David Broockman is a political scientist at UC Berkeley who digs into one of democracy’s core questions: can political messages really change minds? He’s spent his career running careful studies of persuasion, from door-to-door conversations to the effects of cable news, and testing whether the confident claims of political consultants actually hold up.

In our conversation, David shares the path that brought him into political science and the “credibility revolution” that reshaped how researchers study politics. We talk about what persuasion looks like in practice, why it’s so hard to predict which messages will work, and what his research reveals about the gap between political insiders’ instincts and what actually moves the needle.

Source for intro to government shutdowns:

• Politicians argue both sides of government shutdown | AP News
• A Brief History of U.S. Government Shutdowns
• That Time a Lawyer Invented the Government Shutdown - Government Executive

For a transcript of this episode, visit this episode's page at: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episodes/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Lulu Miller has done a lot of things and done them very well. She is currently the co-host of Radiolab and its family-friendly spinoff, Terrestrials. She also co-created Invisibilia with Alix Spiegel and wrote the beautiful book, Why Fish Don't Exist. In our conversation, I try to learn Lulu's secrets when it comes it sharing science across media. I've been a fan of her work for a long time, so it was great to get to talk with her!

(If you're here as a Radiolab fan, you should also check out my chat with Latif Nasser a couple of years ago.)

In the show, I mentioned a run of letterpress prints I did inspired by Lulu's book. You can get a print for yourself here and learn more about how they were made. Any sales feed back into the podcast.

You can find the rest of this summer's science communication podcast series here.

For a transcript of this episode, visit this episode's page at: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episodes/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Sarah McAnulty is a squid biologist and a science communicator. She's come up with all sorts of creative ways to bring science to the people, especially through local community engagement initiatives.

Learn more about Skype a Scientist: https://www.skypeascientist.com/

You can find the rest of this summer's science communication podcast series here.

For a transcript of this episode, visit this episode's page at: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episodes/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.