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The Purple Principle
by Fluent Knowledge LLC
Nonpartisan podcast for independent-minded Americans exploring the perils of partisanship in U.S. politics, society and daily life. Join & Support us with an Apple Podcast Subscription for bonus content.
Episodes
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Election Reform in the Last Best Place? Voting Day 2024 in Kalispell, Montana
“You want to know why we’re polarized? You want to know why we have division?” Our featured guest Frank Garner posed this question to voters at the constitutional ballot initiative debate we attended in Helena, Montana and many similar events. “We have a system that allows for it and the pressure...
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Our Top 10 Predictive Insights: Explaining the 2024 Election & Beyond
The 2024 election results are in and clearly underscore a rightward shift in American politics. Most pundits and many pollsters did not foresee such a clear victory for the GOP. But some of our Purple Principle guests from the past four seasons have recognized the important dynamics at play…
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Transforming US Politics for $200 Million? Andrew Yang on Election Reform
“You meet them and you're like, ‘oh, wow, you're a good person trying to do the right thing, and there's nothing in it for you,’” says Andrew Yang, Founder and Co-Chair of the Forward Party. He’s referring to largely volunteer teams around the country that have raised the profile for election...
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Reform Milestones with FairVote’s Rob Richie: Ranked Choice Voting’s First Three Decades
“It’s a thrilling year. It’s a tense year. I am a believer that this is a marathon,” says Rob Richie, Co-Founder and longtime Director of FairVote, the nation’s foremost catalyst for ranked choice voting elections. “There's moments of excitement– of cresting hills, of victories and sometimes...
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Frontiers of Election Reform (Part 2): Will Alaskans Preserve Top Four Voting?
In 2020, Alaskans passed a first-in-the-nation voting system which helped energize similar reform efforts around the country. In 2024, Alaska voters are now presented with a ballot measure to repeal this same Final or “Top Four” system that includes a unified open primary of all candidates plus a...
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Frontiers of Election Reform: 5 Views on the Alaska Legislature (Part One)
“The notion of getting rid of a closed primary system in Alaska appealed to me instantly,” says former Alaska House Speaker Bryce Edgmon who has represented Bristol Bay and parts of the Aleutian Islands for nearly two decades. “It overrode right there almost on the spot any trepidation I might…
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When Legislatures Act Before Citizens Vote: Colorado's Top Four Election Reform
Election reform is officially on the ballot for voter approval in Colorado this year. This “Top Four” voting system is similar to the Alaska model of a unified open primary plus ranked choice general election. But there is a catch to this Colorado ballot measure, and it came via the state...
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New Oregon Trail for Ranked Choice Voting? From Farmer’s Market to Legislature & Citizen Ballot
“I've sat in rooms where we as Democrats have high-fived when a Libertarian party candidate gets into a competitive race,” recalls former Oregon House Speaker Dan Rayfield. “That's not democracy.” “And Republicans high five when a Green Party candidate gets into the race,” says Rayfield…
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Three Election Reformers Approach the Finish Line: Will Nevada Adopt the Alaska Model?
In 2024, Nevada voters will see a ballot Question 3 strikingly similar to the question on Final Five voting that passed by 6 points back in 2022. That’s because a constitutional amendment must be passed by voters twice in succession, according to Nevada law. And should voters approve Question 3...
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How About Treating All Voters & Candidates the Same! Paul Johnson & Chuck Coughlin of Make Elections Fair AZ
“Everybody likes to think about these reforms as being revolutionary,” says Paul Johnson, former Mayor of Phoenix, now Co-Chair of Make Elections Fair AZ, on the record number of state level election reforms in play this year. “They’re not. City governments have been doing these reforms for about...
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Opening Primaries on the Great Plains: Are Stars Aligned for South Dakota Reform?
“I like to say the stars are aligned for open primaries right now,” says South Dakota Open Primaries Director Joe Kirby. “I think there’s a realization that closed primaries simply don’t make sense when you’re in a single party state.” “I also think that Open Primaries will foster a more...
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The Alaska Election Frontier: Our July 4th Trek Across Three Episodes
In this bonus episode we revisit the vast nation-sized state of Alaska, model for election reform in numerous states around the country even as that voting system of an open, unified primary plus instant runoff general election faces a potential 2024 recall ballot measure back in the frontier...
