Who actually votes for Donald Trump?
Jolene and I actually explored the Beyond MAGA report from More In Common a couple of months ago, and we couldn't stop talking about it. We ended up doing a whole podcast episode on it because the findings completely blew our mind. So getting to sit down and nerd out with the actual man behind the data this week to ask who actually votes for Donald Trump was an absolute treat. Stephen Hawkins is the director of research for More in Common, and he helped us break down the report and understand our fellow Americans in a whole new way.
Stephen’s own life proves how dynamic our worldviews actually are. He grew up in an evangelical Christian, conservative Southern environment, ended up on the executive board for the College Republicans at age 19, and then swung over to the progressive world of Manhattan activism in his 20s. He has lived inside the psychology of both tribes, and it led him to a career built on understanding why our societies are fracturing.
And this tribal madness is not just an American issue. Whether it is Brazil dealing with an identical plague of left-right polarization, or Europe fracturing over deep border anxieties, societies everywhere are suffering from a devastating decline in institutional trust. The stakes became tragic for More in Common right at its inception in 2016, when British MP Jo Cox was assassinated by a white nationalist. Her first speech in Parliament gave the organization its name, where she famously stated that we have "more in common than what divides us."
"We work with social psychologists and political scientists to provide a richer, more human understanding of what's going on in our societies that are fractured, that are distrusting, that are atomized."
That richer understanding is exactly what we needed to see. Back in 2018, their landmark Hidden Tribes report introduced a concept that Jolene and I have found ourselves in too: the "exhausted majority." It is that massive, quiet chunk of people who are totally burned out by the extreme wings of our culture and just want to step back from the fighting.
But things have shifted wildly since then. We have gone through COVID, a change in presidents, and a massive cultural evolution. So, Stephen’s team released a brand-new study called Beyond MAGA: A Profile of the Trump Coalition to figure out who actually votes for Donald Trump and to understand the nuance within these voters.
The mainstream media loves to paint the Trump coalition with one giant brush, but the data tells a completely different story. In reality, the modern coalition is the youngest, most racially diverse group a Republican has pulled together in 50 years. The report breaks Trump voters into four distinct groups: MAGA Hardliners, Anti-Woke Conservatives, Mainline Republicans, and the Reluctant Right.
The data revealed a massive perception gap. While Democrats wanted to be seen as the party of the economy, the general public overwhelmingly perceived them as being exclusively obsessed with three social issues: abortion, climate change, and transgender rights. When everyday people feel like their salaries cannot cover their bills, a party that looks distracted by big global or social abstractions is going to lose them.
On the other end of the spectrum are the MAGA Hardliners, making up about 29% of the coalition. For them, it is not a transactional relationship based on policy. It is identity. While critics view Trump purely as a destroyer, his core base looks at him through a business lens and sees a builder trying to fix a fundamentally broken system.
So how did our regular political disagreements turn into this deep, structural animosity?
Stephen points directly to a heavily jacked incentive system. Social media algorithms quickly figured out that while good news makes you smile, rage makes you click, comment, and share. Cable news shifted its business model from trying to be fair to audience retention through continuous validation, feeding viewers a daily drug of why the other side is evil.
But it is also the politicians themselves. Members of Congress in Washington D.C. are forced to spend anywhere from 40% to 70% of their time trapped on phones raising millions of dollars for their next primary campaign. And ever since cameras entered Congress in the late 1970s, the financial reward for shifting from a constructive moderate to a combative firebrand skyrocketed. Politicians who choose conflict over governance see their fundraising instantly multiply by five to seven times.
We have created a system where camaraderie is dead. Representatives used to live in D.C., raise their kids together, and play on the same Little League teams. Now, they fly in on Tuesday and fly out on Thursday, completely isolated from one another. The shared goal of running a country has been swallowed whole by the singular obsession of keeping power.
It is easy to look at that and feel completely hopeless, but history actually says we have been here before.
Stephen pointed us back to the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. Back then, massive new technologies concentrated extreme wealth into the hands of a few billionaires, corruption ran rampant, working conditions were brutal, and inflation crushed ordinary farmers. It looked remarkably like today.
What fixed it was when a massive, messy coalition of completely different people - socialists, Christian reformers, labor organizers, and suffragettes. They realized they were all getting screwed over by the exact same concentrated power. They formed the People’s Party, and while the party itself did not last, they forced a common agenda that defined the next twenty years of American progress. The eight-hour workday, the direct election of senators, the FDA - all of it came because regular citizens built a new North Star.
We are sitting on the edge of that exact same cyclical turning point. Between a broad societal anxiety over the unaligned power of AI and a younger generation that has inherited a thoroughly broken political map, the old left-right paradigms are collapsing.
If we want to turn the temperature down, we cannot wait around for a crisis like 9/11 to force us to remember each other's humanity. We have to start shifting the incentives ourselves. We have to step out of the outrage ecosystem, stop rewarding the combative actors, and remember that when you actually sit down across a table from someone on the "other team," you almost always end up liking them a lot more than the internet told you to.
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Stephen Hawkins Organization: https://moreincommonus.com/
Stephen Hawkins Report: https://beyondmaga.us/
Brad Porteus: https://www.bridgegrades.org/
Stephen's Good for the Soul: https://rutgerbregman.com/books/moral-ambition
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[00:00:00] Nicole: She's conservative and I'm liberal, and yet we've been friends for almost 40 years. Everyone says you shouldn't discuss politics, religion, or money, and we say that's exactly what friends should be talking about. Join us as we tackle the conversations you're having in your head but are too scared to say out loud. Welcome to We've Got to Talk. Jolene and welcome Stephen Hawkins
[00:00:26] Jolene: are so excited to have Steven Hawkins with us today. He is the director of research for More in Common, where he leads studies exploring the psychology of political division across nine countries. Steven authored the landmark study Beyond MAGA: A Profile of the Trump Coalition, which I know, listener and viewer, you have already seen us talk about.
[00:00:48] It was in a, a podcast that we aired last month. His work focuses on understanding the ideology, s- biases, and values that shape how people see the world. Did I say all that right, Steven?
[00:00:59] Stephen Hawkins: [00:01:00] You said it all right. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm really glad to be here
[00:01:03] Nicole: for being here.
[00:01:04] Jolene: So Steven, tell us a little bit about your background, how you got to Moreincommon.
[00:01:08] Stephen Hawkins: I have something in common with each of you in that I have spent a lot of time in the conservative world and a lot of time in the progressive world, including kind of professionally. my story's a little bit complicated. I have an international background. I grew up overseas, mostly in Brazil.
[00:01:25] Um, but I moved to the US to come to college, and I went to GW here in Washington, DC, where I live. And at the time, it was considered among the most politically active schools in the country, if not number one. And, uh, it's right by the White House and the State Department and the National Mall. And I quickly got onto the College Republicans executive board.
[00:01:44] It was a huge thrill for me at age 19 to be meeting congressmen and senators and governors and to be involved in... At the time, it was the John McCain era and the 2008 campaign. And, um, had a kind of change of perspective when I [00:02:00] was in college that led me to being more secular and more liberal. And if you fast-forward till after grad school, so fast-forward about eight years, I moved to New York City and started working for an LGBTQ-run activist organization in Manhattan that, um, was trying to change people's minds on climate change and women's rights and Black Lives Matter and all of the things.
[00:02:23] And so I kind of swung from the evangelical Christian conservative Southern Republican background that I started with all the way over to the cosmopolitan progressive, uh, worldview, secular worldview, and learned a lot about the psychology and values of the people on, on th- in both of those worlds. And, um, in my late 20s, got invited to lead the research for this new initiative called More in Common, and what they were trying to do is they were trying to understand what is changing about our societies, where it seemed like we had a consensus around [00:03:00] certain values and certain issues.
