Tweak the Vote
01:09:43 Share

Thank you.

See Mint Mobile for details.

♪♪♪

Listener supported. WNYC Studios. Hey, it's Lethif. Given the approaching American presidential election, we are on week two of our election run. So last week, if you'll remember, we had the story about the dramatic changes in how we cover presidential candidates in this country. Next week, we have a brand new episode about...

why and how we count our votes for president. But this week we have the evolving story of how we cast those votes.

The episode I'm about to play for you, it's six years old, which, I mean, if you think about the long sweep of American political history, that does not feel like a long time. And yet so much has changed. So when we released this episode, the process we're about to outline for you, like it was pretty obscure. It was used, I don't know, in a few places, few cities, few states in the U.S. Now it's

This is big time. What we are describing to you, it's on the upswing. This is literally going to help decide who the next president is going to be, which I don't know about you that I find that kind of inspiring. It feels like things can actually change in this country. So anyway, we will play the episode now and then we will do a quick update on the flip side. Yeah. So without further ado, here is tweak the vote. Wait, you're listening. Okay.

I'm Robert Krolwich. And I'm Latif Nasser. Thank you.

And today on Radiolab, Robert, I am going to make you wrestle with your most cherished ideal, American democracy. Oh, I see. Okay, great. Wait, hang on a second. I'm just struggling with the earphones. Now I have them on. Okay. Okay, great. And I'm going to start things off by introducing you to Yasha. Yasha Monk. I'm a lecturer on government at Harvard. He studies politics. What was I going to say? Ah.

Maybe we just start with where you grew up. Yeah. So I was born in 1982. I grew up in Germany, moved around a bunch of different places within Germany as a kid, and then went to college in England. Cambridge. In 2000.

And I was kind of studying politics. I was a history major. So Yasha was studying politics, but he was studying it in the past. So he was looking at, you know, going all the way back to the cradle of democracy in ancient Greece and then how democracy came to thrive around the world. But as he was studying that, he was noticing, you know, in the news, he would see in certain countries like France or Austria, you know, there would be these parties, these far right, ultra-nationalist

anti-immigrant parties that were starting to gain some traction. And for Yasha, I saw some of this. This was a little bit scary. Because my family has been in the wrong place at the wrong time for about four generations. His great-grandparents perished during the Holocaust. My grandparents were

barely survived in the Soviet Union. My parents grew up in Poland and were thrown out of the country in a huge sort of anti-Semitic wave in 1968. And so the idea that, you know, political systems that seem relatively stable and seem relatively peaceful might suddenly turn fractious and even violent is something that I suppose I always had a sort of dim awareness of even as a kid.

So I remember being quite worried by this and having friends who were quite worried about it. But we were worried about it as sort of this weird bad thing that's going on. I don't think we actually thought that these people might win. Jump to... The early 2010s. Yeah!

They start winning. For the first time, Mali Nopan will have a seat in parliament, along with seven others from her far-right party. These far-right parties in Austria and France, they start to gain power. And it's not just there. The huge swaths of Europe. What's happening in Italy is also happening elsewhere in Europe. Similar right-wing parties start rising up in Italy. Greece. The Netherlands. Poland.

Hungary. An identity crisis for the entire European continent. And it's not just Europe. You have India, Turkey. And what started off as, of course, the United States. Unlikely, impossible, is now reality. Basically, there's this wave of politicians whose message was, people aren't really listening to you. Your government has failed you. Trust me, I really speak for the people, people. I'm going to fix everything.

And to Yasha, this was, you know, this was like a wake up call. And not just because of immigration policy or right and left leanings of certain politicians, but even more deeply than that. I was quite worried about the way in which these political movements perhaps pretended to have some allegiance to democratic mechanisms, but actually really were enemies of it. Right.

Like, there was this one guy, the leader of the Austrian Freedom Party. Who glorified the Third Reich in various ways and really harkened back to the country's fascist past in a positive way. That wasn't a far-fetched fear, I don't think. I mean, a huge number of the world's dictators have been elected democratically at some point. And then they move against democratic institutions in such a way that you can't displace them democratically anymore. Yeah.

So for Yasha, who by this point was a lecturer at Harvard, he kept seeing this in country after country after country. He saw these citizens willingly elect these wannabe dictators into power.

And so he started wondering, what is making these citizens do this? Do they feel like their current leaders don't get them? Are they riled up about some issue of the day, like refugees or income inequality? Or is this a sign that they're upset about something even more foundational? The political system itself. Like, are they actually angry about

with democracy itself. And so I sat down with a friend and colleague to figure that out. And his friend, it turns out, worked on something called the World Values Survey, which is a really ambitious attempt to try and get a public opinion around the world. It's basically just a bunch of social scientists who ask a whole bunch of very standard questions to a whole bunch of people all over the world. And they're like, OK, let's actually scrutinize what

What's being said in here about democracy? And when we actually looked at the numbers, we were, you know, honestly flabbergasted by what we saw.

Okay, so there's actually three questions in particular that he got interested in. Okay. Here, so let's start with this one. How do you feel about a strong ruler who doesn't have to bother with parliament or elections? Who doesn't have to bother with parliament or elections? Correct. Yeah. Okay. They also asked this of Americans, just instead of doesn't have to bother with parliament, it was doesn't have to bother with Congress. Anyway, so in 1995—

Twenty four percent of all Americans endorsed that kind of strongman leader. Twenty four. So, you know, one out of every four. Yeah. But in the last several years, that number has jumped from 24 to 32 percent. So now it's a third almost. That's yeah. Yeah.

say, a strong leader who doesn't have to deal with Congress or elections is either a very good or fairly good thing. Well, that surprises me. It's kind of even more striking in Europe. In Germany, one in six people used to like that idea. But now... One in three. In Germany, where they should know better. Yeah. In France and the United Kingdom, it was one in four 20 years ago.

