Welcome to Season 2 of the Political Empathy Podcast hosted by Noah Kocher, PEL research team member and undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. In this series of interviews Noah sits down with students who joined the lab for its second phase, a one-week research trip around Pennsylvania last summer (2025), to talk about their experiences of listening deeply to people across the state. We hope our conversations will give you a sense of what we heard from our fellow Pennsylvanians, how we practice our empathetic listening, and what you can learn from our experience.

The Political Empathy Lab is directed by Dr. Lia Howard, a political scientist and Fellows Director, SNF Paideia Program. Season 2 has been recorded in the Wexler Recording Studio at Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania. Our producers are Jill Katz, Communications Director, SNF Paideia Program, and Noah Kocher, PEL Research Team Member Phase I + II, and SNF Paideia Fellow. Political Empathy Lab gratefully acknowledges our funding from the Office of the Provost at the University of Pennsylvania and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Paideia Program at Penn.

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In the fifth and final episode in the series, Final Thoughts on Summer 2024, Dr. Lia Howard reflects on how the summer of 2024 was a profound one for the Political Empathy Lab. While traveling 2,500 miles around Pennsylvania as political sea changes were happening week to week, they had to be both aware of their own emotional reactions to changes in geography, people and the political narratives they were hearing and rearticulating while being attuned to the emotional reactions of others.

“It was exhausting. It was exhilarating. And at the end of the day it taught us about ourselves as it taught us about the people and places of Pennsylvania; while giving us additional understanding of national trends. And in all humility, we fully recognize that we still have much to learn about it all.”

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the summer of 2024, Dr. Lia Howard, a political scientist and Fellows Director at the SNF Paideia Program, led a small group of students in the inaugural cohort of the Political Empathy Lab, a project born out of Dr. Howard’s SNF Paideia designated course, “Political Empathy and Deliberative Democracy.”

The inaugural research project this summer consisted of several trips to towns and cities across Pennsylvania. These trips weren’t to extract policy positions from Pennsylvanians, not to canvas or poll, and they weren’t tourism either. Rather, they were opportunities to meet fellow residents of Pennsylvania within the state, acknowledging that we experience different lived realities and want to try to better understand each other.

Before they started their travel, the Political Empathy Lab students and Dr. Howard each gathered to explore their thoughts and feelings about beginning such an emotional research endeavor. In this premiere episode, “The Art of Politically Empathizing,” listeners are invited to deep dive into the true meaning behind “political empathy” and meet the Political Empathy Lab research team— who they are, their thoughts about politics in the US right now, what drew them to the lab, and what they’re nervous and curious about.

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Summer 2024 will be a significant time, from the summer Olympics and Paralympics going on in Paris, the 60th anniversary of Freedom Summer with special events planned to commemorate 1964 and NASA will be prepping for a September trip to the Moon.

In addition, in 2024, 49% of the world’s population, including 64 countries will be voting for new leadership. To quote Time magazine “ 2024 is not an election year. 2024 is the election year.

For 10 weeks this summer, Dr. Lia Howard will be leading a team of seven Penn undergraduates on trips throughout the state, across at least 57 counties conversing with Pennsylvanians, putting skills and dispositions of political empathy into direct practice. In short, Political Empathy Lab endeavors to better understand our fellow Pennsylvanians through better conversations with them. Travel with us for Political Empathy Lab Summer 2024!

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