[00:03:01] And in particular, they were concerned about what was happening in Europe, where there was a huge backlash to migration that started in 2016, 2017, and they wanted to understand what was happening and how Europeans were responding to that because the kind of typical left-right framing wasn't working.
[00:03:20] And so I have been with More in Common now since that period, so it's been about 10 years that I've been working with More in Common. And I'll just conclude by saying that today the organization has about 75 staff, and we're operating in, as you mentioned, uh, soon to be in nine countries. and so we're all over Europe, the UK, we're in Brazil, we're in the United States.
[00:03:41] We're expanding to Australia. We're expanding to Ireland. and just to g-give a sentence or two about what we do, we work with social psychologists and political scientists to provide a better understanding, a richer, more human understanding of what's going on in our societies that are fractured, that are distrusting, that are [00:04:00] atomized, that are suffering from media bubbles.
[00:04:02] And we write reports about this content, and then we give briefings to philanthropy, to politicians and political parties, to the nonprofit world, and engage with the media. And we hope that this work will help bring a stronger sense of social cohesion to our societies in a moment that really needs it.
[00:04:19] Jolene: okay, one of the things that you said that, that I think, um, has triggered me is number one, so it's not just the United States that's so screwed up right now? Like, it, like this is happening, this phenomenon is happening throughout the whole world? that right?
[00:04:34] Stephen Hawkins: It's happening in a lot of places. It's happening, you know, uh, Brazil, where I grew up, is... It's a very different country in a lot of ways, but... And it's very different actually in its political, institutions. It's not exactly the same as the United States. and yet it suffers from an almost identical set of plagues, where you have very, very similar fights going on between the left and the right there.[00:05:00]
[00:05:00] Um, in Europe, uh, we're seeing a lot of polarization and political division too, uh, especially around issues of immigration and Islam.
[00:05:08] and everywhere where we work, we're also seeing a decline in trust in our institutions, right? At a moment where there's a lot of uncertainty about the future, and in a moment where there's a kind of malaise in our culture, institutions could step up and provide leadership, but they're actually not trusted.
[00:05:24] And so we're, we're seeing those themes across countries wherever we work. It's not just the US, although I think we're kind of leading the way.
[00:05:33] Jolene: Well, yeah
[00:05:33] Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, didn't More in Common start because of a tragedy in England? Is that or
[00:05:40] Stephen Hawkins: That's right. That's right.
[00:05:41] Nicole: say?
[00:05:42] Stephen Hawkins: It's very fair to say. So, um, you know, I began working with the founders of More in Common in 2016, and then a few months into my, my tenure with them, uh, sadly, tragically, a member of Parliament named [00:06:00] Jo Cox, a woman named Jo Cox, she was attacked and killed by someone in her district, and, uh, she was meeting with constituents, and he approached her in public, and he shot her and stabbed her.
[00:06:12] He had been plotting this, and as he was killing her, he yelled, "Britain first. Britain first,"
[00:06:18] Jolene: Wow
[00:06:19] Stephen Hawkins: she was, a vocal advocate for helping particularly Syrian refugees to settle into the United Kingdom where they, where they're fleeing from civil war. And, uh, so she was killed by a white nationalist, and she told her staff to clear out of the way, and she took the brunt of it, and she left behind, uh, two kids and her husband, as well as a heartbroken nation.
[00:06:42] There was a total national outpouring of grief and love for her, um, maybe in a way that feels similar to Gabby Giffords, but of course, with a, a worse ending. So the phrase more in common comes from her first speech in Parliament, where she talked about [00:07:00] her constituents having more in common than what divides them.
[00:07:03] Um, so yeah, this organization owes a legacy to her
[00:07:08] Nicole: w- were you also always in the United States,
[00:07:11] Stephen Hawkins: Hmm
[00:07:11] Nicole: start with the 2018 Hidden Tribes, uh, report, which then, I'm guessing, 'cause I-- that was one of my questions, like what is different about the, the Hidden Tribes report versus the Beyond MAGA report that came out in January of '26?
[00:07:28] Stephen Hawkins: We did start in Europe. That was our primary focus. Our first research projects were in France and Germany, and then we've also done them in, uh, Italy and Greece. And so we were focused on Europe for a little while because what happened to Europe was millions of people came from places as far away as Afghanistan, Syria, North Africa, still ongoing, large draw towards Europe and a very large border, um, a maritime border, and the continent needed to grapple with how to deal with [00:08:00] this.
[00:08:00] And there We described a conflicted middle where a lot of people have empathy for people who are surviving and s- and escaping war, and they believe in the principle that when somebody is fleeing because their family is unsafe because of bombs being dropped in their hou- over their, their house or their, their town, they should have a country to flee to, and th- in principle, we want our country to be a place where those people can be safe.
[00:08:31] That's a very broad feeling that Europeans have, that Brits have, and I would argue that Americans have. The challenge comes that people then have concerns of different types, economic concerns. Are these people who are gonna be able to assimilate into our economy and contribute in any way?
[00:08:46] Cultural concerns, do these people share our values? Especially places like France that really have a reverence around being secular and keeping religion out of the public space. You know, even wearing a cross, for instance, is something which [00:09:00] is largely not allowed in public spaces, uh, s- by work and school, things like this in, in France.
[00:09:06] security concerns. Are there gonna, are there going to be terrorist attacks? You know, people in Germany being afraid to go to Christmas markets now, that sort of thing. And so it... That, that ambivalence was what we were trying to study because we're trying to where do people net out on this, where you have valid competing concerns about what's happening, and you have to kind of lean in one direction or the other.
[00:09:29] And how much skepticism do people have versus empathy and grace that they're giving? And so that's why we started in Europe, was to try and understand all of those different cohorts of people and how they were,
[00:09:40] Jolene: Mm-hmm
[00:09:41] Stephen Hawkins: how they were thinking about the issue. So our first study in the US was Hidden Tribes, which we released in 2018, What we were trying to do with that was If you go back to 2018, this is kind of post-Me Too era. It's kind of in the middle of the Black Lives Matter era, but before George [00:10:00] Floyd. It's before COVID. And much of the discussion is really about identity and racial groups and gender, and so much of the political discourse was focused on those categories as well as, of course, red versus blue, urban versus rural.
[00:10:17] And because I had spent so much time on the conser- in the conservative world and in the progressive world, those dividing lines felt far too simplistic because I knew myself that my demographics hadn't changed, and I had changed my worldview. And so there's something there which is dynamic, and it's about how you understand the world, and it's about what you value.
[00:10:39] And so that's what I wanted to help articulate, and I worked with my dear friend and colleague, Daniel Yudkin, who has a PhD in social psychology, and he helped bring in the academic literature that talks about those differences in psychology and values. And then we were able to use those, um, to [00:11:00] paint a different picture of American division.
[00:11:02] And it's based on people's inner lives, their psychology, and their political engagement, not based on their demographics. And that's how we came up with our seven-group typology, um, so that very quickly the seven groups are progressive activists, traditional liberals, passive liberals, politically disengaged, moderates, traditional conservatives, and devoted conservatives.
[00:11:26] And those seven groups provide a more refined picture of where the division actually is in our country than any of those other groups that, um, I just mentioned, because you have Black and white, male and female people within all of those groups. the other concept that really came out of that work in twenty eighteen was this idea of an exhausted majority.
