WKNC's Brain Trust

(Host) Lucas 00:13
Good time of day everyone and welcome to the third episode of WKNC, his newest podcast Wk and C's brain trust. My name is Lucas and I'll be your host with almost the most as I tackle introspective topics with my guests, and occasionally fingers crossed to get lucky with a good joke. For today's episode, we will be talking about political polarization. And I have two guests here that I have met at a club here on campus called Bridge USA, a free of hate speech political discussion club that I highly recommend. But before we get into that, I'd like to introduce myself a little bit more. My name is Lucas, I'm from Long Island, New York, and I'm a member of the freshman class of 2026. Here at State. As I've said, I'm super excited to be hosting this podcast, and I am even more excited to be introducing our guests for the episode, guests. Number one, do us a favor and tell us a little bit about yourself.

(Guest) David 01:10
Hello, everyone. My name is David Olshinski. I'm a political science major here at NC State. I'm also a senior. Currently I'm the president of bridge USA and evolve with alpha omega as the recruitment chairman.

(Host) Lucas 01:23
Wonderful, thank you for calling. Thank you for coming, David. Thank you for introducing yourself. I'm looking forward to the discussion we have today. Now guest number two, do us a favor and introduce yourself.

(Guest) Ben 01:35
Thank you for having me on board Lucas. My name is Benjamin Guadarrama. I'm a finance major over at BU College of Management, involved in Bridge USA and also with lifestyle omega.

(Host) Lucas 01:47
Amazing. So we have our two fantastic guests here today. And we have our amazing topic picked by yours truly. Today's topic, they know it. Today's topic is political polarization. We are going to be talking about why as a country today as a society, why we are so politically polarized. So to dive right in, I'd like to pose our first question. Would you say our country is dangerously polarized? And why? Ben, I'd love to hear from you first.

(Guest) Ben 02:26
Yes, I'll say our country is polarized yet to what degree people can differ on that. I don't believe it's dangerously polarized. But it is polarized at no other point in history, as opposing political police beauty each other so negatively. The Pew Research Center has an outstanding survey. They compared that from one year ago, to a couple of decades ago. And from that trend, we can see that both parties are starting to view each other more more negatively as time goes on.

(Host) Lucas 02:55
That's an excellent response. Ben. Now, why would you say just just as a basic kind of initial thought, Why would you say you think that is the case? Why do you think people are viewing each other more and more negatively?

(Guest) Ben 03:09
Right off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of reasons. The first main one being social media, it learns our, our habits of what we like and what we dislike. And as it captivates us and wants to draw us in deeper, it's going to feed more of our extremes, whether that be our personal biases, or our political beliefs, whatever it shows, it's going to pull us more to the extreme.

(Host) Lucas 03:29
I would definitely agree social media can be rough. Now, David, would you say our country is dangerously polarized, and why?

(Guest) David 03:38
So our country is not dangerously polarized yet. However, it is increasingly getting there. So as Ben said, with the Pew Research Center, you can see that Congress is definitely more polarized than ever. So in the 1990s, there used to be people that are Democrats considered on the right. There's also people that are Republicans considered on the left of the spectrum. Also, everyday people are saying that they refuse to be friends with the opposite political party. And as Ben said, this can be attributed to social media, but more, more specifically, the spread of misinformation and hate on those platforms.

(Host) Lucas 04:13
Excellent. David, thank you for sharing. I'm glad you guys agree on the fact that social media can do us some harm. We all know that algorithms on social media can be dangerous, although they show us what we want to see that can sometimes be difficult for polarization stances. Because social media will really it'll just it'll show you what you want to see. Sometimes you never see the other side. You never learn about the other side. But while we are still on the topic of social media, do you think that there are any other ways that social media may negatively impact the let's say polarization level of our political landscape here in America?