And now it's one in two. Half. Half, yeah. So every second Brit and Frenchman says, yeah, the idea of a strong ruler who doesn't have to bother with parliament and elections, that's pretty appealing to me. It's not appealing to me. That is not appealing to me. Yeah. Who would say that they like to not be involved in a democracy which is about being involved? Okay, well, if you think that's crazy, here comes question number two. Flat out, simple, straightforward. How important is it to you to live in a democracy on a scale of one to 10?

And when you look at Americans born in the 1930s and 1940s, two-thirds of them give the highest importance to living in a democracy. I say that's really essential. I mean, I agree with, well, two-thirds seems a little soft to me. Sure, but among Americans born since 1980, it's less than one-third. Less than one-third consider it essential to live in a democracy. Less than a third? Yeah. So if 100 people, 100 young people,

32, 30, 30, 25 would say, I love democracy. That's very important. And the rest, what would the rest say? It's not, it's not the most important thing for them deciding where to live. Okay. Well, then if, if you are, if this is good, where would you like to, like, what would you prefer? Would you like to be living? Okay. Well, that, that's a good segue to the next question. All right. Final question, which was about army rule. So do you think that army rule is a good system of government?

Army rule. So we're not, this is no civilians anymore. Soldiers running the government, soldiers following orders, soldiers giving orders? So 20 years ago, about 1 in 16 Americans thought there was a good system of government. In the most recent poll a couple of years ago, it was 1 in 6. And among young and affluent Americans, it's actually gone up from 6%.

to 35%. So it's a nearly six-fold increase. In America, you have one in three young African-American say a military rule is a wonderful thing. That's what you're saying? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's misguided,

Or tragic. I don't know which. So Yasha said something, he was like, look, like... I don't think if the colonels took over tomorrow, one third of Americans would say, this is wonderful. I don't think that's actually true, but it does show a deep lack of attachment to the counter-political system and this sort of sense of, you know what, I mean, let's try something new. How bad could things get? I don't think it could be much worse than what we have today.

Here's the thing that gets to me. Let's imagine a well-intentioned but totally authoritarian dictator who takes over, gets used to power, and then, as dictators do, chooses to remain in place forever. The adventure of democracy is that it admits that nothing is ever right, we always have to fix it, and the system has built in it

Every six years, you elect a senator over again. Every two years, you elect the congressman over again. Every four years, you can have the option to switch presidents. Presidents can't serve beyond a particular point. There will be checks. There will be balances. There will be protection. But the whole thing is...

admits that there's always change and always the ability to change. And this survey you just read me says, nah, we don't believe in it anymore. Well, that's dangerous to me, scary to me. And I think my response is if that's the case, and I don't argue that people have these opinions, if that's the case, then let's fix it. Let's not throw it out. Let's repair it in some way. That's what it seems like a moment like this calls for.

That's the speech. Basically, you're saying, let's fix it. Yeah.

Yeah, well, I mean, and there's a lot to fix, right? Obviously. There's corporate money and special interest lobbyists and gerrymandering and minority groups who don't get a voice and active voter suppression in a lot of places, the weirdness of the electoral college, the two-party system in general, where it seems like they have nothing to do except for hate on each other. But I figured let's just focus on one thing, voting.

Like, is there a way to just tweak this fundamental part of democracy? Like, can we change the way we vote so that people don't feel, as many people now do, that they're throwing their vote away, that their vote doesn't count, that their vote is wasted? Okay, so...

What would you suggest? So what I got is a it's kind of an alternate universe. It's it's it's a different way of doing elections that could have a profound effect on the way our democracy works. And we'll get to that right after a quick break.

Radiolab is supported by BetterHelp. Masks and disguises are big this time of year, with many of us out shopping for that perfect Halloween costume. But do you ever feel like you wear a mask maybe more often than you want to in life? In your relationships, in the workplace, or in a social setting? Well, therapy can help you to learn to accept all parts of yourself so you can take the mask off. After all, masks should be for Halloween fun, not for our emotions.

So, if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Therapy can arm you with the tools you need to live your best life, helping you learn things like positive coping mechanisms and setting effective boundaries. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge.

Visit BetterHelp.com slash Radiolab to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Radiolab.

You made a great meal. You set a gorgeous table. You stayed up late talking and laughing with your closest friends. But the night's not perfect if you're throwing all those table scraps in the garbage. That is, the landfill. Instead, clean up fast with the Mill Food Recycler. Odorless, waste-free, fully automated, and beautifully designed. It might just be the star of your next dinner party. Make food, not waste, and get free white glove delivery now at mill.com slash nyc. ♪

James Baldwin is one of those writers who commands respect as well as love and affection. He was born 100 years ago this year. I'm Razia Iqbal. Join me for Notes on a Native Son, a special series from Notes from America with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Bryan Stevenson, Nikki Giovanni, and many others discussing their favorite passages by Baldwin. Listen to new episodes every Saturday in the Notes from America feed wherever you get your podcasts.

Latif Radiolab, we are back. A.B., can you hear me? Yes. There we are. Oh, good. Okay, cool. And we're going to start off with producer Simon Adler. Yeah. So in search of democratic inspiration, I called across the ocean to the Emerald Isle to talk to this guy. So my name is A.B. Philbin Bowman.

I currently work for RTE Radio 1 on the Drive Time program. AB's a radio producer reporter for Ireland's equivalent to the BBC known as RTE, and he's a self-described election nerd. OK, so to sort of start from the start, please, the way I would look at this is

American democracy is one of the oldest democracies in the world. It's kind of like a laptop from 1985. And at the time, everybody was like, oh my God, this is incredible. It's so fast. It's so responsive. You're going to get so much stuff done with this. And to be fair, you did. But you've got to keep updating your operating system. Otherwise, pretty soon your democracy is struggling to deal with things like Facebook news feeds and Twitter and leaves itself open to being hacked by Russia. Now, in Ireland...