[00:11:46] And that was really what people held on to and which still gets discussed in politics and the media sometimes today, is this idea of an exhausted majority. and I would say that that's where I sit as well. I talked about kind of my [00:12:00] transition from right to left, but genuinely, I'm not just somebody who considers himself to be fully on the left because I still see a lot of value in what the conservative perspective provides in terms of emphasis around things like character formation, around family, around the importance of ritual, around humility.
[00:12:21] And much of the, the, the Christian worldview is, is something that I have held on to. And so I, I find that the group lens and the power lens that progressives bring to the table, it does a lot of explanatory work, um, but that you're missing so much of the individual experience if you don't have a language for things like character and forgiveness and redemption and family.
[00:12:42] Nicole: when did the idea of Beyond MAGA come? How did it go from that to Beyond MAGA?
[00:12:47] Stephen Hawkins: A lot of years passed, and we needed to update our model. We had a change in president to Biden, and then a change in president back to Trump 2.0, and we wanted to update the model. [00:13:00] And the question we wanted to start with was, who supports President Trump in 2024? It was a very surprising election, uh, in that, or at least to some people it was, in that the story people were telling about President Trump's election in 2016 was that he had won over racists.
[00:13:22] That's a l- a big part of what it was. white old men in particular, had gone to vote for President Trump, and that was kind of a big, big narrative of who he had won over. In 2024, President Trump was elected by the youngest, most racially diverse coalition that has elected a Republican in, like, 50 years.
[00:13:44] And so that begs questions. Who are these people who are joining the coalition that are younger, that are African American, that are Muslim, uh, that are women? What are, what are they seeing in President Trump or not seeing in the [00:14:00] Democratic Party and their candidates? And so, we wanted to take on that question, and from that, the Beyond MAGA report was born.
[00:14:08] And I'll just mention also that our Hidden Tribes 2.0 project is ongoing, so as we speak, we are going back out into the field to update our Hidden Tribes typology for 2026.
[00:14:21] Jolene: can we talk about the, the Beyond MAGA report? Uh, because, so I voted for Trump,
[00:14:27] and as, as we've talked about 100 times on this show, Because I had two choices, right? I mean, I, a- and I, I'm not a Trump fan for the most part, I had a choice between, you know, Kamala and, and Trump, so that's who I voted for.
[00:14:44] So I loved taking the, the test because, it truly identified exactly why I voted for him. And now Nicole, who did not vote for Trump, also took the test
[00:14:55] Nicole: For
[00:14:56] Jolene: to see what she would be if, if she would have voted for him, [00:15:00] and she was exactly what we all would have... You were, yeah, we were both
[00:15:04] Nicole: is that we both were reluctant right
[00:15:07] Jolene: Yeah.
[00:15:07] Yep. Yeah. Right.
[00:15:08] Nicole: And one
[00:15:09] Jolene: 100%.
[00:15:09] Nicole: that I thought was really cool for Jolene, uh, is that, and, and I say this with love, Jolene is a cons- like, she doesn't trust necessarily, so she's always, like, into a good conspiracy and things like that. And she looked at that quiz, and she was like, "These were really good questions.
[00:15:28] I
[00:15:28] Stephen Hawkins: Hmm
[00:15:29] Nicole: feel, I didn't feel manipulated." Is this fair to say, Jo? I don't
[00:15:34] Jolene: Yeah.
[00:15:34] Nicole: words in your
[00:15:34] Jolene: Yep
[00:15:35] Nicole: Which I thought was really exciting and why I was so excited that you shared, Steven, what your background was, because to me, like, I don't even know how to ask this question. It might be just be more of a You seem like the singular perfect person to write these questions because you have such a vast experience of your life between, how you grew up, the beliefs you had, and also having the international [00:16:00] experience. We don't know each other, but I'm just like, uh, it seems like a deep empathy and curiosity about all sides that, that it seemed like you were the perfect person to write questions that Jolene could trust.
[00:16:13] Stephen Hawkins: I apprec--
[00:16:13] Jolene: good. Yeah
[00:16:16] Stephen Hawkins: I appreciate that. That's so kind of you. And, I, I'm gonna take that compliment because I think that that is, uh, it's a contribution that I try to continue to make, which is sit within the psychology of somebody who's different from you, and then back in your own shoes, and then somebody else.
[00:16:34] And, you know, the compliment I'm most proud of receiving about The Hidden Tribes work was... It was a day in Washington, D.C. I was with the other... some of the other co-authors on the report, and we had a morning meeting with a progressive think tank who had helped fund the project, and they were enthusiastic about our description of what was happening in the country, and they [00:17:00] approved of it, and they were grateful.
[00:17:02] And then in the afternoon, we went to a very conservative think tank, a socially conservative think tank. And the... One of the people in that boardroom, in the conservative think tank, um, picked up the report and held it in his hands. He goes, "I looked at it from over here, and I couldn't see the bias. I looked at it from over here, and I couldn't see the bias."
[00:17:20] And, and then it's like, "If there's one place in which you might be biased, it's towards being hopeful." He goes, "But it-- But I..."
[00:17:26] Jolene: gosh
[00:17:27] Stephen Hawkins: And, and so the validation from the left and from the right of the report as having been even-handed, um, that, that's, you know, it's not easy to achieve that.
[00:17:38] Jolene: Absolutely
[00:17:40] Stephen Hawkins: and I think conservatives especially, I think because they feel underrepresented by the mainstream institutions of media in particular,
[00:17:50] Jolene: percent
[00:17:51] Stephen Hawkins: they have their guard up when it comes to anything that is about talking about Trump or Trump supporters
[00:17:57] Jolene: if we looked at polling that took place prior [00:18:00] to the elections, which again, Nicole's already said, I'm, I'm, don't know if I would go so far as to say I'm a conspiracy theorist, but I could be talked into one. don't think people are honest, um, in their polling
[00:18:13] Stephen Hawkins: Hmm
[00:18:13] Jolene: they don't wanna admit who they wanna, who they wanna vote for.
[00:18:16] Stephen Hawkins: Hmm
[00:18:17] Jolene: so I think that's why people like Nicole were so surprised on election night, like where did this come from? How could the, how could more than half of the nation be voting Republican when that's not what the polling showed? And do you find that? I mean, as you go through and, and formulate these questions and all that, that people are, are then more willing to talk about it, talk about it after the fact because they're so afraid to admit maybe before the fact
[00:18:43] Stephen Hawkins: After the first Pr- President Trump election, there was a lot of discussion and polling about the shy Trump voter, which I think is a poor characterization. I think, Joe, yours is better, 'cause it's, it's not really timid, being timid, it's being, having an aversion to being judged.
[00:18:58] But you could see [00:19:00] systematically that the way that people reported supporting Trump online was higher than the level of support that they would find when they would do telephone interviews, where you have to tell somebody,
[00:19:10] Nicole: Hmm
[00:19:10] Stephen Hawkins: And so that, that was quite a tell, right? uh, because a lot of research, of course, is done online. we don't see, too much aversion to being honest about opinions supporting Trump. you know, and we ask a lot of thorny questions. We wanna know people's views on race and racism and crime and Islam and terrorism and transgender athletes and gender issues and gender differences. Like, we wanna understand how people think about these questions, and we wanna do it in a way that reflects the language of our moment.
[00:19:44] And that's also something that we tried to do in Beyond MAGA, was, you know, there's a formality that has kind of eroded in our politics and been replaced with something which holds our attention more and that, you know, is accessible. And President Trump is a, is a very effective [00:20:00] communicator because he speaks to a very general audience rather than speaking in academic speak or in bureaucrat speak.
