Listening in a Swing State: The 2,500-Mile Empathy Road Trip

When Lia Howard, the director of the Political Empathy Lab at Penn, took seven undergrads across 2,500 miles of Pennsylvania during the 2024 election season, she wasn’t looking for votes—she was looking for understanding. In this episode, Leah shares what happens when students practice democratic listening in politically divided towns, where truth itself can come from different sources. From tense conversations about George Soros to unexpected moments of warmth and connection, she explores the delicate balance between curiosity and complicity—and how to stay open without surrendering your values. It’s a masterclass in listening across America’s political fault lines.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] When we disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. After watching a documentary about plane crashes, flying suddenly seems terrifying. One bad experience with a dentist makes all dental work feel dangerous. A friend's messy divorce makes you question your own marriage.

This mental shortcut, judging probability by how easily some examples come to your mind is called the availability heuristic, and it distorts countless kinds of disagreements. Our brains estimate frequency and likelihood based on how readily we can recall. Examples, vivid recent or personally experienced events seem more probable than overall statistics might suggest.

Car accidents kill far more people than plane crashes, but dramatic plane crash coverage makes flying feel really dangerous. This mental shortcut worked well for our [00:01:00] ancestors. If you easily recalled tiger attacks, then tigers were probably a real threat in your area. But in our modern information environment, the availability heuristic can really lead us astray.

Media coverage makes rare events seem common. Social media algorithms, surface outliers and extremes. Personal anecdotes override population data, and we end up arguing about distorted realities. Each person's available examples, creating completely different worlds of perceived risk and probability.

Consider how this plays out in parenting disputes. One parent reads about a kidnapping and wants to track their child's every move. The other recalls their own free range childhood and sees no danger. Neither is wrong about their available examples. They're just drawing from different pools of memory and information they each thinks the other is being irresponsible or paranoid.

Relationships can really suffer from availability distortions. After hearing about a friend's partner cheating, you might [00:02:00] become suspicious of innocent behaviors of your own partner. One forgotten anniversary makes someone seem generally thoughtless. While dozens of thoughtful gestures fade from memory.

Arguments escalate as each person sums, summons their most available examples of being wronged, creating competing narratives of victimhood. Countering the availability heuristic requires some real thoughtfulness. When someone seems irrationally worried or dismissive, ask what examples they're drawing from.

Share statistics, but acknowledge that numbers rarely override vivid mental images. Or recent stories and when making decisions actively search for contrary examples, what's not making the headlines? What are we not thinking about? What boring normal outcomes are we forgetting in disagreements, explicitly discussing which examples are shaping each person's position can reveal why seemingly irrational positions feel completely logical to those holding them.

I'm Michael Lee, professor of communication and Director of the [00:03:00] Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. Our guest today on When We Disagree is Leah Howard. She is the Fellows Director at the SNF Padilla Program and the Director of the Political Empathy Lab at the University of Pennsylvania.

Leah, tell us an argument story. Mike, it's so nice to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Yes. So this summer I took seven undergrads and we traveled around Pennsylvania for 10 weeks. It was tw 250 sorry, 2,500 miles all around Pennsylvania and one, we had all sorts of great stories, but one won't leave my mind, so I'm really excited to talk with you about it.

We were in a small town in Pennsylvania and I'm gonna keep it the name. Quiet just for now. Sure. About two miles, or excuse me, two hours from Penn from Philadelphia. And while we were there I was walking around with one student. I sent the students out in pairs and I was always matched with a student.

And we entered a building called the Republican House, and we walked [00:04:00] in. It was about to close. It was two hours before, or excuse me, it was like a few minutes before closing. Mm-hmm. And we met a woman who was probably in her late seventies, eighties. I'm in my forties and the student with me was in their twenties.

And we launched into a conversation. And so there was this intergenerational aspect to the conversation, but also there was this interesting phenomenon that happened with the different sources from which we get our information. And so we were talking and, and part of the political empathy labs.

Emphasis is on listening. It's not on talking. And so as we're listening this woman very kindly is talking to us and she starts sharing stories. She hears we're from Philadelphia and she gets very nervous that we're from Philadelphia. She's nervous for her safety, and we're trying to describe to her that, no, we're fine.

And so the disagreement was. Relying and resting in this differences in understanding where we get our information. And so we were coming up against just clashes, [00:05:00] not in personality not in actual substance, but it was in where we. Yet truth. Mm-hmm. And so I, I mean, I, I, I can't wait to talk with you more about this.