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Making All Votes Count in DC: Proposer Lisa Rice & the Yes on 83 Team
It was nearing summer temperatures on this early June primary voting day outside a polling station in Washington, DC. Lisa Rice, official Proposer of Initiative 83, is wearing a sandwich board with the message, “Ask Me Why I Can’t Vote Today?” “Why can’t you vote today?” asks a woman on her way…
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Idaho's Open Primaries & Final Four Voting Initiative: Sometimes it Takes a Coalition!
In April of 2024, Luke Mayville, co-founder of the grassroots organization ReClaim Idaho, addressed volunteers on the final day of signature gathering for this year’s Open Primaries and Final Four Voting ballot initiative. “We are here today because we are tired of playing the same old game under…
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Can Competition Foster Better Government? Reform Strategist Katherine Gehl on 2024 Ballots & Beyond
Katherine Gehl, co-author of The Politics Industry and Founder of The Institute for Political Innovation, has always asked herself what she needed “to do in order to change the political situation.” “So at first I needed to sell my business,” Katherine tells us. “Then I needed to make the...
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United States of Gerrymandering? Ripple Effects from State House to White House
“The Presidential race might get thrown into the House of Representatives,” says Dr. Sam Wang of the Princeton Gerrymandering Initiative in this episode. “And in the House of Representatives, every state gets one vote.” Both a neuroscientist and recognized authority on gerrymandering, Wang is...
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Dissenting Voices on Today’s GOP: Interviews from The 2024 Principles First Summit
The 700-plus attendees at the 2024 Principles First Summit in Washington DC come from various locations and backgrounds yet attended this event for similar political reasons: all are concerned about authoritarian trends within today’s GOP. Blaire Egan, for example, had been questioning her GOP...
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Former RNC Chair Michael Steele: An Alarmed Critique of a GOP Transformed
“I’m still in it to hold a mirror up to my GOP colleagues,” former RNC Chair Michael Steele tells us in this episode. “To show them how unLincolnlike they have become.” Michael Steele has borne painful witness to that transformation over the past two-plus decades as the first African American...
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Asa Hutchinson on 2024 GOP Primaries: Hard to Get Any Other Message Out!
“I'm the only candidate that was Head of the DEA, that was in charge of border security in the Bush administration, governor for eight years,” says our featured guest, Asa Hutchinson. Yet despite possessing perhaps the most impressive resume among GOP presidential candidates, Hutchinson failed to...
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Grand Old Party or Brand New MAGA? Contrarian Conservative Charlie Sykes
“I had been a conservative critic of mainstream media bias for many years,” says author and MSNBC columnist, Charlie Sykes, a “contrarian conservative” and our featured guest. “It suddenly occurred to me that we had succeeded in not just critiquing the liberal bias, but in destroying the...
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A Primary Solution to Unite America? New Book From Election Reformer, Nick Troiano
“My goal in this book isn't just to diagnose the problem,” explains Nick Troiano, Executive Director of Unite America. “But to give people a solution that is viable and can happen right there in their own states.” That book is “The Primary Solution: Rescuing Our Democracy from the Fringes,”...
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Systems Level Failure? Veterans for All Voters Takes on Polarizing Elections
“Every time I talk to someone about running for office, the first thing they say is, Eric, you have to pick a team,” confides Navy veteran Eric Bronner, COO of the non-partisan group Veterans for All Voters. “And something didn't sit right with me. So the pump was primed, as my parents would say,...
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Breaking Bread, Sharing Salad & Final Four Voting: Alaska Representative Mary Peltola
“I know that I would not be in this position if we didn't have the Final Four system,” Representative Mary Peltola (D-AK) tells us in this first Purple Principle episode of season four. “Because I would not have made it through a partisan primary.” A native Alaskan, Representative Peltola gained...
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Election Lessons Unheeded? A Cautionary View of the New U.S. House
“The American people want serious people to solve serious challenges,“ declares former Texas Congressman Will B. Hurd in this season finale on the U.S. House of Representatives. “That’s the lesson we should take away from 2022.” But he’s quick to add, “I don’t think that lesson is going to be...