We got our democracy a little bit later, the 1920s. OK. And at that point, democracy had moved on from the 1770s, 1780s, when you guys sort of brought in your democracy. And we adopted this what was then quite modern voting system called PRSTV. PRSTV. Exactly. It sounds a bit like an STD.

It does sound quite like a sexually transmitted infection. It does, yes. Oh, this seems like dead in the water for him. Hello. The extended version is multi-seat PRSTV. That really sounds like an STI. It's not. One more time. Say it again. Multi-seat PRSTV. Which stands for multi-seat proportional representation by single transferable vote. I have no idea what that means. Well...

Weird as it might sound, this is a system of voting that, unlike ours, can make every voter feel heard. Ooh. Gets you candidates who best reflect the collective interest of the people and makes sure no one ever feels like they're throwing their vote away. I believe you. You don't have to believe me. Okay, I'm following. Tell us. Tell us how this impossible feat, how does this even work? I believe.

I'm walking through the lower part of Dublin Central. Well, let's just put this in concrete terms. Great. Okay, so 2016, there's an election for the national parliament in the Dublin Central District. It's blocks of brick row houses punctuated by these brightly colored pink or purple or yellow doors. You can think of it like an election district. In Ireland, it's what's known as a constituency. A couple adult stores, low-rise white stores.

public housing units. It's a predominantly working class constituency with a lot of difficulties. This is Maureen O'Sullivan, a longtime resident of the constituency with a shock of white hair. And I've always been involved with youth clubs, etc., doing voluntary work and then teaching in communities in the area. And so back in February of 2016, this area of Dublin, along with the rest of the country, was holding their parliamentary elections. A

elections for what they call TDs.

Wait, what are TDs? Right, OK, well, TD is the Irish, the Gaelic for Chachta Dóla, which translates into Member of Parliament. At that time, Dublin Central had three of these TD seats, three people representing them in Parliament, one of whom... I was elected in 2009. ...was Maureen. And I would be, I am independent, not allied with any party. And going into that 2016 election, things were looking pretty uncertain for Maureen.

First of all, there was a field of 15 candidates running for those three seats. And worse, seats one and two were expected to be snagged quite easily by these two high-profile major party candidates.

Yeah. This again is A.B. Bowman, who actually covered this 2016 election. They're not locked down, but these are people who look like they are going to get elected. And what that means is you've got this wide open field of folks all fighting against Marine for that third and final seat. Who's our contenders? Well, right. So we're going to focus in on two of them. Can I just get you to introduce yourself? Of course. Yeah. So I'm Mary Fitzpatrick. First, we've got Mary Fitzpatrick. Yeah. On the spectrum of American politics, do you know where you fall?

But you just have two parties. She's pretty liberal. Been around Irish politics for a while. Have you interviewed me already? Okay.

And second, Gary Gannon, who's a young community worker. This brash guy with red stubble on his face. Quite interesting, quite authentic. And he's sort of an interesting one to watch. Because he's representing this brand new political party. A plucky upstart. I think that's what they call it in the West Wing. I remember, yeah. And did you have a slogan or anything? Yes, I had an amazing slogan. It was very simple. And it was just the one word, if. If.

Like I said, brash.

And then you've got other voices who are left wing or environmentalist or others. So that's our field. All right. And now here's how things actually work over in Ireland. Voting is underway in the Republic of Ireland as the country elects 157 new members of its parliament. So day of the election comes.

As an Irish citizen, you walk into the voting booth and it's a very, very long ballot because it has all of the candidates, all 15 of them, their photo, their name, and then a line next to them. And this ballot is a key component of that updated Irish laptop of democracy.

Because instead of just filling in the circle next to one of those 15, you say, My number one choice is this guy. My number two choice is this lady. My number three choice is this person. And you can go all the way down the ballot giving preferences to as many different people as you like. You write in a number next to each candidate. How about one man, one vote?

Got it. Well, it's still one man, one vote. No, it can't be. No, it is. It is. It is. It is. At the end of the day, your vote will only have counted for one person. However, in the voting process. You're not just measuring what everyone's first choice is. Like you might have a favorite choice, but you're not totally equal about the other three choices. And what this system allows us to do is to reflect that. It allows you to say how you feel about the rest of the candidates.

And if your first choice doesn't make it, if he or she is way down the list and out of the running, then your vote lives on in the form of your second choice. So for as long as there's a viable candidate with your number on it, your vote will stay alive in the system. Is this too early for me to raise a warning flag? You can wave. I may ignore it, but let's see it or hear it. The commitment that people make to voting is...

Most of us are into lunch, sports, work, and then maybe on the day of a vote, they have their best friend, so you got to vote for Sally. Like they know one, they're not even going to know seven. Yeah. So the first smell of this is it would take us more time than we want, and

And we might walk away from this exercise because we don't feel prepared. You can engage with this on whatever level you'd like, Robert. If you only know one candidate's name, you can just put your one next to that person and hand in your ballot and you're done. Or let's say there's a candidate on there you really, really don't like. You can leave them off the ballot entirely. You're ranking your preferences. It's very simple. Fairly good answer. Okay. So let me walk you through how this plays out. So...

Polls close at 10 p.m. on Friday, February 26th. And then... Then all hell broke loose. General election 2016 on RTE Radio 1 with Rachel English and Sean O'Rourke. The real action begins. It's going to be a day of drama, shocks and surprises. So what happens is we vote on the Friday...

And on Saturday morning, the votes actually get counted. So for Dublin Central, Dublin Central gets counted in one central location, which is the RDS. Let's go first to Ireland's largest count centre, the RDS. The Royal Dublin Society. Sean, thank you very much. Welcome indeed to the RDS where we're counting. It's this barn-like building with big vaulted ceilings. Big, big hall, huge amount of noise.

