845: A Small Thing That Gives Me a Tiny Shred of Hope

A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. Okay, 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 Show, a grandma selfie party.

It's two different visions of reality that seem doomed to never reconcile. And maybe this isn't 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's crazy or has they'll intend. 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, well, 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's 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, Robin Semyon. Robin produces the show, Brian hosts it. And they did a story about somebody doing this. And Brian knows how I have kind of a BMI 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. Like 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 WB Easy Chicago. This is American Life. I'm Aaron Glass. Stay with us.

It's this American life at one, a tiny thing that gives me hope. Okay, 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, and 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 the first met decades ago, here's a Republican, she was, she says, a bleeding heart liberal, but it wasn't a big deal. And then that changed. Here's Brian, with one of the producers of Question Everything, Zach St. Louis.

So Zach, you're the one who's gotten a note that can emulate this couple that was fighting over the news, right? 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 to second marriage, both of them. They fell in love singing hymns together in the choir at church. She's an alto. He's a bass. That's sweet. Where do they live? They live in Orange County, California. Okay.

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. 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, um, Briebert News or... Briebert, is that what you mean? Briebert, that's it. Yeah, Briebert. Or, um, Epic Times. She knew those were really right, leaning and wasn't really interested. I was the same way with her. She found something on Atlantic or New York Times or Washington Post.

It doesn't trust anything, no matter what it is. It comes from the New York Times, the Washington Post. The Atlantic. The Atlantic. MSNBC. CNN. CNN is another. It doesn't matter what they're saying. He just automatically dismisses. Well, they develop their own education. Okay. I realize we are not reading from the same hymnal here.

So they told me that they started arguing a lot more when Trump came on the political scene. Dick supported Trump. I'm only furiously did not. But then it was after election day in 2020 when they had one of their biggest disagreements. 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.

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. 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 2000 mules. Have you heard of it? I've heard of it. Yes. I've had people talk to me about it as I've been reporting, basically.

Yeah, so this movie, 2000 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 Denis de Sousa. He's a right-wing political commentator. All right, what's the gist? 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. Philadelphia alone, we've identified more than 1,100 mules.

So there are 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. But that's not real surveillance footage or... It is real surveillance footage, but it's showing people just dropping off ballots legally. And they're scary music under it. They're scary music, scary voice over. We are not a democracy. We are a criminal cartel masquerading as a democracy.

And when Dick watched it, like a lot of people, he thought it seemed really plausible. 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. 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. And also he's watching the president, President Trump, say over and over again that the election was fraudulent and had been stolen from him. 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. Did that feel different from other arguments or disagreements you'd had about non-political things over your marriage?

It did because there was no give and take. We can argue about what we're going to spend our money on. 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's no resolution. How did that feel? Frustrating.

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.

She wouldn't talk to me. She basically just, I don't want to talk about it. I would try, but it just, 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 the politics was important enough to jeopardize what she and I had together. Did you feel like that it could do that? The politics could jeopardize it? Yes. I really did, I think. What did I get myself into here? Maybe I did something I shouldn't have done. What's the mistake you're talking about? Having someone that was so far left that I couldn't live with.

Oof. 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. We were both looking for some sort of, I don't want to say neutral, but impartial, new source. 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. They started reading different online news sources that branded themselves as being unbiased, plant-free, that kind of thing. Interesting.

And then they finally landed on something. It was a newsletter. Dick seemed to like it OK. So did Emily. We both agreed. Oh, yes, let's read Tangle. Tangle. Yes, that's the newsletter. All right, so tell me about it.

It's this daily newsletter comes to your email. It's like a sub stack 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? So that's what the newsletter is, like it's just like, here's this topic, here are a few stories from the left, here are a few stories from the right. Yeah, so you can actually read what those arguments are.

I think probably the first thing that astounded me was the transparency. That when they make a mistake, they corrected it as soon as they realize it and they put it right up front.

How is that different than corrections in a newspaper? 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. They'll be like a little footnote. Actually, we got this wrong. It's been changed above. We were got the error in like little print italics at the bottom. Tangles approach to corrections. It's a bit different. Can you show me? Yes.

This is from August 21st, and at the very, very top, the very first thing that you see is correction period in big letters. 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 an italics right below that. This is our 114th correction in Tangle's 263 week history and our first correction since August 13th. We track corrections and place them at the top of the newsletter in an effort to maximize transparency with readers. So this is different than a newspaper, I see. Yeah. What else did Dick and Emily notice about Tangle?

