10: Don't Talk About Politics w/ Sarah Stein Lubrano

What if the entire “marketplace of ideas” story about how people change their minds is mostly wrong? In this episode, I talk with political theorist and organizer Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano about why debate, podcasts, and “critical thinking” rarely shift anyone’s core political commitments.

Sarah and I dig into her book Don’t Talk About Politics: Changing 21st Century Minds, the limits of political education, the classed nature of “critical thinking,” cognitive dissonance and cult dynamics, and why good politics begins with friendships, cooperative projects, and building a different world together.

Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano is a political theorist and organizer with a background in feminist mutual aid, local grassroots work, and teaching in prisons. She holds a PhD from Oxford and a master’s degree from Cambridge. Sarah works with the Sense and Solidarity Initiative and the Future Narratives Lab. Her first book is Don’t Talk About Politics: Changing 21st Century Minds (Bloomsbury).

• Website: https://www.sarahsteinlubrano.com

• Substack https://sarahsteinlubrano.substack.com

• X (Twitter): https://x.com/SSteinLubrano

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahsteinlubrano/

• Sense and Solidarity Initiative: https://senseandsolidarity.org

• Sense & Solidarity podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/2dcKkTCJNZM2j2CLKJZS3W

Don’t Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds: https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/dont-talk-about-politics-9781399413923/ (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Mentioned in this episode
– Olivia Nuzzi, American Canto
– Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (audio excerpt)
– Leon Festinger, When Prophecy Fails and the origins of cognitive dissonance theory
– Thomas Kelly’s archival critique of Festinger’s study (discussed further on Conspirituality)
– System justification theory
– Aristotle on friendship and the “friend of virtue”
– The Dig podcast (as a political education project)
– The School of Life

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Chapters

• (00:00:38) - Don't Talk About Politics With Sarah Stein Lubrano
• (00:02:50) - Olivia Nuzzi's American Canto
• (00:07:14) - "Don't Talk About Politics"
• (00:12:50) - How Do People Change Their Minds?
• (00:17:42) - What's Hard in the World?
• (00:26:44) - Cognitive dissonance and the conversion
• (00:38:54) - Fascist Dad of the Week