Firstly, welcome to the concept tour here at the show. Okay, well, I didn't realise we were going to go through the post-traumatic trauma of the whole thing. I've kind of blacked it out. No, I'm joking. Actually, it was lovely. The doors open at nine o'clock and I arrived. This bethrong arriving. This is Mel. Mel Muckiboon. He's a campaign worker for our endangered incumbent, Maureen. Maureen O'Sullivan. And on the morning of the count, as he pushed his way through these heavy wooden doors...

What he would have seen was this cavernous hall filled with people milling about. Everybody's got clipboards. There's people with tons of sandwiches made. Tea and coffee in abundance and everybody's really excited. And so, shortly after nine o'clock... All the boxes come in. These giant metal boxes of ballots. So the boxes are opened. Literally, they're lifted up and there is a cascade and a spilling of all this paper. Because it's all done by paper voting.

Wait, what? Yeah. We tried electronic voting in this country and we didn't like it because it was very fast. And I think we realized that the drama of an election and also the ritual of democracy gets everybody engaged and gets people watching. It's like watching a big sports game. You don't want it to be over in five minutes. They're off.

And so... Time now for our live update. I have to warn, as we always do at this time on this day, we're talking tallies, first of all, which obviously can skew the results... Not just at the RDS and not just for Dublin Central, but all across the country. Vote counters are dumping boxes of votes and going through them and putting them into stacks. First...

In Kilkenny is Justin McCarthy. Rough bundles in no particular order. 75% of the boxes have been tallied here and they include... And so early on here, the counters are just trying to get a handle on how many first choice votes each candidate is getting. From Calvin, Audrey Carver. 100% of the boxes are open and...

And while the ballot counters are doing this official count, there's another group of people standing next to them. Up the Atlantic Way in Donegal. Doing their own unofficial calculations. Yes, definitely. The tally men. 88% of boxes opened and tallied. Cork, North Central. All boxes opened, all sheets tallied. These tally men, there are several of them put forward by each candidate. And they're just looking over the railings, waiting for you to turn that ballot. Brash upstart Gary Gannon again.

So they can shout out the name of the person that got the number one preference. They're like, Gannon number one, Gannon, Burke, Gallagher. And they're just counting them up. And what they're counting is number one. Yes, they're shouting out and tallying the first choice labelled on each ballot. So you have an understanding whether you're at the races or not.

Which it seemed like Gary was. We have a 98% tally and there is a growing belief here that the third seat will be between Gary Gannon and... He was getting a lot of first preferences. So I walked in, I got pulled over by one of our national newspapers to do an interview. Let's bring Gary Gannon in, how are you Gary? It's too early to be saying you're over the line, but you're good.

But not for everyone.

So that morning, I was at home doing different things. Again, this is incumbent Maureen O'Sullivan. What did you do? Did you make breakfast? Did you go for a walk? I did. I had my breakfast. I probably walked the dog. What type of dog? A white, fluffy dog. Okay. What's his name? His name is Bailey. So I brought him for a walk.

Are you listening to the radio? You're totally disconnected. Yeah, pretty much. I let my campaigners go over to be part of the tally. Campaigners. It's starting to kind of make... Including Mel. So within the first hour from some of the tallies that we were seeing, you know, like Maureen isn't picking up

enough votes I would say oh I hope this is not going to be an early day where there's no need for you to hang around because nobody's in the race any longer. And then I think I was driving when I got the first call from my campaigners over in the count saying it's not looking good. Let's go back now to the busiest count centre of them all to Mary Wilson in the RTS.

Meanwhile, the counters take all those ballots, now officially sorted by first preference, and they pick up the stack for each candidate on the table and walk that stack back to... This wooden shelving unit... Again, Mary Fitzpatrick. ...behind the tables at a little bit of a distance in the centre...

This giant sort of cubby. Pigeonholes, just like light, flimsy wooden boxes. And this is the sacred shrine of Irish democracy on this day. The cubby. Absolutely. Because, because when they've counted all of the first preference votes... They placed them all in their respective cubbies. There's a hush in that part of the arena. And the returning officer stands up on a stage with a microphone and goes...

Here is the first count for the constituency of Dublin Central. And they read out every candidate, how many number one votes did they get. And first off the bat... At the end of the first count, first and second are pretty much locked down with the two people everybody expected to win.

But then in third place, unexpectedly, is Mary Fitzpatrick. Yeah, I mean, I was very pleased to be in third position on the first count. Now, with our system of voting, at this point, you're done. The election's over. The two frontrunner candidates would have each won a seat, and then Mary Fitzpatrick would have won a seat. Gary and Maureen, they'd be out. Done. But in Ireland, not so. In Ireland, they're just getting started.

So back to the race. And remember, at this moment, Mary Fitzpatrick is in third, Gary is in fifth and in seventh. At that stage, I was listening to the radio and I knew what they were saying about Dublin Central. Is incumbent Maureen O'Sullivan. And what were they saying? That... It appears almost certain that Joe Costolo and Maureen O'Sullivan are set to lose out. Myself and Joe Costolo, you're out.

I had some. Why? Because of the numbers. I think the feeling was I was too far down that first preference to come back up. But I've been looking at the early results coming in from around the country. But like I said, it's not over yet. So the way the vote progresses is the sheriff or the presiding officer starts to eliminate the

The first elimination is the bottom three candidates. Those candidacies are gone and in the bin. Since Gary's in fifth and Maureen's in seventh, they're safe for now. But the bottom three candidates, they're gone. Why three? Because they are so far out that mathematically they could never win.

come back. Between the three of them, they've only got like 150 votes. So we get rid of all three of them. And redistribute those ballots. So if you voted for those people. They just go, OK, who did you vote for as your second choice? And the point is, your vote is still live and is still part of this election.

And so those 150 votes, those 150 ballots, they begin to do this sort of ballet. The ballots are all in these pigeonholes. Everything is visible. The vote counters walk back to that shrine, to that cubby. Yeah, yeah. And pull the ballots from the cubby holes for those three candidates.