[00:20:07] And so some of our questions tried to reflect that too, which is that we were trying to enter into a dialogue with people where they are rather than, you know, structure things in the language of our world.
[00:20:19] Nicole: Stephen, for those of us that have not, I mean, not us, but those of our viewers that seen our episode and haven't read your report, can you
[00:20:28] Stephen Hawkins: Hmm
[00:20:28] Nicole: a small summary about what your findings were with the Beyond MAGA, you know, the different types and, and also what was surprising you in doing
[00:20:38] Stephen Hawkins: Yeah. Sure, of course. So the Beyond MAGA report identifies four groups. So they are, in this order, MAGA hardliners, anti-woke conservatives, mainline Republicans, and the reluctant right. And they're not too different in size. They range between twen- 20 and 30% [00:21:00] in size, basically. with the largest ones being the mainline Republicans and the MAGA hardliners.
[00:21:07] And basically, what we found is that the, the original research question that I mentioned about who the people are that are bringing... Who, who, who the reinforcements are coming into the Trump camp that helped him get elected in 2024, a lot of them sit within this world of the reluctant right. And the reluctant right are people who identify as moderate or slightly conservative.
[00:21:29] They're not especially politically engaged. They do care about the economy. They care about inflation and prices, and that was so central to Trump's message and to the lack of appeal in Harris's candidacy. And they are, also concerned about the border. I think that was a broadly popular stance that President Trump had was in securing the border.
[00:21:52] And they're not progressive in the sense that they are motivated by, [00:22:00] um, issues like abortion, climate change, and transgender rights. And what we saw in 2024 was that there was a real mismatch between how Democrats wanted to be perceived and how they actually were perceived by the electorate. Democrats wanted to be perceived as focused on the economy because that's what matters to you.
[00:22:19] But we did a study, and we wrote up the results of this and had an article in The Atlantic about it, that showed that Americans, including Republicans and Democrats, thought that Democrats were motivated by those three issues I just mentioned: abortion, climate change, and transgender rights. And so, you know, there's a moment of concern that Americans are having that their salaries can't cover their bills and that they don't feel like we're not safeguarding the country.
[00:22:46] And the reputation of Democrats is, well, they wanna focus on social issues and big global problems and questions of justice that don't relate necessarily to me directly. Um, and so that's-- the reluctant right would've been part of that group [00:23:00] that were just like, "Well, if I have to pick between these two options, I'm gonna go with the guy who's probably gonna do the sensible things on the economy."
[00:23:08] And that included a lot of younger men who told us that they made up their decision, they made the decision about who to vote for weeks or days before the election,
[00:23:18] which wasn't true for the other three groups, the mainline Republicans, anti-woke conservatives, and the MAGA hardliners. I'll just say one more thing about the key findings that I think is really interesting. the MAGA hardliners, which are twenty-nine percent of Trump voters, Their support for President Trump is really tied up in their identity. It's not just, "I want these policies, and this is the mechanism for getting these policies done." That's a transactional relationship. That's not the basis of the MAGA hardliner relationships with Trump.
[00:23:49] For them, it's more, "This is my identity and my values. I'm proud to be American. Usually, or very often, I'm proud to be a Christian, and that's really important to how I see myself and what I want [00:24:00] my family to be like. And I am, uh, you know, deeply committed to also the Republican Party." And President Trump embodies more than just policy preferences.
[00:24:14] He, he embodies a person that they, that they feel personally connected to. Um, and so we talk about these different roles that, um, President Trump plays for the MAGA hardliners, who are his most diehard supporters. Um, and they include him having a constructive role. I think from the critical perspective of President Trump from the outside, Trump is seen as a destroyer.
[00:24:37] Like, you know, he's, he's, he's wrecking things, and he's, he's coming in with, uh, a, a negative agenda. But, um, for Trump voters, the number one metaphor that people used was, "No, this is a builder trying to fix a broken system, and he's coming in with that business acumen to do it." and so the, the MAGA hardliners have, um, a type of relationship with President Trump that I don't think we see [00:25:00] any corresponding parallels to on the left.
[00:25:04] I don't think there was a, a Biden hardliners group that we would have found on the, on the left that was just like, "He's our man forever, and he's-- I feel so personally connected to him." You know, I don't think so. And so Trump has created something singular there.
[00:25:19] Jolene: So do you think, though, that this, this polarization then, And, and, and you kind of touched on this ab- about the, um, the perception gap, right? I mean, the, the Democrats have this perception of the
[00:25:32] Stephen Hawkins: Mm-hmm.
[00:25:32] Jolene: the Republicans have this, of the Democrats. this polarization that we're having right now, how did it become, um, more than just political disagreements?
[00:25:42] I mean, we, you know, we talked about, I, I, you know, I talked about loving Newt Gingrich because I
[00:25:47] Stephen Hawkins: Hmm.
[00:25:47] Jolene: he got in there, it was like, "Okay, what are the things that we all agree on?
[00:25:49] Let's,
[00:25:50] Stephen Hawkins: Mm-hmm
[00:25:50] Jolene: we, we really agree on 80% of the things, so let's start there," and, you know, Contract with America and all that. Now it is so polarized.
[00:25:59] Stephen Hawkins: Mm-hmm.
[00:25:59] Jolene: [00:26:00] How did that ha- I mean, it... Was it social media?
[00:26:03] Stephen Hawkins: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:04] Jolene: was it news? Was...
[00:26:05] Stephen Hawkins: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:05] Jolene: what's, what are your thoughts on that?
[00:26:07] Stephen Hawkins: Yeah. It does have everything to do with incentives. So there, there's something which I sometimes refer to as the polarization ecosystem, and it's a lot of what you just mentioned there, Jolene, which is that what social media algorithms have figured out is that good news is something that makes you smile, but things that make you angry are things that you share.
[00:26:29] They're things that you engage with. They're things that you comment on. And so it's stickier and more valuable to have negative content than positive content. And studies have shown that on X, for instance, there's a, a bias towards the negative and inflammatory content over the positive content because it, it shows this engagement...
[00:26:50] Uh, it elevates the engagement with the platform. The, the, the big change also from the '90s is that people have moved towards cable news as their means of getting news as opposed to nightly news [00:27:00] hour, which is brief, and the, the economic model between the previous news, mainstream news and cable news is very different.
[00:27:10] The, the model has moved towards more opinion, towards more division, and towards more negativity, and that has, you know, that changes what the conversation is about. You know, the, the n- the nightly news anchors of the '70s, '80s and '90s started out their show going, "How do I make sure that I'm being fair? How do I not alienate my Democrat rep- my Democrat viewers?
[00:27:34] How do I not alienate, you know, those folks in the South or the conservatives?" And now it's, "How do I hold on to my audience that hates the other side? How do
[00:27:43] Nicole: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:43] Stephen Hawkins: I, how do I validate them?" Right? And that, that is a business model because it's, you know, it's audience retention through validation. It's a business model for the social media platforms.
[00:27:55] And I wanna mention one other set of incentives, which is the politicians themselves. So I live in [00:28:00] Washington, D.C., and it is criminal how much time you have to spend raising money if you're an elected official in the city. If you are a member of Congress, you need to be spending between 40% and 70% of your time raising money when you're in D.C.,
[00:28:14] not when you're back in your district among your constituents. You're on the phone at your party headquarters, and you're spending effectively two to three days of your week calling people in San Francisco or New York or somewhere else, and you're asking them for $5,000 and $10,000 do-donations, and you're doing this as the primary activity of your, um, of your job.