(Guest) Ben 04:55
Right off the top of my head, I can think of two different ways social media can also negatively factors besides learning your habits and feeding you what you already like. One is naturally people are going to be more drawn towards figures and Euro with their own political beliefs, while their dose views be more extreme. And as they get bold to those extreme people, they're going to be engaged in your market and be surrounded more by their own thoughts. As such, they're going to enter an echo chamber, or anything inside the chamber is right. Anything outside must be wrong.

(Guest) David 05:26
Yeah, building off what Ben said, the arguments on social media comments, continue to get more post reach with that people are emotional creatures and are inclined to comment when they see something emotionally charging.

(Host) Lucas 05:38
Yeah, I definitely agree. People, people love a good fight, especially on on social media, good things can get heated quite quickly. And I'm glad that you brought up the fact that people are emotional. Okay. They like what they like, they don't like what they don't like. So do you think that because of the fact that we are so polarized that contributes to the fact that people don't want to see things that they don't like, just because of the fact that we are so polarized that we've gone past the point, like, I want to say that point of no return, but we've gone past that point where people are willing to the other side. And just because of the fact we're so polarized, do you think that contributes to how people react to things on social media?

(Guest) David 06:24
Yeah, so definitely, human nature contributes to that, right. Um, everybody in time has hated each other. There, you can see polarization, way back in the past, however, it's not as bad as it is today. There's definitely periods of time where they increase in polarization, but also polarization decreases. So because of that human nature, I believe that social media arguments exist, and continually do so. Yeah, um, so it's almost like a snowball, right? Once we get a little bit polarized, it's just gonna keep getting bigger and bigger. But someone's gonna have to have enough G force to stop it.

(Host) Lucas 06:59
So I had I really liked the the snowball analogy. But have you ever seen the movie G force? Like, have you ever seen that movie?

(Guest) David 07:07
I have not.

(Host) Lucas 07:09
Now, the ones with the hamsters in it?

(Guest) David 07:11
Oh, okay. Actually, I have seen that.

(Guest) Ben 07:13
I've seen it when I was looking at I watched it on repeat.

(Host) Lucas 07:16
Now there's those movies. It's actually funny, because the first episode of the show I talked about, we talked about like nostalgia. So I talked about Megamind. That was my move like that. So I just wanted to bring that up, because I liked that movie.

(Guest) Ben 07:28
Rango was a good one.

(Host) Lucas 07:30
It was so good. But to get us back on track, obviously, you know, we gotta have a little branch off every once in awhile. But um, I like that it was a good response. But I will pose our next question to Ben, what other societal factors do you believe contribute to political polarization? Like, because we've talked about social media, we all know that, you know, social media, it's a, it's a hole, you just if you don't put down the shovel, you're gonna keep digging, and it's gonna go deeper and deeper, deeper, or like the snowball, like David said, it's going to keep rolling and it's going to bigger, bigger, bigger, and then eventually, G force is going to have to stop the snowball at some point. But do you think there are any other factors in society? Because there? I'm sure there are but or do you think you could name any other factors that we might be able to talk about?

(Guest) Ben 08:14
Now, definitely, the first one that pops off, right, the top of my head would be, I'd say a change in values, not only amongst generations, but also across, like, where people live, which in groups, people identify themselves with you and I we could hold different values now could also form our political beliefs, which, to some degree is a good thing and a bad thing. I believe that exasperates our polarization, because if I see if I believe somebody else has a different belief, I'm just gonna go, oh, they must have different values than me, when in actuality, we could hold the exact same values, but just go about in different ways.

(Host) Lucas 08:53
That's definitely really interesting. Would you mind expanding on that a little bit?

(Guest) Ben 08:59
What part of it?

(Host) Lucas 09:02
Like how would somebody go about things in a different way? Like, if I value, let's say, like, if I if I value, let's say money, the same way that you do? How could we because I know you're I know you're a finance guy. So how if I value money the same way that you do, how would it explain how would how would that like show in going about it in different ways? If it's not just different values

(Guest) Ben 09:27
of stay on topic with like the finance that we could easily talk about monetary policy and how we should and how people would treat a welfare differently. If that could come back to like a set of values that people already hold predetermined? Lee how much they want to help somebody? How much do you believe the government should help when compared to the surrounding community?