Then march these ballots back to the front table. And sort them then into bundles of second preference on the ballot. So now you've got stacks for every candidate that was listed as a second choice. And we distribute them. They take them back to the cubby where they are then added to the remaining candidates' first preferences. And that becomes the second count.

Okay. Okay. So what they want is everybody who voted to the degree that it is possible should maybe be participating in electing somebody to the legislature. Exactly. All right. So. Excuse me. What time is it now? We're probably middle of the afternoon at this point. And when do we start? We started at nine in the morning. Okay. Okay.

Point taken. People are having a good time. No, no, no. What do you mean? I am now watching this program for five hours. That's a long time. I will challenge your statement that just because a competition unfolds slowly, that it is without competition.

drama or suspense. All right. I'm sorry that we're making this so hard for you. That's fine. But you are not making it easy for us. Anyway, back to the scene. Dublin Central is reduced to three seats. So I'm looking at this going, OK, Mary Fitzpatrick, our candidate in third after the first count, has 2,500 votes. Gary Gannon, currently in fifth, has only 200 votes behind her.

And my instinct is he's going to be more transfer friendly. He's going to get more second choice votes than her. I think he could overtake her. And I start watching where the transfers are going and I start to be proven right.

Gary Gannon of the Social Democrats did very well on transfers. So count two, Gary Gannon is getting 20 votes and Mary Fitzpatrick's only getting two. Count three, the whole process repeats, knock somebody out, do the ballet, redistribute those transfers. Gary Gannon picks up 60 votes and Mary Fitzpatrick only picks up seven. So he's gaining on it already. They're talking about me. They're asking who is this guy? Where is he coming from? All of these things. And then I was getting phone calls. Mary's stock is falling while Gary's arriving. Mary's stock is staying static.

You know, we were struggling for transfers. That was the issue. She's not going up much and the others are gaining on her. So, yeah, it's painful. It's not pleasant. And bear in mind, you've still got other people picking up votes there. We're seeing little pick-ups for Maureen. Maureen picked up 49. But not a lot. We're moving ahead slowly. Okay, we have a Dublin Central count coming in. Count four. Again, eliminate the bottom candidate. Redistribute those votes. This time around, really not much changes. Then count five.

The next person going out has got 800 votes. 31 of them go to Mary Fitzpatrick, but also 190 of them go to Gary Gannon. Gary Gannon has surprised a lot of people in his ability to pick up transfers from... And Gary Gannon has just jumped into fourth place.

We've got quite a fight now on our hands. The standings as they are. So the places are Mary Fitzpatrick in third place. She's just barely holding on in fourth. Hot on her heels is Gary Gannon. And then way at the back of the pack, still in seventh, is incumbent Maureen O'Sullivan. That's the state of play at count five. Count number six. Oh, here we go. Continuing coverage. Michael Gallagher is here. Guys, hello, we're back.

This is where two big things happen. Everybody's having their own conversations, obviously. One. Mary Lou MacDonald of Sinn Féin. Mary Lou MacDonald of Sinn Féin. One of the frontrunners expected to take a seat. Gets over the line. CHEERING

And also... I'm walking around just hugging people. Gary Gannon now jumps into third place. It was invigorating. Pushing Mary Fitzpatrick out of a winning spot. Like that, it was on the transfers, I got caught. And that's it. She never recaptured it. So the woman who under our system would have won off the bat, she lost out. That is it, you know.

Still hanging on in second to last, but also disheartened, is our incumbent Maureen O'Sullivan, who's expecting to lose. And I suppose maybe 7 o'clock, people started to arrive. She actually invited her campaign staff and volunteers back to her place for a concession party. And I said, when people came in, I don't want to know anything about the elections. I'll catch up tomorrow. Unknown to me, because I was busy with the tea and the drinks and the food,

Some of them in the House were still in contact with those over in the RDS. To the Dublin Central constituency and to our reporter Damian O'Mara. Damian, you have a development to report. One of those guys still over in the RDS was Mel. I did have a sense, looking at the numbers and saying, well, OK, but if and then maybe there's a chance.

there's a chance in this. Well, was that a crazy thought to have or a very smart thought to have? Um, it was just a thought to have. Because despite the fact that all day the media had been saying that Maureen was out... Maureen O'Sullivan set to lose. Outgoing TD Maureen O'Sullivan. Maureen O'Sullivan might be eliminated. At count seven, something starts to happen. Three furlongs to go. Coming around the bend, Gary Gannon looks like he's in pole position.

Because, keep in mind, most people's votes are still sloshing around the system. And at this point, not only has their top choice been knocked out, but their second and third as well. So their vote is now being cast for their fourth, fifth, or sixth place choice. And a lot of those...

they start going to Maureen. She'd known people for years, been elected twice previous to that. So even people who weren't voting for number one, number two, number three, their votes were still carrying on past the fours and the fives and just mauled me on those transfers. So we go to count eight. Maureen makes this massive jump, vaulting her.

ahead of two opponents into fourth place. Now, just a couple hundred votes behind Gary. Did you have any sense this morning? No, no, no, because I didn't have the television on. And they decided not to tell me

Not to raise my hopes. On the ninth count at the moment. So, the ninth count. The situation is that... Another candidate is axed. They redistribute her votes. It's coming down. It's coming down to it. When they count up those transfers... Does that mean then that Gary Gannon is likely to be elected or what's the situation there, Michael Gallagher? Maureen gets some 300 more transfers than Gary, meaning suddenly... Gary Gannon is precisely eight votes ahead of Maureen O'Sullivan. Oh my God, I did not see that coming.

She's within eight votes of him.

Around quarter to ten. But Maureen, meanwhile, is still convinced she's going to lose. She's actually heading down to the count center to concede the race. I said to myself, I should go over and concede. So I came out into the car, and as I'm driving over to concede, I was just at the traffic lights, I can picture it. And at that stage, the phone call comes. She looks at her phone, and it's one of her campaign staff calling. I thought, why are they ringing me? Is it to hurry me up to get over or whatever?