[00:28:36] And so I, I'll mention something else which has happened along the way. Two more things, just 'cause I love this question. One is, uh, it-- there wasn't C-SPAN b- in the-- until the late '70s, right? It was part of the Watergate reforms was that there was more transparency, so they put cameras into, into Congress.
[00:28:58] And so [00:29:00] the incentive then was, well, let's pass good bills and good laws, and let's do good regulatory work, et cetera. When the cameras came on, it, it started to shift a little bit towards how can I get attention out of this moment? How can I, how can I fundraise off of this? And, what we have seen is people who...
[00:29:18] I'm not gonna name names, but there's a great example from the Republican Party of this, but it's true on, on the Democratic side as well. People who have shifted intentionally from being moderate to being combative have seen within their first fundraising cycle a shift of five to seven X more fundraising, right?
[00:29:34] So imagine, imagine if your job primarily is to raise money, and there's a move you can make which makes it, you know, you can spend 20% as much time and get the same amount of funding for it, right? And get rewarded by your party because you're helping your party's brand. So the incentives in the traditional world, traditional news world, in the social me- uh, media world, and in the fundraising world are all towards this conflict and the preservation of this conflict [00:30:00] and not towards, uh, resolving it and setting it aside
[00:30:03] Jolene: Okay, so then how do, how do we fix it? I was gonna say, do you think things are gonna get any better? I, I, I mean, i- if, if that's what the system is feeding into, uh, I mean, not gonna fix it, are we?
[00:30:15] Nicole: mean, that's the things... I, okay, this might be a really dumb question, but what's the money for?
[00:30:20] Stephen Hawkins: They're raising money for their campaigns. So basically, it's not, it's not a form of personal corruption, What's happening is every two years, members of Congress have to run for re-election, and they have to set a target. Maybe it's $3 or $4 million that they need to raise to have a good election, and they need to win their primary.
[00:30:42] Usually, the primary is the more contested election because that's more competitive. So many c- congressional districts have been drawn so that there's a clear majority of one party or the other. So when you get to the general election, mostly people live, in America, mostly people live in districts where there's hardly ever been somebody from the [00:31:00] other party representing them, so they have to win their primary.
[00:31:02] And to win the primary, they need to have a budget for TV, for radio, for digital, and they need to have a campaign staff, and they need to get volunteers out, and they need to do lawn signs, and they need to be able to host dinners where they raise more money.
[00:31:15] Nicole: Mm-hmm.
[00:31:15] Stephen Hawkins: what they're doing. They're raising money so that they can stay in power, and it's, it's not the elected official's fault that this is the game, but this is the game that they're playing
[00:31:26] Nicole: Has the game always been like this or is it worse now?
[00:31:29] Stephen Hawkins: It's worse now. One of the things which has, which has happened along the way is a camaraderie has declined in Washington, DC among members of Congress. Two reasons why, at least two. One of them is it used to be that members of Congress didn't have to spend so much time fundraising. They would come to DC, and they would raise their families here.
[00:31:49] So they would have a house in DC, and their kids would go to school together, and they'd be on the same Little League team. And so, you know, your colleague in Congress is also your neighbor, [00:32:00] also a parent at your school. And that's basically declined a lot as people fly in and fly out, and the congressional calendar has gotten shorter and shorter, so people are coming in Tuesday to Thursday, and they're spending much more time back in their home district.
[00:32:13] So that sense of camaraderie has gone down. The other thing that's happened is, uh, Newt Gingrich actually has helped bring about this change, was Republicans had been out of power in Congress for decades, and so he was charged with a way to, like, how can we get Republicans back in the majority in the House?
[00:32:29] And there was a norm that changed, and this is a little bit technical, but I find it so, so interesting. It used to be the case, let's say you represent Virginia. You're from one congressional district in Virginia, and there's-- you have a neighboring congressional district where you have your fellow Republican candidate who's running for re-election there.
[00:32:48] It used to be the case that you don't help out your colleagues in campaigning for them, because if your colleague loses, then you've campaigned against your future [00:33:00] member of Congress who's representing the district next to you. Does that make sense? So there's kind of this gentleman's agreement that you don't want to tear down or attack somebody who could end up being a congressman or congresswoman with you if they get elected.
[00:33:15] So what happened in the 1990s was we said, "We gotta win. It's not about being nice and getting along with people. We've gotta win." So now Republicans and Democrats both will campaign actively, in other n- in other districts, which just brings the level of animosity up because it means, it means that there's not a sense of camaraderie coming in, like there's a purpose that's bigger than our party being in power.
[00:33:36] The purpose of our party being in power seems to have dwarfed the shared purpose of let's do good governance as members of Congress.
[00:33:44] Nicole: Well, that's making me think, Steven, they just had a, the Texas runoff on Tuesday, I'm just gonna say that the Republican Party money towards a Democrat that is, was a horrible Democrat to get [00:34:00] them to win so that Democrats wouldn't vote for them. And thank God she didn't win. Um, I'm forgetting her name.
[00:34:10] Stephen Hawkins: Is this Jasmine Crockett?
[00:34:11] Nicole: no, no, no, no. Um, no, this just happened. Um, do you know her name, Joe?
[00:34:15] Jolene: It was G- uh, like, um, G- Gwendolyn or Gwen,
[00:34:19] Nicole: All I know
[00:34:20] Jolene: but I mean sh-
[00:34:21] Nicole: anti-Semite, and
[00:34:22] Jolene: yeah
[00:34:22] Nicole: the Republicans were putting, I guess, a lot of money behind her because they were like, "Yeah, if we get her in the ticket, then the Democrats won't vote for her, and so we'll have an easier time winning." I don't know if I'm being articulate right now ' cause I'm s- too
[00:34:38] Jolene: It,
[00:34:38] Stephen Hawkins: No, no, this, this makes total sense. This makes total sense.
[00:34:40] Nicole: Where
[00:34:41] Stephen Hawkins: Yeah
[00:34:41] Jolene: Now
[00:34:42] Nicole: "Oh my gosh, what if, what are we doing? Like seriously, what are we doing as a country?" And I know that I lean more Pollyanna-ic and bleeding heart, but we are all Americans, when stuff happens, when bad stuff [00:35:00] happens, like September 11th, and I lived downtown. I saw the first
[00:35:06] Stephen Hawkins: Hmm.
[00:35:07] Nicole: hit Tower One. It was def- like, there are no words. There are no words of how bad it was, and I might get emotional. But one thing that I remember so clearly is not only America, but in the first couple days, the world was behind us, and that doesn't happen unless there's hor- Like, I feel like as Americans, we've just forgotten. It's all about winning, like you're saying, Steven, that people are like, "I don't ca- I don't... Like, I don't want you to be friends with, with the other. I don't want you to marry the other." I- like, it's gotten so ugly, I, I think that's one of the reasons Jolene and I are here, and why we were so excited to talk to you. Brianna, our producer, I'll shout out Brianna. She was like, "Oh my God, we, I can't wait for this conversation with Steven." And she's in Australia. [00:36:00] Like they... It's, as you know, 'cause you deal with a world organization, like what are we doing?
[00:36:06] Stephen Hawkins: it's, it's telling that you bring up September 11th, and a lot of people do because it's... For those of us-- There's now a generation that's adults that doesn't remember 9/11.
[00:36:17] Nicole: Yeah
[00:36:17] Stephen Hawkins: Um, but for millennials and older, it really does stand out as this singular moment of real solidarity and connection.
[00:36:25] Nicole: Yeah
[00:36:26] Stephen Hawkins: I think there was glimmers of that a little bit in early COVID, in the very first days and weeks of that.