(Host) Lucas 09:46
Okay, I see now. Thank you for elaborating on that. And, David, anything else in society, I think might be a heavy contributing factor to our polarization because we talked about our values, and we'll definitely come back to values. But this one established some other other topics we can mention before we move on.

(Guest) David 10:05
Yeah, so if we talk about geographic isolation, people in the cities versus people in the country, oftentimes, people in the city are more liberal people in the country are more conservative, and actually creates identity group politics within that. So I'm definitely your location, and off that the values.

(Host) Lucas 10:23
So David's for maybe some of our listeners who don't understand what I identity politics are, would you mind shedding some light on that? And maybe explaining a little bit?

Unknown Speaker 10:33
Yeah, so identity politics is essentially an approach where people of a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, background, develop a political agenda. For example, let's say if I was a very religious Christian, I would center my values around that, and have a political agenda to promote

(Host) Lucas 10:52
I thank you for explaining that. I appreciate it. Ben, do you have anything else to say on that?

(Guest) Ben 11:02
Staying on the topic of identity politics, I'm gonna point it to myself for a very unique and interesting example. Honestly, I'm a practitioner of the Jewish faith, I'm of Mexican descent, I was raised in the country here in the south. So while some people may look at certain facets, individually, Hispanic, Jewish, and like, already assume I'm gonna have a predetermined political belief just based off that, I believe that that is a factor. Working into polarization, people work themselves into different in groups, just because of what they were born into or raised into.

(Host) Lucas 11:37
So thank you guys for elaborating on identity politics for the people out there...me who really doesn't get it all that much, or maybe just needed a little bit more clarification. So thank you for that. wonderful examples of identity politics, just to help us understand here at WKNC is brain just because we have the biggest of brains, and we trust in them. So like I said earlier, we're gonna jump quickly back into values. So jumping back into values, Ben, do you have anything else that you'd like to say?

(Guest) Ben 12:10
Really on values, going back to how it polarizes us. It's essentially how we hold them differently. Those values are affected by a multitude of subjects where we ourselves, our personal experience, our immediate family, May and even our culture that were raised in, we could we all hold the same values we wish hold them to different degrees, you could hold a value of, I guess you'd say freedom from the government, how many regulations and laws there should be? We hold the same values, but to different degrees, those values being not only regulatory, and the regulatory environment, personal values about like life and marriage, but also public values, but how involved somebody has to be in their public community, whether it be serving as a volunteer first responder, all the way over to education.

Unknown Speaker 12:56
Yeah, Ben, one of my biggest values is education. I love to promote fair education to all students. However, many ways party polarization can contribute to unfair education. I've encountered many liberal or conservative professors that blend their personal opinions with the facts being taught some others and most that I've taken, which I'm very fortunate keep their own opinions out of their teaching. This allows students to create their own opinion and a term be a better citizen at the polls.