But in fact, they were calling because... In Dublin Central. But Brian Dowling, you've been... Just as I mentioned your name, Brian, we're going to Dublin Central. This is the result of the 11th count for Dublin Central. And I deem the following candidate to be elected, and they are Maureen O'Sullivan. In her car, Maureen did eventually pick up. And then it was, where are you? You're about to be elected.

You're going to be elected. She put down the phone, drove to the count centre and when she arrived... Great applause, great hugs, great kisses. So it was just a lovely explosion of feeling, warm feelings towards me from everybody. Maureen O'Sullivan, congratulations. Thank you very much. You're a very relieved woman.

So I just said, "Look, I know what Lazarus felt like." It was that kind of moment.

So is this a story of a multi-seat proportional representation by single transferable vote working out exactly as it's meant to? Or is this sort of a perversion of the system? No, it absolutely is. That day worked out exactly as single transferable votes was meant to do. One last time, the gracious Gary Gannon. Everybody got their say and everybody got their vote. Don't get me wrong when I say it did hurt.

But, I mean, I was 28, 29 then. Like, there was a huge sense of, like, we'll show you this. Then we'll be back. So, single transferable vote on that day worked against me. But, you know, I think it worked out perfectly. Perfectly. I mean, let me just see if I get this right. There's this woman, Maureen.

who hardly anybody loves. She scores almost no votes as the favorite. She's just everybody's, you know, fourth, fifth, sixth, I'll choose Maureen. And yet, because the votes keep getting shuffled and shuffled and shuffled, it's Miss Meh who becomes the winner. She's chosen because a lot of people don't hate her. Yeah, well, so...

So here's what it makes me think of. Right. And I had this moment where I was just imagining if we had been using this at various crucial moments in our very recent history, things could have gone an entirely different way. Take the American presidential election of 2016 between Donald Trump.

Hillary Clinton, but also Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. Yeah, but nobody voted for them. Well, no, but hardly anybody. That number of hardly anybody is that was that's a sizable enough number that they could have swung the election one way or the other. If you look at

Really key states, the deciding states. If you presume Gary Johnson's votes were split and if you presume all of Jill Stein's votes went to Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton would have won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and the whole kit and caboodle. Oh.

Oh, that's interesting. Now, the weird thing is you can just keep playing this game and it'll drive you crazy, but you can keep playing it. So if you go back to the 2016 Republican primaries where Donald Trump emerged victorious, right? Over 10 people or something like that. Over 10 people. Right. But there was a sizable number of people in those primaries who were never Trumpers.

If those people had been able to block their votes together, they might have been able to rally behind a candidate who was not Donald Trump. And then rewind even further back to the 2000 election, where the number of votes that Ralph Nader got in Florida were more than the difference between Bush got and Gore got. Now, elect a Republican, can you? OK, so go back to Ross Perot, right? George H.W. Bush was running against Bill Clinton in 1992. Oh, that's right.

Ross Perot, it's very controversial whether he really was a spoiler in that election. But I mean, if you ask the Bush people, they say he definitely was. And so if the Peroters went to Bush, then like Bill Clinton would have just been a historical footnote. He wouldn't have been the president. Like it's like a huge, huge seismic difference in in world history. Yeah.

So when we come back, we're not going to be looking at my own imaginative math. We're going to look at what does rank choice actually look like if it was in the United States because it is in the United States. It's about to happen when we come back.

Only 116 people in all of history can say what it's like to be a Supreme Court justice. On the next Notes from America, we will meet one. I'm Kai Wright. Join me for a conversation with Associate Justice Katonji Brown-Jackson, the first ever black woman to serve on the court. We'll talk about the generation of civil rights fighters who raised her, what SCOTUS means in this moment, and her passions, not only for the law, but for Broadway. That's next time. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back. I'm Robert Krolwich. I'm Latif Nasser, and this is Radiolab. And we're trying to fix democracy in this hour in little bits and pieces. Yeah. So let me let me just back up for a second, because we have been talking about this and thinking about this around the office for for a little while. And.

At some point, as we were kind of meditating on this dwindling faith in democracy, one of our fellow producers at our sister show, More Perfect, Sarah Kari, she just took me and Simon and just dragged us into a studio. Okay, so we've been having this conversation about...

whether our democracy is broken for like a few months now and like every meeting that we've had I've been the one in the room being like guys our democracy is fine like have you seen other places this is crazy like who are these people that think like our democracy is broken like they don't know what they are talking about and do you know why like where where where's that feeling coming from well uh okay can you tell me your name uh Uzma

And who are you? Probably because of this woman. I'm Uzma. I'm Uzma. Who are you in relation to me? Oh, I'm your mom. My mom and both of my parents actually grew up in Pakistan. That is the...

25 years of my life where I spent and I feel which is a pretty young country and it's it's just struggled so much to keep its democracy alive and healthy and I I

I saw the consequences of not getting the full democracy there in Pakistan. So then after living the next 25 years of my life in America, I really found out the value of democracy as an individual and as a group also. So I can differentiate now very well between those two.

So that's kind of how I've always understood our democracy. But then, Simon, I listened to your Ireland story with all of this ranked choice voting stuff. And that's the first moment when I was like,

Oh, like maybe our way of doing things is broken? Like maybe we do need an update. Okay, and okay, why? What about it made you switch teams?