Mm-hmm. But what was so interesting is my student and I were trying very graciously to listen and we were trying to show reciprocity and, and kind of question some of the source material. And it was just, it was getting frustrating. She called another man who was in the building with her, and they, they talked with us.

And throughout the whole thing, I, I will also say, even though we weren't connecting well there was something else going on where they didn't want us to leave. There was some social element of it where, it, it was a very lonely building until we entered and it, we kept feeling like they didn't want us to leave.

They wanted the conversation to continue, even if we weren't agreeing on whether or not Philadelphia's, you know, scary or not. And whether, you know, George, things about George Soros that we disagreed [00:06:00] with. Oh say more about the beginning. Why were you traveling 2,500 miles across Pennsylvania with these undergraduates this summer?

Mike, thanks so much for asking. So it's a project called Political Empathy Lab, and during the really important election season, the summer of 2024, we thought Pennsylvania would be a great place to travel around and visit and listen to people. And again, we kept saying, the seven students and I are opening said, we're not polling, we're not canvassing, we're just listening.

We didn't wanna persuade. Or extract information. We really just wanted to develop, you know, a repertoire of skills for connecting with other people. And yeah, it was all over. Pennsylvania is a very diverse state in terms of types of towns in terms of types of people. And yeah, we had a really, really intense and wonderful time.

I want to get to the specifics of this conversation in a second, but I think it would be [00:07:00] helpful if we understand how this conversation is informed by the work you do and the kinds of listening you teach and promote. So if you could give us maybe a, a quick overview of the programming, the, the listening curricula.

In other words, what kinds of listening do you promote? It's obviously not listening to rebut or listening to figure out how to attack your super weak argument. So if it's not those, then what is it? Oh, thank you. That's a really great question. Yeah, we're listening. So it's part of a whole concept called democratic listening where deliberative democracy really believes and has spent a lot of time on speech that it's really important to, to, for people to speak their different truth.

And democratic listening is starting to give attention to the listening component. What does it mean to, to calm yourself internally so that you can listen to someone else. And so the students and I were really. I threw them into the deep end of the pool, the election of 2024, Pennsylvania swing [00:08:00] state, in that I wanted them to really think about what gets in the way internally for them in listening to other people.

And then how could they think about encountering strangers and really asking them questions right not to. Rebut arguments are not to debate, but to really find out what's the context, what's the story, what's the person behind the view how do we have, you know, how can our behaviors in listening come first and then we can get to differences in belief.

So I put students intentionally in settings like county fairs agricultural centers you know, old coal towns, Appalachia. We visited places where they would have very different experiences as college students from the people they're encountering. And then what happens? Like what happens? It was, it was an experiment, you know, as much as it was, you know, proving different listening [00:09:00] theories.

What is the value? If I can just really get to the brass tacks of it, what is the value of these kinds of encounters with difference, both in terms of the students' experience, but also in terms of these folks in these small towns and Pennsylvania's experience too? I think one of the surprise things I learned was, and we all learned through experience, is that when you talk to someone you are.

Creating a, a social bond with them. And that is so exciting. You know, Vivek Murthy says, we're living in an epidemic of loneliness. And so when you connect with someone successfully, again, I don't know the neuroscience, but we felt like all these things were firing in our brains. Like we've connect, we've made a new friend.

And so regardless of what hap so that happens in the first like minute or so. It sustains you through a conversation around difference. So I think that was mutual. We, and the reason why I know it's mutual [00:10:00] is that a, we weren't rejected. I thought people would reject us, not really wanna talk to us.

Very rarely were we rejected, and B, our conversations tended to take. More than 20 minutes. Often people kept wanting to have the conversation. And that was both directions, right? You know, when someone wants to end a conversation and, and as my students and myself, I will say myself as we got, as we had like three conversations under our belt, we were enthused and excited for more conversations.

So it kind of like was this mutually reinforcing and exciting process that got better and better as we went on. Yeah, again, it was, there was the curiosity aspect of like going into a place where they weren't familiar with mm-hmm. Penn or us. And so there was the curiosity piece and then there was the, we were building a mini relationship really fast and it was kind of fun.

There's this force in, in our world or social media driven world where [00:11:00] if I encounter a different point of view, especially one that really denies my identity, perhaps, or denies some felt truth that I experienced, or maybe some objective truth that I hold to be true, that just listening to it, sharing a space with somebody who I disagree with is a kind of betrayal, either of my authenticity or of my tribe.