(Host) Lucas 13:23
Right, I actually had a similar situation with one of my high school teachers. And it was the worst two because this was like the last period of the day. So nobody wanted to hear what they had to say. But they always, always, always, always had something to say, every single day, something new to start the class that wasn't related to the class at all. And they just, not only did they kind of force their own opinions on us as students, little us earn a little impressionable student minds. But not only did they they force their opinions on us, basically every day. Were those opinions, some of the just some of the wackiest opinions I've ever heard. Just really outlandish kind of stuff that just really makes you think, like, should this person be teaching? Because I mean, I've also encountered another teacher that may be a little less extreme of an example. But definitely more direct of an example, I'd say, is actually in a government class that I took. So it's very easy for teachers in government classes to teach. It will teach us government classes to have biases that slipped through every once in a while, but my migrant teacher would like he would show us he'd show us like, CNN top five things to look out for like every day they release a top five thing to look out for which is a really great resource for anybody looking to kind of get into the world of politics, like just get a little taste of it. They'll give you like a top five things going on in the news right now. And they'll give you a little short summaries of it and you would show us that And then he would explain it using something from like Fox News, or some other completely opposite source. I mean, it could be seen as a good thing. But the way he did it, it was just it was really obvious that he only showed us the CNN sources because he, like needed to not like the school and maybe somebody must have complained. Because he it really showed he really didn't want to do the CNN source. He really he only would ever show us any videos we had in class, it was very obvious where they came from, like Prager, you. So I don't know if you guys have heard about Prager, you. But it's very obvious that Prager, you is very biased. So he would always show us videos explaining things only from Prager, you. So that definitely impacted the way I thought about things because it would just be very biased, which is not what we need in today's political climate. At least that's what I think.

(Guest) David 15:57
Yeah. So if you want a good source to kind of see all sides of the news, you can always go to all sides.com. That's what I try to tend to use. They can rate certain new sites as very conservative or very liberal. And then you'll know what kind of news you're getting.

(Host) Lucas 16:16
That's wonderful love to have extra sources, so you can guys can see the truth. But that's just another way that the media kind of does. Because not only is it social media that shows you what you want to see the actual media, like news sources, sometimes show things generate, like, like bias towards what their source shows all the time. Like if you have a left leaning source, they will only really show the left side or your right leaning source will only show the right side. So that's just another way that that can happen.

(Guest) David 16:53
Yeah, I'll give you an example. So this is about the Elon Musk's take over on Twitter. This is from David Marcus. His headline was, what would I do if I were Elon Musk taking over Twitter Let freedom reign. Obviously that is a very conservative position to take. BBC News says Elon Musk how the world's richest person bought Twitter. The left, a left a left leaning author wrote Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter will destroy freedom of speech not protected. Oftentimes, people write a lot of Op Ed articles, and they're actually labeled as Op Ed articles. But people might not pay attention to the fact that they are op ed our opinion pieces. And if you can't distinguish the fact between op eds and facts, then they kind of blend together.

(Host) Lucas 17:38
Right? Obviously, that can be very dangerous for how people identify themselves politically, because if they only see opinion, and they only see opinion, like you said, they're going to start to believe that opinion, which is not fact, it is simply opinion. And if they don't get it, then they can be misinformed, which is very dangerous. And if they're misinformed, they generally make just general like, like blanket statements about things without knowing the truth, because they cannot either can't find the truth, don't want to find the truth, or what they're finding they think is the truth. And they just don't know. But bring us back to education. So not only is it important for teachers and schools to just what we think here on WKNC is brain trust, because we have the biggest brains, and we trust in those brains. What we think is, teachers generally should try their best to keep their own political views out of the curriculum that they teach, to allow students to be able to form their own ideas in healthy ways, of course, I mean, students can always go and talk to teachers about it, like normal people, especially on a college campus. But in general teaching, keep it out, don't need to teach the curriculum, get the over with, but bring us back to education and just general ignorance on subjects. I'd like to talk more about that.

(Guest) Ben 19:05
Absolutely. I agree. When we talk about education, and how well informed voters are, those who go right hand in hand, democracy will die in ignorance. If people aren't educate about the current subjects about the current events happening actually, within and within one's country and externally from one's country, we won't be able to vote for the right policies, we won't be overall to set this country on the right track to the ever changing world stage. And that begins at the school level, what I believe personally should begin at the high school level. That's when I know personally, from my personal experience, that's where me and most of my friends start forming our own political opinions. As such, we could have still been influenced by teachers who would include as examples their own personal beliefs in class that could have easily influenced us. You also think one big opinion or one big influence is definitely parents as well.