Because it made me suddenly aware of the fact that in our system, candidates don't actually need a majority of the votes to win. So you have candidates who then make that calculation where they say, I only really have to win the votes of people who are in my base. And if that's

If my base is bigger than everybody else's base, then, like, screw everyone else. Yeah. It seems like in a democracy, most people should vote for the person who wins, not just that the person who wins is going to have the biggest base.

like a bigger base than everybody else. Like it should be that most people are in some way, in some preference, supporting the person who comes to power. Yeah, exactly. And it's funny, like when I heard about ranked choice voting, I was like,

Oh, like this system is so cool because it it's I feel like it addresses that exact problem. And so I totally got sucked into it and I started looking around and it turns out there are a bunch of people who think that this could be used here in the U.S.,

And not only that, it already is. And when I asked around, a number of people pointed to this moment in 2000 with the election when Bush loses the popular election, but he wins because he wins in Florida. And so people look at the results in Florida and see that a bunch of votes that might have gone to Al Gore, they go instead to Ralph Nader, who then becomes...

you know, sort of notorious as this spoiler that maybe ruined the election for Al Gore. And after 2000, at that point, you do see some cities that start to adopt ranked choice voting at the local level. And so what I did is... Okay, I'm putting my phone on airplane mode. I grabbed Latif, and we kind of did this, like, cross-country ranked choice voting tour. And the first place we're going to start with...

Hello, San Francisco. Yes, San Francisco is here. Is San Francisco. Is this Dominic? Yes, this is. Oh, hey, Dominic. What's up? Hi, what's up? So this is Dominic for Casa. Check, check, check. Yeah, he he used to do radio. You got the pipes for it, Dominic. Hey, let me know if you need any ad spots so we can get right to it. You know, OK, cool. But he now he's a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. I'm a city hall reporter for the Chronicle.

Yeah. So the very first ranked choice election in San Francisco happened in 2004. But it was actually a ranked choice voting became, I guess, the city's method or the city system, if you will, back in 2002, where there was a ballot initiative that was passed by voters that said, like, look, this is going to be the system that we're going to implement going forward. So the vast majority of local elected offices are chosen with with ranked choice contests.

So city council. The board of supervisors. The school board. Our like assessor recorder. And in one very specific election. The case in the mayor's race. The case in the mayor's race. Okay, great. I can't believe this was just a few months ago. It seems like a long time ago at this point. Okay, so early 2018, the San Francisco mayor's race kicked off. And when it really kicked into gear, there were three leading candidates.

You had... Hi, I'm Board of Supervisors President London Breed. London Breed. And you had... Hello, I'm Mark Leno. Former San Francisco Supervisor Mark Leno. And you had... Hi, I'm Jane Kim. A current supervisor, Jane Kim. And these are all Democrats. The field of candidates is set now.

Okay, so out of the gate. New frontrunner in the San Francisco mayor's race. And it's London Breed. This campaign is a winning campaign. She was the more moderate, more established candidate. She's getting one heck of a bounce in the polls.

And she had a fairly strong lead and a lot of wind in her sails. The two to one lead over her two closest rivals, Mark Leno and Jane Kim. And as the campaign made its way to Election Day, things were going pretty well. We are winners. It was almost like, sure, there are three names on the ballot. But at the end of the day, it was more like London Breed, London Breed and London Breed. The favorite in the recent polls heading into Tuesday's election. But then.

Right before the election, something happened that you basically never see in American politics.

We are proud to stand together to say that we are united in our belief that we need fundamental change here in the city and county of San Francisco. In the very last few weeks before Election Day, the two underdogs, Jane Kim and Mark Leno, they held a press conference on the steps of City Hall. Mark and I are opponents, as everyone knows. They stood outside City Hall, literally joined hands, and said...

Wait a second. So what she's saying is vote for me, definitely vote for me, but also vote for this candidate.

Guy who I'm running against. Yeah, exactly. Vote for me first, but vote for Jane second, or vote for me first and vote for Mark second. So like if one of us were to come in last, like let's say Mark comes in last, if all the people who voted for him ranked Jane as their second choice, then all of those votes would go to her and vice versa.

That way, they actually have a better chance of beating the frontrunner. London Breed. And that made a lot of sense. They were both, quote unquote, more progressive candidates and, you know, saw each other, at least the rhetoric goes, as the person that they'd like to see as mayor, if not themselves. Was that a surprise move to you as you were covering it? Did you see that coming? I didn't see it coming. No, I think that was a surprise to a lot of people.

After that press conference, Mark Leno and Jane Kim started appearing in campaign ads together. I'm Jane Kim. And I'm Mark Leno. Campaigning for one another.

Mark and I are opponents. - But Jane and I agree. - You should pick our next mayor. - Not the billionaires. - And so basically the whole campaign is like, if you don't vote for me first, then at least vote for me second. - Let's stand together. - Vote for me and Mark Leno. - Vote for me and Jane Kim.

KPIX5's Joe Vasquez is with the London Breed campaign. We're just moments ago. Breed addressed the crowd. Joe? So, on election night, London Breed has a pretty commanding lead as the polls are coming to a close. And basically, she's trying to get up to this marker of 50% of the votes plus one vote. That's a majority. And if she can get to that, then she wins. There's no rank choice problem.

runoff, there's no vote swapping. And as the night goes on... She is not yet declaring victory, but this crowd is celebrating. She's got like a double-digit lead, like things are looking pretty good. They are celebrating the person they believe could be the next mayor of San Francisco.

Holy smokes, she's beating Mark Leno by 10 percentage points, and she's beating Jane Kim by more than that. So we're getting to midnight. I'm completely bleary-eyed, staring at my laptop, refreshing the Department of Elections website every few seconds, when 12.30 at night...

It happens. In the early returns, London Breed had a sizable lead, but she didn't reach 50%. She came in just shy of 50%. So the ranked choice voting system kicked in. And all of a sudden, this entire race has changed.

Okay, so the rankings had been London Breed number one, Mark Leno number two. Jane Kim, who was in third place, was now eliminated in that ranked choice system. But when Kim got eliminated, a huge chunk of her voters, about three out of four, went to Leno because Leno was their second choice. And now, by a razor thin margin, Mark Leno is leading the race.

The Kim-Leno strategy had come to fruition. He's up 0.84%, the slimmest of leads. The mayor's race is still too close to call. The race would actually drag on for days. As more ballots got counted. Tens of thousands of outstanding ballots. We didn't have a mayor chosen until, I think, eight days later. When...