[00:36:31] And then George Floyd happened that summer, and then that ripped open a Band-Aid and-- ripped off the Band-Aid rather, and, and then the division kinda continued from there. there's, there's kind of three paths forward. This is simplistic, but I, I think one of them is what you just mentioned, Nicole, which is like, do we require a crisis for us to have coordinated intention in this country?
[00:36:58] Because when [00:37:00] cr- when COVID happened, we actually did see bills got passed, funding got pushed forward, Operation Warp Speed got a vaccine delivered within months, and there was a sense that there's something bigger and more important than our disagreements here. And September 11th pr- created that window, too.
[00:37:19] And right now, if you ask Americans whether they think that the greatest threat comes from abroad or comes from within our country, four in five say it comes from within our country. And so we're not collectively acting towards a common goal of defeating another ideology or defending ourselves from someone else or working towards some broader project.
[00:37:38] We're primarily consumed with our own conflict amongst ourselves. So that crisis to create coordination path, I think, sadly, is one that we could just be on, or one that w- might be required for us to kind of come to a common consciousness of what matters. another path is that we just, we don't get that crisis, and so things continue to decline.
[00:37:58] But there's a third option [00:38:00] that I wanna mention as well, which is And he, and here, Joe, I'm coming back to your question from like 15 minutes ago, so thanks for
[00:38:07] Jolene: Okay
[00:38:07] Stephen Hawkins: like, how do we get out of it? Well Um, there's a model for how we get out of it that I've been really interested in lately, and it comes from the late nineteenth century, where the country changed in a really radical way in a-- and mostly for the worse in terms of every-everyday people's experience in the country.
[00:38:28] And that happened because basically, a lot of wealth was consolidated around new technologies, especially the railroad. And so these big trusts mounted, and for the first time in American history, you really had a s-kind of set of billionaires, and they were able to really use that power to control municipal governments and the Senate.
[00:38:48] The Senate wasn't directly elected. And you had problems with currency, where farmers had less and less income for their, uh, for their crops, and they were taking out loans, and the value of the currency would [00:39:00] actually, um, go up while they were harvesting their crops over the season. And then when they go to sell their crops, they're getting-- they're, they're not able to even pay off their loans that they took out, you know, nine tens, nine months, uh, or ten months earlier.
[00:39:13] And at the same time, you have this manufacturing boom from the re-Industrial Revolution, which is putting a lot of people in factories, and they're not getting treated well. They're working around the clock. They're working six or seven days a week, and they're working from childhood. Um, and then with that comes alcoholism, and with that comes the failure of the Reconstruction Era and Black people being treated terribly and being in Jim Crow South and rising inequality.
[00:39:38] So a lot of the features that we see today,
[00:39:41] Jolene: Hmm
[00:39:41] Stephen Hawkins: which are things like problems with inflation and currency, new technologies leading to massive consolidation of wealth, a lot of visible, obvious corruption in our society, they, they kind of defined a moment in the Gilded Age of the end of the nineteenth century.
[00:39:58] And what ended up happening was [00:40:00] all these different constituencies that wouldn't otherwise have known each other or worked together came together, and in-- they defined a new political party called the People's Party. And this is socialists, this is Christian reformers, this is prohibitionists, this is women suffragettes, women who are pushing for the right to vote.
[00:40:16] This is Black, uh, rights organizers. They all pushed together to find a common agenda. And what ended up happening was that they thought they were gonna start a political party, but instead they defined a common agenda, and that common agenda ended up defining what the next two decades looked like. And the reason today that we have the women's right to vote, that we have the secret ballot, that we have the FDA, that we have the eight-hour workday, the w-- we have the direct election of the Senate, all of those things came from the momentum that came out of that effort, where people who are very different from each other said, "Hang on, power is con-- is concentrating in the wrong places.
[00:40:51] We're all getting screwed over here as a result, and if we work together, we can create a North Star that the political parties are gonna have to compete [00:41:00] to claim that they're pointed at as well." And that's what happened. And you see Republicans and Democrats in the first two decades of the ninet- of the twentieth century So this would be people like Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, Howard Taft, competing to get parts of this agenda advanced and succeeding in doing so.
[00:41:17] And so to summarize, the broad frustrations that we're feeling right now as Americans might create a context in which we decide we care more about building a future that we want our children to grow up in than we do about the conflicts we're having with each other. And so if we can define that well enough, we can reorient the parties towards that agenda and not-- and, and change the course of where we're headed.
[00:41:47] Jolene: Wow. Can it happen in two years? Will we see this in the next presidential election?
[00:41:55] Stephen Hawkins: Working on it. We're working on it
[00:41:59] Jolene: Do you know [00:42:00] something we don't know, Stephen? Is there, is there an effort to make this come to fruition?
[00:42:06] Stephen Hawkins: That we at More in Common are trying to help seed this sort of work, yes.
[00:42:10] Nicole: and I would say that also there are, like, independent news media companies that have sprouted up. Like, there is, there is positivity in this. There-- It
[00:42:22] Stephen Hawkins: Mm-hmm.
[00:42:22] Nicole: that, exhausted middle might not be so exhausted, that there might be some courage happening here, 'cause it,
[00:42:30] Stephen Hawkins: Hmm.
[00:42:30] Nicole: it's a lot of effort and courage and curiosity that you do every day, Steve.
[00:42:38] And I would, I would imagine, like, what makes you hopeful in this work that you do?
[00:42:45] Stephen Hawkins: Where I find the hope is honestly in seeing that moments have been very, very hard in our country before. I mentioned the Gilded Age, but if you go back to the 1960s, there were hundreds and [00:43:00] hundreds of bombings in the year 1968 alone, uh, by, by organized groups, American domestic terror groups like the Weather Underground, like the Ku Klux Klan.
[00:43:12] Um, there were political assassinations of two Kennedys and MLK. and we were in a, in a vicious war in Vietnam that just, you know, ripped apart a whole generation of young men and of, and of families, and we pushed through that. And there's something which feels cyclical about that,
[00:43:33] and I do when we're...
[00:43:35] It feels like we're trending downwards as a society, like we're in decline. And I think there's, there comes a moment when you ask, "Are we gonna hit rock bottom here? And are we gonna aim for something higher that we can all collectively ima- imagine, and that we feel responsible for passing along? Or are we gonna let the slide just go down even further?"
[00:43:56] And I think we're getting close to that kind of moment, and we've been in this, [00:44:00] these sorts of cycles before. so that makes me hopeful is the history. And the other thing that makes me hopeful is, um, I know a lot of people like each of you who are, like, committed to team red, team blue, and when you sit down, One, you often like people a lot more than you think you would, and two, you often find that their arguments are a lot more persuasive than you might have expected. and in particular, you know, Joe, you said that you wouldn't describe yourself as a conspiracy theorist, but I think a lot of Americans today across the spectrum Have really lost a sense of...
[00:44:38] Well, we know this. They've lost a sense of confidence in our, in Washington, D.C., in our institutions, and there are now enough episodes and vignettes and stories that we've collected where we're like, "Well, but we know that this happened." So the conspiracy theory label actually does kind of fit in this case when, you [00:45:00] know?
[00:45:00] And, and part of what sadly I think has happened in our country is that the sense of crisis that so many Americans felt when President Trump took office meant that everybody was trying to use their power to try and block him. The news media, maybe some of the nonprofits, maybe some of the universities, maybe some of w- people within the government.