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Is the Fever Breaking? Two Centrist Senators on the 2022 Elections
“It appears to me that the fever has broken,” observes Bob Corker, former two-term GOP Senator from Tennessee. ”And there's gonna be a real serious debate on the Republican side of the aisle as to where the party is gonna go in 2024.” Fading GOP loyalty to former President Trump is the elephant…
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Repodcast: Deflating Political Football with Tania Israel
Happy Thanksgiving from The Purple Principle team! This week we’re revisiting an episode from November 2021. In the aftermath of another fractious election season, and heading into the holiday season, it feels appropriate to bring psychologist Tania Israel back into the feed. She explains the...
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As 2022 Election Results Roll In: Concern, Context, & Perspective
The 2022 election will consume us over the coming days, weeks, and months. There will likely be recounts, runoffs and court challenges before a new Congress takes shape. This Purple Principle episode highlights concerns surrounding this election, with many GOP candidates questioning election...
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Test Driving Ranked Choice Voting: These Not So United States (AK Part 2 & NV)
Alaska will soon be the first state in the country to hold a ranked choice voting election for all representatives, state and federal. But can RCV moderate our severely polarized politics? If the August special election and current congressional campaign are any guide, the answer is a hearty,...
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No Such Thing as The Latino Vote? Hispanic American Swing Voters (Finale)
TPP wraps up its series on Hispanic American Swing Voters with three very different yet highly insightful guests. Northwestern University historian Geraldo Cadava tells us that both parties have spun overly-simplistic narratives of the Hispanic voter – a mythical concept in his view. Carlos…
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Will Latinization Bring Moderation? Hispanic American Swing Voters (Part 2)
How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey How large a role will Hispanic voters play in 2022 elections? (Hint: It’s big.) How are the major parties appealing to this diverse voting bloc? (Not so effectively.)…
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Repodcast: Politically Persuadable But Focused on Jobs? Hispanic American Swing Voters (Part 1)
How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Today, we're re-podcasting the first episode of our 3-part mini-series on Hispanic American swing voters. The series continues into October for National Hispanic…
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End of Bay State Bipartisanship?: These Not So United States (MA Part Two)
How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here for our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Massachusetts has long been a bipartisan enigma at the state level, electing moderate GOP governors for 30 of the past 60 years while seating a Democratic legislature. But the...
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Deval Patrick Talks Governing: These Not So United States (MA Part One)
“There are all kinds of ways in which we, as a community, enable the American story,” says Deval Patrick, implying that our success stories overemphasize the individual. Patrick’s own American story is a remarkable one, starting in a tough South Chicago neighborhood, journeying to a planet called...
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INTRODUCING My Body Odyssey, a Fluent Knowledge Podcast
Fluent Knowledge, producers of The Purple Principle (TPP), have a new podcast in the health, wellness and medicine realm, My Body Odyssey (MBO). With TPP staff on summer break, we’re introducing TPP listeners to MBO with our second episode, featuring IronWoman Diane. Imagine taking on a 2.4 mile...
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Less Partisan Elections in Alaska 2022? These Not So United States (AK Part One)
In our continuing state series, TPP visits the state with the highest percentage of non-partisan voters (58%): vast and varied Alaska. On August 16, 2022, for the first time in the US, Alaskans will use the final four voting system, which combines a unified open primary with ranked choice voting…
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Revisiting GOP Party Dynamics: The Decline of Moderates & Rise of Populism
This week we revisit an episode from 2020, adding some fresh questions and analysis on its lessons in GOP history from a 2022 perspective. Is Donald Trump losing his populist grip on the Republican Party after 6 long years, a failed re-election, a failed campaign to reverse that result, and the...
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Great American Independents (Part Two): Andrew Heaton on Liberty, Justice & Satire for All
On this second episode featuring great American independents, The Purple Principle sits down with Andrew Heaton, political satirist, author, podcast host and small “l” libertarian. “I’m a temperamental moderate who wants to help people,” Heaton confides, “but thinks government is not very…
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Great American Independents (Part One): Amy Chua on Political Tribalism
The Purple Principle celebrates July 4th with its first episode in a miniseries on America’s great independent voices. Amy Chua, known for her bestselling Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, is a Yale law professor and author of Political Tribes. “Every group feels attacked, pitted against other...