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. 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. We would still argue, but with less emotion about it. And then we loved Isaac's take.

What's Isaac's take? So Isaac's take Isaac refers to Isaac Saul. He's the founder and writer of the newsletter. 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. Wait, do you have an example of this? Yeah, here I'll send one to you. We can look at it.

All right, this was earlier this month. Hurricane Helene and the disaster relief efforts. 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. Yeah, this is long. Wow. 2,200 words I looked. It's like a whole essay. But what's this take on Hurricane Helene?

Yeah, so before we get to his take, I think you need to understand what he's responding to here. There've 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. Like actually nothing.

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 better be prepared to tell me exactly what I've gotten wrong here. And then he goes on for several more paragraphs. Oh, wow, interesting. I can feel his resentment at having to defend the Democratic administration.

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. Right. And this part of the newsletter was something that Dick and Emily really came to appreciate. 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.

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 2000 mules. He read all of those conspiracies about it. 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 proved to him that the 2020 election had not been stolen.

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.

It's incredibly fulfilling, to be honest. This is Isaac's song. He's the guy who writes Tangle. Yes. 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 like 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.

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 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. And you're saying Tangle did it. In this case, Tangle did it. Yeah, for Dick, Tangle did it. All right, so how did Tangle do this? How did Isaac, the guy who runs this, do this?

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 a new claim surface in the years since. But a lot of new sources have done this. You know, 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? 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. Some of the stuff was really convincing and proving that they were wrong was not as simple as saying like, oh, this is just like conspiracy nonsense. Like the ballot stuffing thing, that was a plausible way to steal an election. In 2022, he actually dedicated an entire newsletter, a deep dive into 2000 mules, that movie we were talking about.

So when that movie came out and everybody just like laughs at Denis de Sousa, I was kind of like, I'm going to watch it and like take some of these allegations seriously and see what's up. It turned out they're all bullshit, but like you only know that if you actually do some of the work. Can I actually just read you what he wrote at the top of that newsletter? Yeah, please. So the title of the newsletter is an honest look at 2000 fuels, 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. Interesting. Okay. So that's the presentation difference you're talking about.

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, 2000 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. After reading his article, what I realized was, and he even admitted there was 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.

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 new source that the Trump MAGA bro will trust and the left wing Bernie bro will trust.

What was the like origin story for Tangle, for Isaac? Like, he was a reporter before this? 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.

The idea for Tangle basically came from the Trump era of like Trump proposes a border wall and I'm like, he's like proposing a 2000 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 like 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 of our watch John Oliver. And then I'll spend like an hour on some Tucker Carlson special about it.

And then I'll do like 10 hours of all this consuming the news and I'll sit down and I'll be like, okay, 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.

Do you know who's reading the newsletter? 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. Wow, so pretty evenly politically split. 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. Like who? I met this one guy at like 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 liked Dick. How does mine changed about the 2020 election?

I think that Donald Trump was telling me the truth that they had firm evidence that it was definitely manipulation of the ballots.

This is a guy named Rick. Wait, Rick and Dick? Rick and Dick. Okay. Both Richard, if you want to be technical about it. Got it. Go on. 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 sun started forwarding Rick the newsletter, including issues that were about the stolen election claims. They weren't just laughing at off. I have a trust in their news gathering and presentation abilities.

Ted and shoulders above any other news gathering source. I have a trust level there that's unequaled. 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. Really? Yeah, the only reason I wouldn't vote for him because he made me look foolish in front of my son.

You know, Zach, you mentioned the importance of striking the right tone when we're presenting evidence, especially evidence that's like contrary to what someone believes. And that does seem important, but also, you know, just hearing the story of Rick and his son alongside the story of Dick and Emily, his wife, like I do just wondered, 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?

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. 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.

Yeah, I mean, obviously it would make for a better story if they each move toward the center. I think that's sort of met in the middle, 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.

How does Emily say it changed her? Like does she say it changed her? 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 was good ideas. Now she says she's thinking more critically about them. Hmm. How are they doing these days?

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've 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. It's a huge relief. Dick and I can now agree on more or disagree based on the same information at least.

I don't feel like I'm walking on age shelves 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. Now we're on the same him book more or less. Although he may might be reading a different page than me at the time, but it's generally the same him book. But I mean, agreeing on the same set of facts being in the same book. That's only going to get you so far. Who's dick voting for? You know, 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. Okay, that's Dix. That's my take. That's the first time that he's verbalized to me that he's thinking about voting for Trump. My heart just stopped.