Unknown Speaker 20:02
A lot of the times when you're raised in a house, where both of your parents will say both your parents are conservative, those are the people from a wall for literally from when you were born until let's say you graduate high school, if you're fortunate enough to live with the same parents, they're going to shape your political opinions almost the most.

(Host) Lucas 20:22
Right, like, I know, a lot of a lot of families on Long Island are very Republican. And that that comes from, it just comes from the fact that their parents, like people, like my friends, their parents have lived, their parents have values the parents have kind of, they've decided who they are, politically. And it's interesting that I mean, obviously parents are supposed to raise their children supposed to teach them right from wrong. But I'm gonna pose a little bit of a surprise question on you guys, now that you bring it up. But although it is obviously it's important for parents to raise their children teaching right from wrong from what they believe. But similarly to what I think we're kind of agreeing on with what should be done in schools, which is, they should be shown both sides of arguments, both sides of the facts, basically should be should be shown the truth, and they can make their own decisions on it. Do you think in the like, in like a your nuclear family, like your you, you and your parents, your parents, or future parents should take a similar approach in raising their children instead of saying, oh, like, we'd like like that guy on the TV? We'd like him? Yeah, let's go. We'd like that guy. Oh, we don't like that guy away. This is right, this is wrong. Do you think it would be important because obviously, it's important for them to start on the high school level? I would, I would argue even even earlier in the middle school level, because I don't know about you guys. But I went through the wrong side of YouTube phase in middle school where Oh, my God, I got into the absolute worst side of YouTube in middle school. Thankfully, I've gotten on to normal normal YouTube, but I think it should start even before that, because you get your values from your parents, you get your values from the environment you grow up in. So should parents take a similar non biased approach to raising their children?

(Guest) Ben 22:20
I'd like to touch on before answering a question I'd like to touch on something you said earlier, you said their parents have lived through experiences. I believe that's something that us as students should also be doing more of trying to get out there and go through experiences. Most some of us will go to high school, do a couple of clubs and come through college. But, uh, personally, in high in high school, out a bunch of different experiences as in Gaston County teen courts. As a police explorers age of 16 I joined a volunteer fire department, I got my firefighting certifications been firefighting since then, at 17, I joined the military. And all of those experiences have formed me and they have molded me into who I am today, I will be a totally different person, not exactly a blank slate. But it'll be in the lot more. I believe the word will correctly say would be all this has been more formative experience. It's helped me find where I stand with my own values. And going actually segue into what you said about families and parents, or values want to pass on to my children? No, I don't believe parents should be a blank slates towards their children when it comes to values. A home and a family is where children first learns their values. I believe they should be unbiased at school. But that's because the kids, it's not the school's kids, those kids belong to the family, not to the school and not to the teachers.

(Guest) David 23:40
Yeah, Ben, I agree with you. Um, to a certain extent, I was fortunate enough to have parents to raise me to see every side of that argument. So anytime that I had a situation, I asked my parents advice, and make the decision based off that not necessarily telling me what to do. It worked for me, but it might not work for everybody. And I don't believe that I have a right to tell another parent, what morals they shouldn't be raising their children with. And those morals can be found in many different places. Typically, it might be religion, it might, some people even have a civic religion. Some terminology I learned about that is, in America, we kind of formulated our country around a civic religion. So just being really involved in government being really involved in those kinds of places. So morals are very hard to define. So what worked for me or for me, might not work for somebody else.

(Host) Lucas 24:28
So you bring up religion, like a civic religion, being involved in government and our, our system kind of being built around that. Would you say that our our sort of roots built around very religious, you know, 13 colonies really a religious sense, kind of, or at least back then a little more religious than it is now kind of the kind of deal like they formulated a government around that civic religion. So based off what you said, would you say that our roots, so like from the beginning, we were kind of I wouldn't say doomed to become polarized as we are today. But kind of meant, or like it was, it was going to happen inevitably, like it was like an inevitable thing that we were going to become as polarized as we are today.

