First hour: How to parse data from presidential polling*
Second hour: Has sports media made us dumber?
The polls don't mean anything... until they do, of course, but when is that point? Last fall, we heard that presidential polling was far too early to mean much. What about now? A recent poll of seven critical swing states found Donald Trump leading President Biden in all seven. Some Democrats panicked while others ignored those numbers. We discuss the nuances of polling; the likelihood that different candidates would be faring better or worse; how to parse demographic data; and more with our guest:
- Joseph Burgess, team leader at the Social Sciences Data Lab at the University of Copenhagen
*Note: This conversation was rescheduled from Friday, March 8, 2024.
Then in our second hour, the New York Times recently cited ESPN's Scott Van Pelt as a dying breed of sports anchor: substantive, measured, not all about himself, not yelling all the time. We take the conversation a step further: has sports media made us dumber? Has the trend toward vitriol and bombast eroded our civic intelligence? Which came first: sports shows with shouting matches, or political shows with shouting matches? And can we turn the tide back toward something less loud? Our guests:
- Tom Proietti, resident media scholar at St. John Fisher University
- Andrew Spayde, writer and editor at the OBR (the Orange and Brown Report), and co-host of the OBR Film Breakdown podcast
- Erin Marshall-Cunningham, local little league softball coach and coordinator
