornfeld
What do you think is happening when she says that?
Frank Filocomo
Well, I didn't think. I knew what happened.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Oh. What happened?
Frank Filocomo
What happened is that I have a very unique Italian last name. If you google me, I come right up. I think I wrote, so you must have looked me up. And she said, yes. And she sent me a screenshot. And I went, ah, got it. [LAUGHS]
Aviva DeKornfeld
The thing Frank's date had discovered about him-- he's a Republican, voted for Trump twice. The screenshot was of an article he'd written for a conservative magazine.
Trying to date in deep blue New York City as a registered Republican-- perhaps unsurprisingly, not so easy. He knows better than to lead with his politics. He intentionally leaves it off his dating profile. But even so, sometimes, Frank can't even get past the texting phase and on to the actual date.
Frank Filocomo
A lot of women have said, OK, you seem great, and I'd like to meet you and go on a date. But first, who did you vote for? Or what are your politics?
Aviva DeKornfeld
Oh, really?
Frank Filocomo
And then that's when I--
Aviva DeKornfeld
What do you say?
Frank Filocomo
I say that I'm an independent thinker. And--
Aviva DeKornfeld
[LAUGHS] That's really coded as right-wing.
Frank Filocomo
Exactly. And--
Aviva DeKornfeld
You might as well just say, I voted for Donald Trump.
Frank Filocomo
Yeah, and I have.
Aviva DeKornfeld
And then what do they say?
Frank Filocomo
They say, well, I can't do it. Can't do it.
Aviva DeKornfeld
By Frank's estimate, 40 to 50 women have canceled their dates with him upon discovering his politics. Having been born and raised in Brooklyn, Frank has this sort of odd problem on his hands, because he basically fits in, unless he's talking.
Frank Filocomo
Everyone I've ever met has told me that they think I'm some Bernie progressive. I strike people as being left-wing.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Yeah. Well, you live in Brooklyn. And you have little glasses, so.
Frank Filocomo
I have little glasses and holes in my ears.
Aviva DeKornfeld
He used to have gauges. He also has a bunch of tattoos. He's a real mix of things. He's got some punk in him. But he's also nerdy, casually says words like "verklempt" and "pugilistic." But you can't see any of his edge today. Came straight from his job at a right-wing nonprofit, so he's in his full conservative drag-- suit, tie, token fun socks.
Frank's been a conservative since he was little. He grew up in a right-leaning household and proudly wore a McCain-Palin button on his backpack at school when he was 11. The main thing that makes Frank a conservative these days, he says, is that national sovereignty is extremely important to him, meaning he thinks we should close the border, build a wall if we need to, anything to discourage undocumented immigrants from coming here.
Otherwise, basically, he's one of those fiscally conservative, socially liberal guys. But his dates mostly care about that conservative part. He remembers this one first date that really kind of stung because he was particularly excited about her. They were at a bar, bantering back and forth.
Frank Filocomo
And then she said, so what do you do for work? And there's kind of no way around that, you know? I could be super ambiguous and say, oh, I work for a nonprofit.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Yeah.
Frank Filocomo
But then that lends itself to, OK, well, which nonprofit?
Aviva DeKornfeld
Yeah, that can mean anything.
Frank Filocomo
Right.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Frank told her he worked for a branch of the famously conservative outlet The National Review, where he occasionally writes. His date thought he meant The Nation, which is kind of the opposite.
Frank Filocomo
And then I clarified, no, a little different.
Aviva DeKornfeld
How would you describe the difference?
Frank Filocomo
I said we're more on the right, [CHUCKLES] which is my euphemistic way of saying we're conservative, because we are. And I said that. And immediately, her whole demeanor changed.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Like, what? She leans back in her chair or something?
Frank Filocomo
Yeah. Yup, yup. Body language changed. And she said, well, so you're a conservative.
Aviva DeKornfeld
They were only 20 minutes into the date and decided to call it a night.
Frank Filocomo
I actually planned on walking her out or walking her to the train station. And so I said, OK, let me get the bill. And I go up to the bar to get the bill. And then I came back, and she was gone.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Frank thought maybe she'd gone to the bathroom. But his date had scooted to the bar and arrived with a helmet. Frank noticed the helmet was also gone.
Frank Filocomo
I'm thinking, I don't think she took her helmet to the bathroom. But I said, let me give it a few minutes, you know. And I gave it a few minutes, and I said, she left.
It does hurt. And when I say this to people, I don't mean to make it into a pity thing. It's not like this is being-- conservative is some immutable characteristic, right? I don't want people to feel bad for me. But it does hurt, because to me, it's like, who am I? So I'm 27. After 27 years of existence, if my identity boils down to being a conservative and a registered Republican, then that's a sad 27 years that I've lived. That's really sad.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Frank's a registered Republican. But to him, that's the least interesting thing about him. Here are some things that Frank would like people to know about him. He plays jazz guitar. He has a very old cat, 17 years old, who is still in remarkably good health. He's also obsessed with aquariums. He has four of them in his studio apartment.
