True Thirty Reports

Timothy J. Redmond received his PhD in political science from the University at Buffalo. He’s an award-winning educator and author of over one hundred articles on critical thinking and politics and the book Political Tribalism in America: How Hyper-Partisanship Dumbs Down Democracy and How to Fix It. 

He teaches political science and history at Williamsville East High School and Daemen University. And in his spare time, he plays drums for the hardcore/punk rock band Snapcase.

During our chat we talked about the origins of tribalism, from our early religious wars, to William Golding’s book Lord of the Flies, and how this very human characteristic of tribal behavior has caused modern day Democrats and Republicans to have an unfavorable opinion of the opposing party almost 90% of the time. 

We then got a bit wonky while discussing the importance of placing Party over Policy, how we can better acquire and evaluate false political information, decipher political polls and complex statistics, and how best to navigate the stream of phony headlines and fake stories.

We ended our discussion with the Story of Oresteia, a collection of plays that illustrates the tragedy of tribalism and revenge as only a Greek tale can.

It was my pleasure to have Professor Redmond on my show, and I hope you learn as much as I did during our chat.

Watch Episode:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.truethirty.com/subscribe

Timothy J. Redmond received his PhD in political science from the University at Buffalo. He’s an award-winning educator and author of over one hundred articles on critical thinking and politics and the book Political Tribalism in America: How Hyper-Partisanship Dumbs Down Democracy and How to Fix It. 

He teaches political science and history at Williamsville East High School and Daemen University. And in his spare time, he plays drums for the hardcore/punk rock band Snapcase.

During our chat we talked about the origins of tribalism, from our early religious wars, to William Golding’s book Lord of the Flies, and how this very human characteristic of tribal behavior has caused modern day Democrats and Republicans to have an unfavorable opinion of the opposing party almost 90% of the time. 

We then got a bit wonky while discussing the importance of placing Party over Policy, how we can better acquire and evaluate false political information, decipher political polls and complex statistics, and how best to navigate the stream of phony headlines and fake stories.

We ended our discussion with the Story of Oresteia, a collection of plays that illustrates the tragedy of tribalism and revenge as only a Greek tale can.

It was my pleasure to have Professor Redmond on my show, and I hope you learn as much as I did during our chat.

Watch Episode:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.truethirty.com/subscribe

Rich Klein is the Managing Partner of McLarty Media. He was part of the 1992 Clinton-Gore presidential campaign, helping to craft policy and messaging on emerging global issues. Rich was subsequently appointed by President Clinton to head the speechwriting staff and be part of the policy planning office at the Department of Commerce, reporting directly to Secretaries Ron Brown, Mickey Kantor and Bill Daley successfully. From the Commerce Department, he was appointed by President Clinton to serve as Special Assistant for International Affairs at the Department of State, the bureau charged with monitoring and enforcing international economic sanctions. 

During our chat, we talked about Rich’s mentor, David Gergen, former White House Communications Director, and the importance of EQ over IQ to connect with the average voter. We discussed Rich’s time working with former Senator Jay Rockefeller and his approach of working across the aisle in the late nineties, and why that method is no longer acceptable in the zero sum game of politics in 2023. We opined on the former bipartisan friendships of Ted Kennedy and Orin Hatch, President Obama and House Speaker Boehner, and war heroes like Senator Bob Dole and Senator John McCain. And we had some fun discussing why party Democrats should avoid any attempts to “primary” Senator Joe Manchin in West Virginia.

We also talked about the Student Relief Bill and the $400 billion price tag accessed by the Congressional Budget Office–who this bill caters to politically–and how this is yet another example of the Democrats forgetting the working class. We then dove into how the Democrats are losing the votes of blacks, hispanics, and asian communities, and why this is happening at large.

We ended our chat with Rich’s sage advice about how to listen to the average voter, specifically how David Gergen’s former researcher, Al Sindlinger called citizens directly from a phone book to get to know them a bit–all of which was chronicled and shared with President Richard Nixon and his communications team. 

It was my honor to have Rich join me on the program, and I truly enjoyed every minute of his storied history, tenure, and storytelling of all things Washington D.C.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.truethirty.com/subscribe

As part of True Thirty’s continued reporting on policing in America, I’m joined today by two former leaders in law enforcement, Nicholas Sensley and Eric Litchfield.

Chief (Ret.) Nicholas Sensley’s diverse experiences include military service, 24 years as a peace officer, and volunteer development in transitioning and developing nations worldwide.

In June of 2020, Chief Sensley launched the Institute for American Policing Reform to a national outcry for police reform following the murder of George Floyd. 

Before launching the Institute, and concurrent with his active police service in 2001, Chief Sensley formed Cross Sector Solutions LLC as an international consortium of experts who build and facilitate strategic partnerships among governments and NGOs for the benefit of development of our communities throughout the world.

Eric Litchfield was a former police captain with the Santa Rosa Police Department, who served 28 years on the force. While there, Eric managed numerous divisions that include: Patrol, Traffic, Tactical Teams, the Incident Management Team, Detectives, Training, and Professional Standards and Education. 

Litchfield is now the Vice President of Education and Standards for the Institute of American Policing Reform. 

During our chat, we talked about Special Police Units and Task Forces. We discussed their origin, purpose, and why these units need more budget, oversight, and leadership if they are to continue at all.

We discussed the lunacy of the naming conventions of many of these Special Police Units…names like SCORPION, CRASH, RED DOG, and TITAN, and how these names became a self-fulfilling prophecy of overreach and unmitigated violence. 

We also talked at length about the need for contiguous standards and education with the more than 800k uniformed police officers in the United States, and how we can begin to build a more constructive dialogue between the men and women of law enforcement and the communities they serve.

It was my honor to talk with both Chief Sensely, and Capt. Litchfield about these controversial topics. 