[00:45:22] And so all of them said, "We have a higher calling or a different mission than to just be truthful or to just pursue our mandated mission for this bureaucracy, so let's try and do what we can because there's a crisis." And what that ended up hap- happening was it, it eroded the integrity of those institutions because they were trying to do something that they're not built for.
[00:45:44] And now we have institutions which don't seem to be living out their mission. And so Americans are turning more and more to individual people who they feel like they have a connection with or who they trust or who they gotta... they have an intuition about, and less and less to the brands and the institutions which all seem like [00:46:00] they've kind of traded their institutional integrity for power, status, or some degree of relevance.
[00:46:08] And, uh, that's a common problem that I think transcends the divide
[00:46:13] Jolene: I have not heard that, anyone say that before, and that makes so much sense. What, the movie that Nicole and I both love is Wag the Dog,
[00:46:20] Stephen Hawkins: Mm-hmm
[00:46:22] Jolene: you know, if, and so y- th- think that's probably where my conspiracy, you know, spidey sense comes up and, and always think of that.
[00:46:31] But you're right, I, we lost trust because everybody thought there was a crisis. And so, you know, uh, as the Republican, you know, it was at the CIA, it was at the, you know, FBI, it was, you know, w- everybody was trying to do their thing to stop this crisis. And oh, God, that's so, I'm, that's brilliant
[00:46:52] Nicole: Stephen, before we do a good for the soul, do you have anything else that you, that's important for our listeners or [00:47:00] viewers to know about you or know about More in Common or, I don't know, find a, give us a pathway forward? that you're thinking about
[00:47:09] Stephen Hawkins: Well, I think every conversation turns to AI at some point these days. Um, so it does feel, um, it does feel a bit remiss to not mention this. There, there... Let me just point at a couple threads that I see happening in the country today and how they could, how they could be brought together. Um, Gen Z is a different creature.
[00:47:33] They are not millennials. They are not Gen X. They have a kind to put it critically, maybe a self-pity, but to put it affirming, they have a real gripe, a grievance with society that is earned, which is that they haven't known a politics not defined by polarization, they haven't known an economy that treated them as well as treated their parents, and they haven't known a foreign policy which has been successful at achieving [00:48:00] anything major.
[00:48:00] So they've only known the dysfunction, I think they present an opportunity because they're not breaking in the typical left-right way, and they are motivated to see something new happen. The political party or the political agenda or the movement that can tell Gen Z, "We're on your side. We want you to have a good future.
[00:48:20] We're committed to you. We don't know what the future is going to look like. We genuinely don't." Fifteen years from now, do you think we're still gonna be sitting in, in lecture halls with laptops trying to memorize facts? It seems unlikely. Do we think we're still gonna be doing jobs that it's-- have words like engineer and coder?
[00:48:36] Like, I don't know. So people who are just entering the, the, the job market now or who will in the f- next few years are genuinely scared, and I think we owe it as a society to affirm our commitment to our future generations. "Kids, grandkids, we're here for you. We're going to do whatever it takes to make sure that you are taken care of."
[00:48:58] That is on the table [00:49:00] as a requirement or at least an enticing, uh, opportunity for whatever political movement is willing to do it. But they, they should do it. and so what I see is a broad American concern about AI and then a generational specific concern about their own future, and that stuff's just not ideological.
[00:49:19] People aren't caught up in left-right, red-blue when it comes to that. and they can be the kingmaker. Gen Z can swing this thing. We have a very narrow, narrowly divided politics in this country, which reflects how weak the parties are. If the parties were really strong and effective, they'd have big, broad, appealing messages, and they'd swing over voters a lot, and they don't, right?
[00:49:41] They're weak.
[00:49:41] Jolene: Yeah
[00:49:42] Stephen Hawkins: And so Gen Z can swing one way or the other for the country. And so what makes me hopeful is that, I think our country needs that kind of commitment to younger Americans right now. I'm-- Look, I'm in my thirties, and I would appreciate it. I would appreciate knowing that whatever comes [00:50:00] next, which nobody can tell us, is not gonna mean that I'm gonna be bankrupted and jobless and homeless.
[00:50:06] You know? I mean, it's genuinely a fear that people have, not to mention other concerns young people have, like climate change. I think it's both the right thing to do and the politically expedient thing to do, and when those two things converge, I think there's a political moment that we might get to benefit from.
[00:50:20] Jolene: So, uh, uh, and, and I was gonna ask you, and, and I thought, okay, no, because this answer, we could g- talk another 30 minutes on this, so I didn't even say anything ab- about AI. But I, as you started talking about, you know, the Industrial Revolution, and the Gilded Age, I mean, that's what I think. I mean, that's where we are, right?
[00:50:40] I mean, it's, the whole AI thing is going to really determine, I think, where we go as, as a s- not even a s- as a society, but as a world
[00:50:51] Stephen Hawkins: Mm-hmm.
[00:50:52] Jolene: 10 years. I
[00:50:53] Stephen Hawkins: Mm-hmm.
[00:50:54] Jolene: is happening in the next five years,
[00:50:56] Stephen Hawkins: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It is, and we know-- [00:51:00] We've done a bunch of polling on this, and it's not a left-right issue. People are anxious,
[00:51:05] Nicole: Mm-hmm.
[00:51:06] Stephen Hawkins: it's for different, different buckets, right? There's a bucket which is, are my kids gonna learn how to think and how to talk and how to socialize? Are they gonna learn how to solve problems?
[00:51:16] Are they gonna read books? Are they gonna learn how to deal with the uncertainty that is just part of being human all of the time?
[00:51:23] Jolene: Mm-hmm.
[00:51:24] Stephen Hawkins: are they gonna cultivate their minds? You know. What-- It's so crucial that we have a sense of intuition and instinct, and that's something which AI doesn't have, and it's something which can only be honed over years of having to make decisions.
[00:51:38] And if we offload that, that cognitive skill, then you're-- we're gonna have people who are, are, are kind of flapping about without any capacity to really direct their behavior and their choices. So that's big, a big concern we see, especially among moms, that that's, you know, gonna under-- their kids will be underdeveloped.
[00:51:58] There's a big chunk of concern about employment and [00:52:00] how jobs are changing, and it's, from my-- in my opinion, very well merited in that, a lot of functions which I might have hired for a few years ago, I now am not tempted to hire for because I know how quickly and well the work can be done otherwise with AI.
[00:52:13] And then the third bucket is this existential concern, which is that we're not just building a powerful technology. We're building a technology with the aim of making it smarter than ourselves, and in some ways, it already is. We know, for instance, that the last anthropic model, maybe you've talked about this, the myth-mythos model, had found ways into the most secure systems, whether it's banks, companies, government agencies, that hundreds of human, hackers and security prof-professionals had not found.
[00:52:46] So that means AI is able to achieve objectives that the smartest humans have not been able to do, and consequential, right? Consequential objectives like breaking into banks. and so when you combine that capacity [00:53:00] with independent agency, which is what we're doing with these agentic models, is they can make their own decisions, and they can connect between systems, and they can work together.
[00:53:07] And then you make them smarter than humans. You know, you're, you're creating something which kind of feels like a superior species. And when you do that, you need to make sure that it's very much aligned with what you want to happen in your society. Otherwise, you start to pursue other goals. So I think Americans feel those threats, and, If we go back to the September eleventh example that Nicole mentioned, the common enemy is sometimes the motivating force you need for people to come together.
[00:53:34] And with AI, I think it's not necessarily a common enemy, but there is at least a common threat that people feel.