The stuff that Frank thinks should matter is the way you comport yourself in the world. Are you polite to wait staff? Do you hold the door for people? Do you check in on your friends when they're sick? Most of a relationship, he says, is not about politics. And so he wants the women he dates to see those other parts of him, not be blinded by his party affiliation.
So he's tried various tactics over the years to get around it-- downplaying, addressing it head on and making a case for himself. Once, since women kept googling him and finding his writing, he even gave a fake last name.
Frank Filocomo
But that made me feel terrible about myself.
Aviva DeKornfeld
So it wasn't worth doing that?
Frank Filocomo
Yeah, that's no way to go through life.
Aviva DeKornfeld
I asked Frank, why not just date conservative women? He insisted the conservative dating pool in New York City is simply too small. There's a filter on the dating app Hinge that you can pay for that does let you filter for political preference. He did try that once.
Frank Filocomo
And I realized that it was meaningless, you know?
Aviva DeKornfeld
Hmm.
Frank Filocomo
I'm attracted to people for other reasons. In fact, I would put politics probably at the end.
Aviva DeKornfeld
What?
Frank Filocomo
Yeah.
Aviva DeKornfeld
That's crazy!
Frank Filocomo
Why is that crazy?
Aviva DeKornfeld
Because the thing that should be at the end is, like, "my favorite color is green."
Frank Filocomo
That's more important.
Aviva DeKornfeld
No, it's not.
Frank Filocomo
It absolutely is more important.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Why?
Frank Filocomo
Well, I'm tempted to push it back on you and say, why is politics important? It's not important. I don't think so at all, actually.
Aviva DeKornfeld
Yeah, but do you think that politics is less important to you because some of the policies that you might be voting for directly impact you in a less personal way than they impact the women that you want to date?
Frank Filocomo
Oh, maybe. I think that's part of it. And I have a lot of empathy for people who are impacted more directly. But I think that I look at my day-to-day life, and I'll walk through a door and someone-- or I'll hold the door for someone, and they'll walk through and they won't say thank you. And I go, what was that? What was that about? It's stuff like that, little interpersonal interactions, that mean something to me, you know? Or--
Aviva DeKornfeld
But to you, but not to the people that you're dating. I'm sure the women you're dating would be much-- it's much more important to them to be able to get an abortion than have a door held for them.
Frank Filocomo
Oh, sure. But I'm one out of 340 million people. I'm not effectuating policy or something.
Aviva DeKornfeld
I can see why his dates don't see it that way.
I have some news to end this story with, which is that, after dozens of dates, Frank is actually seeing someone. It's new, but it seems to be going well. She's a lefty, and she knows all about his views. Politics actually came up on their first date.
It's been a few months now, and they've had a lot of conversations about politics. Frank told me his girlfriend's voting for Kamala Harris. And the idea that Frank might vote for Trump, that really, really bothers her. Recently, with the election coming up, they had one particularly hard conversation about it.
Frank Filocomo
She said, we care for each other, and we obviously enjoy being around each other. And we have, for the past four or five months, however long it's been. And I don't think-- she said that she doesn't think it's a deal-breaker for her, but it's something that concerns her, you know? And I don't take that lightly. So it's made me do a lot of thinking.
Aviva DeKornfeld
And what'd you say?
Frank Filocomo
I said that I want you to know that I hear you. It was emotional. I think we were both a little verklempt.
Aviva DeKornfeld
His girlfriend kept saying, Trump's a rapist. You've got to vote for the whole person, not just the policies you like. These conversations with his girlfriend and other people have actually moved him. And so Frank is thinking of voting third party this election, which may have more meaning in his relationship than it does for our country, thanks to the fucking electoral college. Like most of us, Frank doesn't live in a swing state.
Ira Glass
Aviva DeKornfeld. We first heard about Frank in a story in The Guardian.
["VOTE!" BY THE LINDA LINDAS]
Credits
Ira Glass
Well, our program was produced today by Bim Adewunmi. The people who put together today's show include Jendayi Bonds, Zoe Chace, Michael Comite, Henry Larson, Tobin Low, Katherine Rae Mondo, Stowe Nelson, Nadia Reiman, Ryan Rumery, Frances Swanson, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu.
Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emanuele Berry. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.
Just a heads-up to our Life Partners, there is a new bonus episode this week that's out that you will find in your feed. Everybody else, if you want to sign up and get this bonus content and other stuff, go to thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners. Thanks this week to Life Partners Kelly Darnell, Ken Erwin, Lauren Cahill Fitzsimmons, Lawrence Lin, Rob Nero, Laurel Paul, and Jeanie Thomas. Thank you, guys.
Thanks, as always, to our program's confounder, Mr. Torey Malatia-- always comparing himself to Mr. Potato Head.
Frank Filocomo
I have little glasses and holes in my ears.
Ira Glass
I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.
["VOTE!" BY THE LINDA LINDAS]