Emily and Dick Newton in Orange County, California. So that's Brian Reed and Zach St. Louis of the podcast and question everything, which is produced by KCRW and placement theory, which was edited by Jonathan Goldstein and Robin Simeon. Coming up, other couples by doing their way through this election using slightly more extreme tactics. That's an amendment from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

American life from Ira Glass. Today's program. A small thing that gives me a tiny shred of hope.

Okay, so it was Act 1 and the Tangled 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, till death do us partisan. Okay, 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 de Cornfeld, spoke with a woman who is taking a different tactic with her husband.

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 our schedule to sneak in a call. Do you have a sense of how much time we have right now? About a half an hour. He's in the shower. Okay. Wow, half an hour. Long shower. Luxury. Well, he has a whole routine, you know, teeth and everything. Yeah, yeah. It's like a teenage girl in that way.

Okay, do you mind if I record this call? I don't mind, but I'm a little bit, you know, concerned about, you know, I don't want to get in trouble. 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.

So I really just, 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, you know, get so comfortable. 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 juns 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.

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.

By the time Jun 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 Jun's kids as his own. It calls him 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. And it's destroying something up inside of him that makes him afraid or just like angsty or whatever, and

like it just comes bubbling out. Like 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, you know, 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. Does he have friends? No. Not even one? I mean, he has so one of the pastors at my church really likes them, but no, I really like people very much.

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 a dynamic. She researched and came to an opinion and he trusted her opinions. But these days, the longer that Donald Trump has been on the picture, the sort of more like him, my husband becomes, you know, just, I'm not allowed to have my own opinions and

You know, I better not vote this way or that way or, you know, I'm going to go with you and vote. And, you know, 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 that's the only area where he's like that.

But if we have a big confrontation about it, then it becomes everything. It's just a little dog in the background. Yes, yes, we have to be supposed to.

June is having this disagreement with her husband during a moment when election coverage is non-stop. 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. 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, you know, with cleaning or I have to do some work or whatever. So I'd say maybe

I think he wants every 10 days to two weeks. Do I let my guard down? And when her guard drops, a fight ensues. They have a big fight every 10 days to two weeks because it 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.

It ends up being very pushy, you know? Like, why aren't you talking to me? Why aren't you so mean? Like, he'll say things and I just take the bait, you know? He'll say like, you're a liberal. What do you say? I say, I've been a conservative longer than you've been a conservative. Like, what are you talking about? Like, I am a conservative. Donald Trump stole my party.

Do you regret getting him politically engaged, given how things have turned out? Totally. Really? Totally, yeah.

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 assumed she was 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. And they haven't talked about it again since. I mentioned all this to June.

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 it's 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.

Right. I think, like, we sort of watch movies and TV shows where, like, one sort of explosive thing happens that ends up, you know, destroying a relationship or whatever it is. But I think in actuality, those kinds of deterioration happens little by little over time and it's these small, small things that chip away at

you know, 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 that probably does have longer term consequences.

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. I'm an older sister who's married to a like-minded man.

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 like she can be who she wants to be. And he's more secure in that, you know, 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 on the bed going. I just feel like I have to look over my back shoulder, not because something necessarily bad will happen to me, but just like it's just too exhausting to keep explaining myself, I guess. I just don't really want to keep doing that. Who does your husband think you're voting for? I think he's off.

I think he's afraid. I'm going to vote for Kamala. You know, I think he has a clue that I'm a never-trumper, but, um, I wouldn't say it like he knows for a hundred percent sure. Tell me if this is like way off base. Um, because I don't mean to overstep, but it's, it sounds kind of lonely. Oh my gosh, it's terrible. Oh my gosh. It's, it's terrible. Don't make me cry. Yes. 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. Yeah. Do you have a, I don't know, like a plan for if it keeps going down this road or is there, do you have any red lines or you're just hoping, you know, once the election's over, then you can go back to talking about other stuff. Yeah, it sort of like 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. Okay. Um, yeah, it's not, uh, it's not like a fun life to talk about Donald Trump. I just want to forget about them. Was that your husband who came out? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It just sounds like you should go. Oh, I should probably wrap it up. Yeah. Okay. Well, um, I'll let you go. I really appreciate you talking. Sure. Sure. Thank you. It was good to talk with you. Thank you. Okay. All right. Bye. 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. If Eva de Kornfeld is one of the producers of our show.

Okay, so the biggest gap between men and women in this election is with the younger voters, people under 30. And 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 3 of our show. Act 3, let me be frank. So when Aviva de Cornfield 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 Filicomo. He's trying to navigate his way through the rocky shows of this gender divide. So she talked to him too about what that's like.