(Guest) David 25:17
I don't think that the country was formed around religion, many of our founders were deists, and didn't form our constitution around that. So for example, I do believe that religion is going to inevitably leak into our politics, this can be seen through interest groups. And religion, essentially equals our values. Typically, if you are religious, and politics also have a very large role to play in values, as we talked about before.

(Host) Lucas 25:44
So you're saying, just the way our system is, you know, obviously, democracy is reliant on people's values to decide determine how they're going to vote. You just mean like the system is built in a way that has allowed religion to kind of seep into pop our politics just to be another, another sort of splitting factor, another polarizing factor.

(Guest) David 26:07
It could be, however, not only religion, obviously, there's plenty of other interests,

(Guest) Ben 26:13
Building off what my friend David just said, going back to how religion could be another factor in politics, I remember a while back, and in my little hometown out little ways about actually just driving down the road, and there's else around campaign season, there's little campaign poster and decided one was the defining factor somebody had, that they cared to mention on your campaign poster was the fact that they were Christian, they actually listed that on there, I believe this could be indicative as a factor that some people see, hey, he's part of this religion. It's the same age group as I am in, therefore, he's more qualified than Candidate B, and C.

(Host) Lucas 26:49
So we're having some really wonderful discussion here. I definitely agree with what you guys have been saying, you know, obviously, religion has been is a very important factor in why we are polarized why we have our values and why you know, people disagree, because different religions believe different things, people have different values. And again, right back where we started, people are polarized. Now we're going to get into our sort of wrap up sort of question. But I would still love to hear the amount of examples the enthusiasm guys are giving the elaboration. I'm loving it all. I'm sure our listeners are too. What do you think, can be done to change? Again, that that fake term I made up like the polarization level, like what do you think can be done to improve that level, maybe bring it down to kind of bring bring our society back to an agreeable level of like harmony.

Unknown Speaker 27:51
There's multiple things that we can start with first, you have to be willing to listen to people with other perspectives. For example, if mean, you disagreed vehemently on, let's just say, let's just say the economy, I really want to hear hear your perspective, either to understand you more, reinforced my belief, or change my own belief, also participating more civically, for example, bridge, USA here at NC State, we have a club where we are supposed to discuss with each other not debate, having an actual discussion rather than arguing can really open your mind. So if you are debating oftentimes, if you hear something that you disagree with, you're just on the mic waiting to respond. If you treat it like a discussion and listen to everything that actually might change your whole perspective on your response. So not necessarily the first thing that you say to me. I'm just like, I want to respond to that, because it really hits me, or really heats me up. If I essentially wait for you to complete your Senate's and craft a better response to that. We can definitely start attacking polarization. They're using sources like all sides, that can also help tremendously because you can avoid it yellow journalism.

(Host) Lucas 29:09
Right, so I'd love to give you the opportunity now to quickly plug bridge USA because I know you are the president of bridge USA. And it's an amazing club. But I would love to hear you. Oh, I love to give you the opportunity to plug our excellent club here on campus.

(Guest) David 29:26
Yes, sir. Bridge USA. NC State is a political discussion club, not political debate. We are multi partisan. So we want to really value all perspectives and bring everyone to the chamber. However, we do not tolerate hate speech. And that is our contingency. You're welcome to come. That can be SEC students. They can also be non NC State students. You can reach me at bridgeUSApresident@gmail.com. I would love to see some of you out there. Right now. We meet bi weekly on Wednesdays from seven to 8:30pm. We change our topic every time and we typically meet in talley student union.

(Host) Lucas 30:01
That's wonderful. I have obviously met David, and Ben through bridge USA. It's an excellent club for people like me who are, I don't know, I put myself in a relatively uninformed group, because I just haven't been as involved. But it's a great way to get involved, great way to get started and a great way to have safe and productive political discourse. Now, Ben, I'm going to pose the same question to you, what do you think can be done to improve the real, like polarization level of our society, in a political landscape in America, what do you think can be done to improve it?