My kind of familial and social commitments, and somebody could see me hanging out with you and you and I disagree and then make judgements about me, and I'm concerned about that. How do you respond to the feeling, if not the argument, that conversation is complicity. Oh, that's a great question. And I wanna just foreground that by saying, if any of, I told my students from the start, if their humanity ever felt like it was being questioned or under a threat, they could leave any conversation.

So I wasn't telling them to take abuse in any way. At the same time I tried to disabuse them of [00:12:00] that notion that conversation is complicity by bringing humanity to the center. So there's this. Robert Putnam and, and David Campbell in their book American Grace, they talk about belief, belonging, and behavior, and they talk about it in regards to religion, but I use it for politics.

And I talk about how belief, especially on social media, tends to drive our belonging. So we, you know, we cohere with others based on belief, and then we tend to not think about our behavior. And what I tell my students is, let's reverse behavior and belief. Let's put. Behavior first, then belonging and last belief.

And so what we were doing in each of our conversations, we weren't using a couple questions to like locate people on a social spectrum and then reject them based on their beliefs. We were just trying to connect with them, find out about their town and their, you know, reality and their context. And we were using kind of.

We were using, [00:13:00] we were trying to develop strategies of connection. So I told my students like, what is it that allows you to connect with other people? Ask these kinds of questions. You know, common ground. I like this store, this is great. You know, and then ease into it. So it was a humanity thing? Mm-hmm.

More than it was like, let's find out what people in this town believe. Let's you know, find out about the data. We know all the data about all the towns in Pennsylvania. We know. Lots of things about people, but do we know actual people and are we listening to them talk about their universe? And it will, you know, all sorts of research and political science shows right now that if you listen to people and they perceive that you're listening to them, they feel better about all the things you represent too, as you start to to share those.

So, mm-hmm. I mean, I know there's good things that come from this beyond just our good feelings. It humanizes the process of disagreement. And, and you said that there's, [00:14:00] there's, there's a collision between two ideas that I'm, I'm curious about as we transition back into the discussion with this person, which is that for you, there is a, there is a line, there is a difference between there kinds of depolarization within ourselves that can make us calm enough to listen.

And then as you said, the denial of your basic humanity or the denial of your truth, or what you called abuse. But at the same time, we begin from the premise that we should flip the idea that we believe first and we belong second, that beliefs have a kind of social function to help us belong. And so if we're humanizing all beliefs, it's possible that I have beliefs that help me belong in my community that deny your humanity.

Most definitely. Right? Well, no, and and what I was saying with the be I wanted behavior to go first. So can our behavior drive our belonging, and then we get to belief, right? And if that happens [00:15:00] and you get to belief and there's a denial of humanity and. That actually happened in a couple conversations my students had, and they had to respectfully leave even though they'd kind of made friends with people.

Mm-hmm. And then they, they, but the reverse happened as well. Like I had a few stu a couple conversations are coming to mind, but one in particular about immigration that a student had. And I haven't written it up yet and she would be best to describe it, but basically the person she was talking to was saying all sorts of, very negative things about immigrants and she herself is a daughter of an immigrant and was able to describe her story to the person she was talking with, and they were able to reach a better understanding of this too. Her father is a truck driver. The man she was talking to is also a truck driver and they were able to just go somewhere really special that had they led with belief, I don't think they would've got there, but because she was leading with her behavior, right.

And then they kind of belonged in that like mini friendship for a few minutes. They were [00:16:00] able to get to belief in a better way. It didn't happen all the time, but it happened enough times for us to feel good about it. Well said, and I, I like that example. And with that in mind, let's turn to the particulars of, of this example as well.

So setting the scene three person conversation, multi-generational, an older person a person in their forties, and a person in their twenties. Tonally, it sounds at least just putting words in your mouth, it sounds like there is some tension, at least in terms of this person's assumptions about what's going on and how violent Philadelphia is where you're from.

She's concerned for your safety because you live in blood bath. And then, and then second, some larger kind of political conspiratorial assumptions about the way the world works courtesy of information she has or thinks she has about George Soros. Yes. And then at the end you said that you were not necessarily connecting well in this conversation about where each of you is getting your sources, but that perhaps her and her, her counterpart didn't [00:17:00] also want you to, to leave as well, which is curious.

It was. So that piece of it was the, and you summed that up so beautifully, Mike, that that piece of it was the most interesting to me because it was very clear that they wanted us to stay. We were way over their closing time Uhhuh. And I kept saying like, signaling, we should leave. No, no. Please stay.