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.

And then we were texting, 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's gonna 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. What do you think's happening when she says that? Well, I didn't think, I knew what happened. Oh, what happened?

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.

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 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, non to the actual date. A lot of women have said, okay, you know, you seem great and I'd like to meet you and go on a date, but first, you know, who did you vote for? Or what are your politics? Oh, really? And then that's when I... What do you say?

You know, I say that I'm an independent thinker. That's really coded as right wing. Exactly. You might as well just say, I voted for Donald Trump. And I have. And then what are they saying? They say, well, I can't do it. Can't do it. 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. Everyone I've ever met has told me that they think I'm some Bernie progressive. I strike people as being left wing. Yeah, we live in Brooklyn and you have little glasses, so. I have little glasses and holes in my ears. You step 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 for clamped 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, and 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, the really kind of stung, because he was particularly excited about her. They were at a bar, bantering back and forth. And then she said, so what do you do for work?

And there's kind of no way around that. I could say I could be super ambiguous and say, oh, I work for a nonprofit. But then that lends itself to, OK, well, which nonprofit? Yeah, that can mean anything. Frank told her he worked for a branch of the famously conservative outlet, the National Review, where he occasionally writes his date that he meant the nation, which is kind of the opposite. And I clarified, no, a little different. How do you describe the difference?

I said, we're more on the right, which is my euphemistic way of saying we're conservative, because we are. And I said that, and immediately her whole demeanor changed. Like, well, she leans back in her chair. Yeah, yep, yep. Body language changed. And she said, well, so you're a conservative. They were only 20 minutes into the date and decided to call it a night. I actually planned on walking her out or walking her to the train station.

And so I said, okay, 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. Frank thought maybe she'd gone to the bathroom, but his date had scooter to the bar and arrived with a helmet. Frank noticed the helmet was also gone. 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's not, 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 as 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 after 27 years, 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.

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 can port 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. Downplane, 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. But that made me feel terrible about myself. I can't do that. Yeah, that's no way to go through life.

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. And I realized that it was meaningless, you know. I'm attracted to people for other reasons. In fact, I would put politics probably at the end. What? Yeah.

That's crazy. Why is that crazy? Because the thing that should be at the end is like my favorite color is green. That's more important. No, it's not. It absolutely is more important. Why? 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. Yeah, but do you think that politics is less important to you because

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. 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, you know, I look at my day-to-day life and, you know, 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?

You know, it's stuff like that little interpersonal interactions that mean something to me, you know, or. 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. Oh, sure. But I'm one out of 340 million people. I'm not effectuating policy or something. 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, the election coming up, they had one particularly hard conversation about it.

She said, you know, 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, you know, 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. What'd you say?

I said that I, you know, I want you to know that I hear you. It was emotional. I think we were both a little verklempt. 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.

You can't just sit on the side While you're just wasting our time You can't just wait and see Gotta make a difference for you I'm right Oh yeah, if you don't speak, you'll never be heard So get on your feet And jump on the feet Gotta vote

As you're right, you gotta vote! You gotta vote! You gotta vote! Vote! Vote! For you and me!

Well, a program was produced today by BIM Adawunmi. People who put together today's show include Jindai Yibon, Zoe Chase, Michael Kamate, Henry Garson, Tobin Low, Katherine Raymondo, Stonelson, Nadia Raymond, Ryan Rumory, Frances Swanson, Christopher Sotara, Matt Tierney, Julie Woodiger, and Diane Wu, our managing editor, Sara Abderaman, our senior editors, David Kestenbaum, our executive editor, is Emmanuel Berry.

This American Life is to live in the 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 slash life partners. Thanks this week to Life Partners, Kelly Darnell, Ken Erwin, Lauren Cahill Fitzsimons, Lawrence Lynn, Rob Nero, Laurel Paul, and Jeannie Thomas. Thank you guys.

Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Troy Mountatea, always comparing himself to Mr. Potato Head. I have little glasses and holes in my ears. American Glass, back next week, with more stories of this American life. You've got to vote! If that fight you've got to vote! Make a choice, you've got to vote! Vote! Vote! We'll join the team! When we turn left in...

Next week on the podcast of This American Life, so many people this year personally feel like this election is up to them. They've been convincing family members who to vote for their monitoring election sites, their canvassing, their fighting lawsuits. This week we watch them push to complete their missions. And we hear from some of the people who president Trump has vowed retribution against about how they feel about the results. That's next week on the podcast or your local public radio station.