I hope you learn as much as I did with their candid and honest answers to my questions.

Watch Episode:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.truethirty.com/subscribe

Chris Ferguson is an American psychologist who serves as a professor and co-chair of psychology at Stetson University in Florida. He previously served as an associate professor of psychology and criminal justice at Texas A&M International University.

Ferguson holds a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Central Florida. He has clinical experience with juvenile justice populations as well as conducting evaluations from child protective services. In 2013 he was given a Distinguished Early Career Profession Award, and in 2014 he was named a fellow of the American Psychological Association.

In addition to his academic work, he was published a historical mystery novel entitled Suicide Kings, and more importantly, he plays in a Pink Floyd cover band called “Gods of Avalon.” He lives in Orlando with his wife and young son.

I invited the professor on the show to discuss a recent piece he authored for Quillette called “Stuck in the Middle (of Academia), academia is a mess, but there is still hope.” In it, he talks about topics like suppressed speech, sacred dogma, and its effect on education, online mobs, the attack on academic freedom, and what it's like to be a tenured university professor today.

I hope you learn as much as I did from Christopher.

Watch Episode:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.truethirty.com/subscribe

Meaghan Thumath is a practicing nurse, clinical assistant professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC), and the regional director of communicable disease control at Vancouver Coastal Health. She holds a Masters of Science in public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford as a Trudeau scholar.

Meaghan is an active member of the World Health Organization’s WHO Emergencies Programme (WHE) with recent deployments to support the COVID-19 response in South Africa and the Ebola Response in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I invited Meaghan on the program to share her expertise on the topic of harm reduction policies here in North America. During our time together, we talk about her experience as a street nurse, her own purview on the topic of substance abuse, and her hope of a dignified national approach to assist our growing homeless and addicted populations worldwide.

Meaghan’s love and attention to our world’s most marginalized communities is even more impressive than her storied experience and education.

I hope you learn as much from her as I did.

Watch Episode:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.truethirty.com/subscribe

Robert Jensen (AKA Bob) is Emeritus Professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also the author of numerous books, including, An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity; The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege; and The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men.

As you may have gleaned from his book titles, Bob is a humanitarian to his core, a man who cares about the plight of the less fortunate, and a man who has spent his entire life in the pursuit of helping our world become a better place.

But the reason I wanted to talk with Bob today, was due to a recent article he penned for Julie Bindel’s Substack called “Drag Story Hour and Cultural Appropriation”, specifically his feminist critique that these Story Hour events are just another example of patriarchy and objectification of women… which was a purview I had yet to read regarding this very divided topic in our culture.

During our chat, we talked at length about why Drag Story Hour is offensive to many feminists, as well as other topics like, trigger warnings, safe spaces on college campuses, and how political dogma is harming us all.

I hope you learn as much from this conversation as I did.

Watch Episode:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.truethirty.com/subscribe

Hyrum Lewis is a professor of history at BYU-Idaho, and a former Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. He received a PhD in history and philosophy from USC. And before coming to BYU-Idaho, he taught at Skidmore College in Saratoga, New York. 

Hyrum was born in Arizona, raised in Oregon, and now resides with his wife, Sundee, and their three kids in Rexburg, Idaho.

In January of 2023, Hyrum co-authored and published a book with his brother called The Myth of Left and Right, How The Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America. 

In it, to be brief, the authors argue that politics is more emotional than logical, and that the categories of Left and Right are no longer accurate or consistent – and are doing more harm than good to a culture already painfully divided by ideology.  

As I shared with Hyrum during our chat, rarely have I read a book that’s remapped my own internal dialogue the way this book did. It’s one of my favorite political reads in the past 10 years. I hope you learn as much from Hyrum as I did.

Watch Episode:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.truethirty.com/subscribe

Justin Dangel is a serial entrepreneur who has founded and led successful companies like Firefly, Ready, and Goji, due to his genuine hope of helping people in need. 

Justin is also a political wonk who founded Voter.com in 2001, an early adopter in online news media. Under his leadership the company generated over 3.5 million monthly active users and 500,000 newsletter subscribers. Voter.com was a repository for digital content that helped Americans educate themselves about local, regional, and national politics. Or to quote Justin directly, “Voter.com delivered the kind of information voters needed to make informed decisions about their elected officials.”

His political and public service background includes both volunteer and work positions with the United States Treasury Department, Senator Ted Kennedy’s Office, and Senator Joe Biden’s office.

During our chat, we discussed a wide range of topics that included: climate change, racism, gun violence, testing criteria in public schools, defund the police, student debt, and the state of journalism today. We also discussed the overall challenges of the democratic party and how they can once again align themselves with working class voters. 

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Watch episode:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.truethirty.com/subscribe

Julie Smolyansky was born in Kyiv, Ukraine to Jewish parents. Her family immigrated to the United States in 1976 where her father founded the Kefir company, Lifeway Foods in 1986. Smolyansky joined the company in 1997 after graduating from University of Chicago with a degree in psychology. 

After her father died of a heart attack in 2002, Smolyansky became the youngest CEO of a publicly traded firm in the history of our country. She then transformed Lifeway Foods into a multinational conglomerate, growing its annual revenue from 12 million to over 130 million in 2015. 

Even more impressive than her tenure as a corporate executive, is her service as a board member to organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.

Additionally, Smolyansky has been very active in the conversation on sexual violence of women and girls, both as an advocate and a survivor. In 2015, she served as an executive producer or the award winning documentary, The Hunting Ground, an award winning exposé of rape crimes on U.S. College campuses.

Smolyansky is yet another powerful woman that has made a difference with her outreach and involvement, and why I feel lucky to have her join me on the show.

Watch Episode:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.truethirty.com/subscribe