[00:53:40] Jolene: That's scary
[00:53:43] Nicole: Ай-яй-яй-яй-яй
[00:53:45] Stephen Hawkins: Or it's gonna unify us
[00:53:47] Nicole: shall we do a good for the soul? 'Cause maybe
[00:53:50] Stephen Hawkins: Let's do some good for the soul. Let's do it
[00:53:52] Nicole: this up.
[00:53:56] All right, Steven, what is your good for the soul?
[00:53:58] Stephen Hawkins: Um, [00:54:00] I am about halfway through this book by, uh, by Rutger Bregman. I'll hold it up. I don't know this gentleman. I'm not doing this, you know, as part of any kind of partnership. But it's a great book called Moral Ambition, and subtitle is Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference. And, um, I really like this because I have, in recent years, started to identify with the idea of being an idealist.
[00:54:25] And, um, at the same time, I'm a researcher, which requires critical thinking and skepticism and data and objectivity. And I have found this book to be, um, heartwarming, but not in a way which is naive. It's, it's all about finding the intersection between what is possible and what is worthwhile. And, um, I've got a lot of respect from him.
[00:54:49] He takes a historical perspective and shows cases where people m-might have left their job, and then they go find out that they can b- find a [00:55:00] solution to something like getting malaria nets to hundreds of thousands of people in certain areas of sub-Saharan Africa that weren't getting them, and save thousands of lives, and do so in a way which, um, reflects a very pragmatic way of, of understanding what's needed.
[00:55:15] So I really like this book, Moral Ambition. That's my heartwarming take.
[00:55:18] Nicole: All right, right on. We will put
[00:55:20] Jolene: That is awesome
[00:55:21] Nicole: That's awesome.
[00:55:22] Jolene: So now is the time of the show that we play the would you rather game.
[00:55:26]
[00:55:31] Jolene: would you rather
[00:55:32] Stephen Hawkins: Hmm
[00:55:34] Jolene: see anonymous social media accounts be banned
[00:55:39] Stephen Hawkins: Hmm
[00:55:40] Jolene: 24 a- hour cable news?
[00:55:43] Which is funny, uh, because I wrote this question, what? A week ago, Nicole?
[00:55:47] Nicole: yeah
[00:55:48] Jolene: And, and you talked about both of these things earlier, and I'm like, "He's playing right, what...
[00:55:54] He's playing right into our hands
[00:55:55] Stephen Hawkins: Yes, I am. Yes, I am. You'd say that's v- [00:56:00] well-posed question. Um, I would ban the social media. You know, I would ban the social media, uh, anonymous accounts. One, because I worry about foreign interference. We know that the Russian, the Chinese, um, the Iranians are using social media to, to, to pursue political goals in the American population.
[00:56:25] The Chinese TikTok is educational. The American TikTok is garbage that divides you and makes you insecure and depressed. Uh, that, that, that's not an exaggeration. That th- they, they know that they are giving us a product which has cancerous social effects, and then they're giving one which has edifying social effects in China.
[00:56:42] Um, so if we could ban the anonymous accounts, I think that would be a good thing for us. What would you say?
[00:56:48] Jolene: Uh, I would agree.
[00:56:50] Nicole: I
[00:56:50] Jolene: Because I, and w- as, as Nicole and I talked about this question, I said, you know, even when I, when I wrote out 24-hour cable news, it's really not even 24-hour cable [00:57:00] news anymore that people are getting their news from. I mean, I think more people are listening to podcasts or, you know, uh, news sources.
[00:57:08] Nicole: or Instagram
[00:57:09] Jolene: or Instagram or TikTok or, you know, or chat, you know? So I think, um, I, I think it is. I think social media... And we've done a lot of different podcasts on, you know, the, the demise of, of our country because of social media, for sure.
[00:57:29] Nicole: So do you have a would you rather for us, Steven?
[00:57:32] Stephen Hawkins: I do.
[00:57:33] would you rather, be constrained to your hometown where you live now, um, for the rest of your life or be on a traveling cruise ship forever but you can't disembark? And it's going to different places, so you get to see the world, but you don't...
[00:57:52] You have to always sleep on the ship, and you don't ever get to step foot on land again
[00:57:59] Jolene: This is an easy one for [00:58:00] me, sorry. I'm not getting on a damn ship ever, ever. Ever. With this, I mean, it's a traveling Petri dish
[00:58:12] Nicole: right.
[00:58:12] Jolene: germs
[00:58:13] Nicole: Between COVID, the hanta- hantavirus? Hantavirus. L- so I live in New York City and I live in Utah, which, so that's... I d- guess I have to choose one, and I'm with Jolene. I'm with Jolene. Listen, traveling is my happy place. Like, I can't imagine not being able to see the world.
[00:58:36] I think it's the most incredible... If you have the chance and the means to be able to do it, like, you can't learn more about being alive really than, I think, learning about other people and, and seeing where they live and how they walk through the world. But a cruise ship Yuck. Listen, we will never [00:59:00] get sponsored by a cruise line, ever, 'cause Good Wa- We've Got to Talk wants nothing to do with cruise ships. What do you think, Steven? What would you do?
[00:59:12] Stephen Hawkins: Right there with you. I have been on one cruise. The buffet was great. Some of the live entertainment was pretty good. And we shouldn't, we shouldn't... I won't share this with my sister. My sister is a cruise line performer. She, she is a traveling acrobat, and so she,
[00:59:29] Nicole: so
[00:59:29] Jolene: Oh,
[00:59:30] Stephen Hawkins: she has a very cool life, and she's been all over the world for work and gets to perform on, on cruise ships.
[00:59:36] Um, but yeah, no, I'm with you. I, I live in DC. I would, I would restrain myself to living in DC and find that, um, a reasonable trade-off.
[00:59:47] Nicole: I mean, if you had said that you could, you couldn't disembark, that would be different,
[00:59:52] Stephen Hawkins: Yeah. Yeah
[00:59:54] Nicole: Listen, that's a really good question you
[00:59:56] Jolene: That i- that is actually a good question.
[00:59:58] Nicole: I...
[00:59:59] Jolene: [01:00:00] Okay
[01:00:00] Nicole: Yeah. Sh- you might be competing with your, your We've Got to Talk or your, uh, Would You Rather savvy, Jolene.
[01:00:08] Jolene: All right, I'll
[01:00:08] Stephen Hawkins: Well, you know, I, I tested this one out before I came on, and we got competing answers. The three of us agreed, but we had people who said, "I would love to be on the cruise. I love the buffet."
[01:00:19] Jolene: Okay. And the entertainment.
[01:00:21] Stephen Hawkins: And the entertainment. And the entertainment. Yeah. Yeah
[01:00:24] Nicole: Oh my
[01:00:24] Jolene: that would be a reason. Stephen, thank you so much.
[01:00:27] Nicole: you very
[01:00:28] Jolene: could have listened to you all day long. Um, so we so appreciate your time and, and the work that you've done, and, and we're fans, so keep it up and, and, uh, thank you for taking time to be
[01:00:41] Stephen Hawkins: Oh, it's been, it's been my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for your support
[01:00:45] Nicole: and Stephen, can you tell our listeners and viewers where to find More in Common?
[01:00:50] Stephen Hawkins: Yes. So you can go to moreincommonus.com, and I'd encourage you to follow our newsletter where you can keep up with all of our work. And, um, [01:01:00] that's where we'll... You can also go to the beyondmaga.us website and read the report
[01:01:07] Nicole: Okay. And we will put all of that stuff in the show notes as well. Thank you very much, Stephen. We really appreciate you being here
[01:01:14] Stephen Hawkins: It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much
[01:01:16] Nicole: Bye.
[01:01:18]