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Strength in Diversity, Weakness in One Party Rule? These Not So United States (CA Finale)
The Purple Principle completes its three-episode tour of the great state of California with three uniquely positioned viewpoints on the Golden State. First, Leon Panetta, former Cabinet Secretary and nine-term US Congress member, who questions the one party mindset of Democratic governance in...
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2022 California Primaries by Faction & Tortilla with Gustavo Arellano: These Not So United States (CA Part 2)
If California progressives were tortillas, they’d be delicious but expensive and inaccessible; establishment Democratic tortillas would be ubiquitous, if not so tasty; and Republican tortillas would be pretty tasteless… Is this any way to understand California politics? It is when speaking with…
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One Golden State, Two Democratic Parties: These Not So United States (CA Part 1)
“I always point out to people that California is still a two-party state,” says Dan Schnur, former independent candidate for Secretary of State. “It just so happens they're both Democratic parties.” So starts a series of TPP episodes on our largest and bluest of states this primary season.…
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Georgia On All Our Minds: These Not So United States
How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey All political roads lead to Georgia these days. The Peach State was so pivotal in the 2020 election of Joe Biden and the 2021 runoff election of two Democratic senators....
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Politically Persuadable But Focused on Jobs? Hispanic American Swing Voters (Part 1)
How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Is a large and growing segment of Hispanic American voters now leaning independent? That’s the operative question in this first episode on Hispanic swing voters…
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Like Family, Like Nation: A Braver Angel Mediates Polarization at Home & Nationwide
How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Our TPP guest this episode, Mónica Guzmán of Braver Angels, is a fascinating conversationalist who knows how to stop a conversation, particularly among blue-leaning...
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Is Texas the Future of America? These Not So United States (TX Finale)
How’d you hear about The Purple Principle?: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey The Purple Principle brings its seven-part series on politics and identity in the already huge, yet fast-growing Lone Star State to conclusion with a guided tour of key insights from our notable “Texperts” in all…
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A New American Operating System? These Not So United States (TX Part 6)
How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Purple Principle listeners know these not so United States need a new political operating system. But who’s going to code it? Based on a great new book, American Reboot...
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Lone Star Launch Pad for Rear-Guard America? These Not So United States (TX Part 5)
Our special guests for this fifth episode on Lone Star State identity are two authors with Texas-sized reputations: Lawrence Wright (The Looming Tower, God Save Texas) and Stephen Harrigan (The Gates of the Alamo, Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas). Wright, a New Yorker staff writer, wastes...
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Polarized Politics & Hispanic Identity: These Not So United States (TX Part 4)
The Purple Principle is visiting the Lone Star State throughout the month of March 2022 and wondering if the famously strong Texas identity is holding up under the powerful forces of red vs. blue throughout our nation. In Polarized Politics & Hispanic Identity, we focus the discussion on Hispanic...
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Growth, Diversity & One Party Politics? These Not So United States (TX Part 3)
Is democracy still democracy when one party wins all the elections? That’s a question we’ll be asking around the country on our state-level identity and polarization series, since 37 state “trifectas,” or one-party governments, are now in office. It’s also a major point of discussion with Dr.…
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Strongest Identity of Them Y’all? These Not So United States (TX Part 2)
Texas has long had one of the most powerful and vocal identities of any American state. But how’s that unique Texas pride faring under the homogenizing power of polarization? In this TPP episode, Strongest Identity of Them Y’all, Texas Monthly Editor-in-Chief Dan Goodgame argues that the social…
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Purple Principle have?
The Purple Principle currently has 101 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Purple Principle about?
Nonpartisan podcast for independent-minded Americans exploring the perils of partisanship in U.S. politics, society and daily life. Join & Support us with an Apple Podcast Subscription for bonus content.
How often does The Purple Principle release new episodes?
The Purple Principle publishes regularly with 101 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to The Purple Principle?
You can listen to The Purple Principle on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Purple Principle?
The Purple Principle is created and hosted by Fluent Knowledge LLC.
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