Please stay. So they wanted our presence, even though we weren't. I didn't feel like we were reaching some great belonging moment, but they, they wanted us there. So right. I'm curious about the, the Soros content in terms of the question I asked earlier about belief, behavior, and belonging as well as denials of humanity.

Because obviously if you and I are talking and we, we disagree about something, and then I just insult you directly as a, as Leah, I insult you. Any sort of your obvious identity markers. And or threaten you directly with, with violence, right? That's a clear denial of humanity. And that's a clear case. [00:18:00] Some, some of these can actually be somewhat gray areas though.

And the Soros is as a decent example because many people make arguments that the Soros accusations are a long stream of antisemitic. Thought about these, exactly. These invisible Jewish financiers, et cetera. And some Beck Smoky Room who controlled the media and governments, et cetera. And so. For some that can easily be a denial of their cultural or religious humanity.

And so then that is in the, the purview of the student perhaps to say, look, I'm out, right? I'm not gonna listen to this anymore. And it was entering that realm. It was entering that anti-Semitic realm. And my student when we left told me a whole bunch of you know, things he had read about the particular conspiracy theories around Sora that they were articulating.

And so we were trying to, mm-hmm. Yeah, be in the room with them. But there were, there were places we were reaching real. Conspiracy theory, things that [00:19:00] we couldn't even connect with and felt right that we were reaching that, that that limit of political empathy. Yeah, that's, that's also the tension too, that I'm, I'm seeing, and, and not that it's not that it's damning, just that it's tough to navigate, which is that at some point as you're making connections, but then you're providing a sounding board and listening for empathy, understanding and reciprocity with somebody who you really disagree with fundamentally, and you actually find their views to be quite abhorrent.

Exactly. And at the same time, protecting yourself and not being a sounding board. Or a source of validation, so they leave the conversation feeling heard and seen, and that's exactly right. Read justified in their own beliefs. No, Maggie put your finger on it. Exactly. And I felt like because of the intergenerational aspect, they were trying to teach us things we may not know.

Mm-hmm. Like, you know, we were the younger people in the conversation. And so there was a little bit of this kind of. You may not know this, but, and then launching [00:20:00] into a conspiracy theory. And I ended up, I didn't want to catch them or, you know, shame in any way. I was going overboard to, you know, both not validate and not shame, you know, so this very right.

Middle ground that's quite difficult to navigate. And I, I wanted to ask about sources, and they did tell me the sources which are very different than mine. And I tried to make it a question of sources, but they didn't necessarily want to dive into a question of sources. They wanted to tell us about their truth which was from their source, which all other sources were wrong.

Mm-hmm. One. I don't wanna go on too long, but one thing I will say is in hanging in there though, and hanging in with the conversation. It didn't go so to, to all the bad places, but we hung in just a bit. We did learn some things and one of the things we learned is that they don't have a lot of contact with people of other [00:21:00] views.

Mm-hmm. For example, they set up tables, they were saying at different auto shows throughout the state, and there's only a Republican table. This was the Republican house. Like we knew what we were getting when we walked into the house, but Right. They, they said that there often isn't a democratic table.

And to me that was like news, you know, to learn. Yeah. I like the spectrum you set up between validation on one poll and shame on the other. And I'm curious about the label. That you would give to the middle where it is a kind of like, well, let's see what you got. Kind of critical curiosity. What, what word would you use or phrase would you use to describe the middle between validation and shame as you listen?

That's a really great question, and maybe I will, I'm holding that to be honest, because. I don't want the middle to be complicity, you know? Mm-hmm. Especially as the middle. It depends on which you know, the middle can go to one side or the other. Right. So a true middle maybe [00:22:00] is discernment and trust in the humanity of the person like a, a.

I don't wanna say like a blind optimism, but a, a, a trust that you can have a conversation and you can evoke things that might be there that I don't wanna assume. First I wanna hear what they have to say. So I, I kind of discernment as I trust. And then now if, if enough things start tipping the scale in one direction right?

Towards, you know, a direction that I'm no longer comfortable with, and we're gonna leave the conversation. But, you know, if it, it starts to go in another way you know, I don't wanna lead with shame if I thought I heard something that's a little bit off for me. Mm-hmm. I wanna lead with, you know, giving them the benefit of the doubt.

I'm persuadable, but I'm not gullible. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. I like that. Wonderful. Leah Howard, thank you so much for being on When We Disagree. Oh, Mike, it's been such a [00:23:00] pleasure. Thanks for having me. When We Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse k and Lance Laidlaw.

Reach out to us at When We disagree@gmail.com.