(Guest) Ben 30:45
Going back to what can be done to improve it, I believe the biggest thing we can do at the moment, is exactly what bridge USA was aiming for, in person, open discussions about a subject, different study, I don't remember from who this time, and they had people from one political belief talk to each other. And then rate rate, how he saw members of the opposing view. And then they mixed both groups together, and then have them rate each other. Again, those from the opposing view, they found that after talking with people from the other from across the aisle, actually already rated people more favorably than previously done. And what's easy to do when we're just discussing a same subject, whether it be online within our own echo chambers, or just with our same group of friends every day, who has the same beliefs at us, as to stop seeing the other side. Like other people who've also had life experiences that have formed our own experiences. We're entering our own echo chamber, we're not being we're not being as open to other people. It used to be back in the day, the average human had interactions with everybody believe the average friend group that correction, not friend group average social size, the average number of how many meaningful social interactions a human can hold, was 150. Today, that number has dropped drastically, I believe last time was at 75 and supposed to be near 50. That is a decreasing number of social interaction, higher levels of isolation, when somebody asked lates themselves, they become more prone to reaching those for political political extremes, just to find where they fit in.

(Host) Lucas 32:23
So when they find those extremes, and they don't have people to talk to they again, as we circle back to it, they become misinformed. They become an I don't want to say uneducated, but that's really what we're hitting at here. If you don't get it, you're not going to you just you can't get it if you're not educated if you're not informed, really, because you may still be educated. But you're not informed. If you don't have the truth if you don't have the facts. And if you don't engage in discussions, like we have at bridge, USA, hashtag go bridge USA. That's not a real hashtag, don't quote me. But by have not having those discussions, we kind of shelter ourselves in our own echo chambers and become more polarized, and we become more reactive to when people disagree with us.

(Guest) Ben 33:14
Picking up where you left off, I just love how you use the word, the truth when you were listing off that list. It's something worrying certainly that we're starting to see nowadays, where people are starting to say, This is my truth. There's no such thing as my truth. There's only the truth. Once we enter our own idea that there's my truth, that's when we're entering my echo chamber, where I just want to hear what I want to hear. And anything outside of that echo chamber is, to a certain degree, either false, or to have some people have said violence, just because it isn't what I agree with

(Guest) David 33:47
Yeah everyone obviously go seek the truth. That is how we're going to fight party polarization. The only way to bring it back to any level that is closely resemblance of people actually talking together. For example, look at Congress, like I said earlier, there's nobody in Congress that is real, really willing to work with the other side. If we want to have any chance of bringing it back to a point where we can talk to each other. We have to go engage, we have to seek the truth. And we have to formulate our own opinion.

(Host) Lucas 34:15
I could not agree more with everything you guys have said about what we can do. Obviously, seek the truth. Talk to people get out of your echo chambers, and do what you can to become more informed. And more on point unpolarized. So I think that about wraps it up. I want to thank you guys for being here. I had an excellent time recording with you guys. And I'm really glad you agreed to be here for episode three of my podcast.

(Guest) David 34:47
Thank you, Lucas. It's been a pleasure.

(Guest) Ben 34:49
I just like to thank you so much for this opportunity, man.

(Host) Lucas 34:51
Right and again, thank you, I really, really appreciate it. And I also appreciate the amazing intro and outro music provided to us by JT Sutek from moving boxes. If you want to check them out, they've done some really great work for us here at WKNC braintrust. And for WKNC JT is a great guy moving boxes is an excellent band. If you want to check them out on Instagram they are movingboxesband all lowercase one word that's @movingboxesband. Now if you want to stay tuned with WKNC is brain trust because we have the biggest brains and we definitely do trust in them. If you want to stay tuned with that you can check us out at wknc.org/podcasts. That's podcasts with an S wknc.org/podcasts. Subscribe to stay tuned with future episodes. And to hang with us here at WKNC is brain trust. And with that, good day