In a gymnasium packed with screaming supporters, out walked the new mayor of San Francisco, London Breed. Yes, I'm your mayor. Mark Leno came up just short. He came within 1.1 percent or a little over 2,500 votes. Oh, man. So, I mean, OK, it didn't work in that he didn't win, but you can't say that it was completely ineffective.

And so so ultimately, what did people think of this whole like Mark Leno, Jane Kim coming together? People saw the dual endorsement strategy as as gaming the system as saying, look, they are doing this in order to keep London Breed from winning.

And that was at your paper, right? That was the editorial board? Yeah, our editorial board said as much. You know, and I think that's not just the Ed board. I mean, people do feel that way, that it was this strategy, you know, especially London Breed supporters who saw a teaming up, a piling on. And, you know, in this, I mean, just to kind of just

very quickly just zoom out all the way. I think people just find that weird in a country in which politics ends up being a zero sum game oftentimes in which you are, you know, relentlessly attacking your opponent, beating them down. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

But at the same time, that's very much, you know, there might be some people at my own newspaper that disagree with me, but I think that's very much in the spirit of what ranked choice voting invites. Coalition building. Now, Dominic wanted to be clear that in the case of the mayor's race, this coming together of opponents. I don't want to make it sound like it was just some kind of kumbaya thing, you know, because that that wasn't the case. But.

At the very next stop on our tour, we actually found that case. The Kumbaya case. Hey, Curtis, are you there? Yeah, I am. Which also on the line we have Latif. Hi, how you doing? Hey, what's up? We heard about from this guy. Curtis Gilbert, and I'm a reporter at American Public Media, but I used to be a reporter at Minnesota Public Radio.

So Curtis told us in Minneapolis, they actually started using rank choice voting in 2009. But it's gotten much more interesting since then. So in 2013 was the first time Minneapolis actually had like a competitive mayor's race.

under ranked choice voting. There's a record-breaking number of candidates vying to succeed Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Ryback, who's stepping down at the end of this year. 35 candidates signed up to run to replace him. Wow. Oh. Yeah. Curtis Gilbert covers Minneapolis politics. He joins me in studio. Boy, you're going to be busy. Yeah, you betcha. I mean, there were so many. I mean, 35 candidates is a lot.

Unlike the race in San Francisco, the mayoral race in Minneapolis... People say, aren't you the Republican? ...did have more diverse candidates. And I say, sure, I've done some work in the Republican Party. And I also stand fiercely for marriage equality. Always have. There was a Republican, an Independent, a bunch of Democrats. It was a wide-open, free-for-all race. And it was really interesting. That despite all that... They were very...

Very, very civil. Thank you very much. It's nice to see you're not utterly infallible. I always thought you were. Very, very gentle to each other. We won't be rude with each other because it doesn't benefit us to be rude with each other. And this is one thing that, you know, the advocates of ranked choice voting sort of look at as a positive. You know, voters are turned off by negative campaigning.

And there's a theory that goes that if you're hoping to get like second and third choice votes, you'll be much nicer to your opponent so you don't alienate their supporters. So maybe you get a second or third choice vote.

And it did seem like there was an element of that playing out in the race. I will talk more about the issues because I think I've run out of time. Thank you. So at worst, there was like some light ribbing. They said we could finish our sentences if we've run out of time, but I think that was a run on sentence. There were polite stage logistics. Getting out of that chair is a little challenging, so we may want to pass the microphone around.

And thank you. Thank you, Jackie. Plenty of thank yous. I mean, the most remarkable one of all was the final debate. I was there and it was in a church. I think it was in downtown Minneapolis. I can't remember what the church was.

And at the end of the debate, the candidates, and I think there were eight of them, all kind of put their arms around each other. And one of them suggested that they all sing. I don't know, but I was crazy in my high school. Kumbaya, my lord, kumbaya. Kumbaya. Kumbaya, my lord, kumbaya. No. After the debate? After the debate. Oh, lord.

What's going on Instagram? It's the farewell tour. So it's like, I mean, it's almost like a cartoon, right? Like the kumbaya, it's really funny, right? But it's also, it's also, I think for a lot of people right now, that...

It feels like a relief. It feels like a relief to hear politicians not biting each other's heads off. And that's that's something that comes from ranked choice voting. You find consensus, you find coalition, you find commonalities instead of differences.

But that also flattens everyone out. If everyone ends up running to the middle and then you just have kind of a bland consensus where no one's saying bold things and everybody is just kind of middle. So in a way, when you make this choice, you're choosing for do this carefully.

Right.

You are lined up behind your alpha dog who's going to argue for all of the things you want. And maybe you're going to get them, but maybe you're also going to lose them all. Or do you want to be in a system where we're all kind of begrudgingly bought into our second place person who we can kind of get behind, but it definitely wasn't our...

You know, it's not our ideal. And I think that's a question. That's like a soul searching kind of a question. Like, what do you want and what do we want this country to be? And for that reason, I like I don't know how I feel about it. Nothing's going to be perfect. I think what's really interesting is what seems sort of mechanical and technical, but

it does affect the tone of your country and of history. So the world we've got is the function of how we vote now. Change the system of how we vote, you might get a very different world. How different? What different? Where different? Which kind of different? Scary different? Good different? You don't know. Well, we might actually know soon because I actually have one more stop on our cross-country ranked choice voting tour. Grand State of

The great state of Maine. Super politically diverse, fiercely independent, like a lot of independent voters. And it's

In fact, in 2016, there was this coalition of independents and Democrats that managed to get this ballot initiative that would change all statewide elections to rank-choice voting. Statewide? Yeah. Rank-choice voting was adopted in 2016. According to Maine Public Radio reporter Steve Missler, it passed. It passed, however, with a major flaw. It's a scam.

It undermines the integrity of our election process. The state Senate, which was under Republican control at the time,

picked up on this constitutional conflict within a conflict within the state constitution. The reality is we're not happy with it. I'm blatantly opposed to it. Very unconstitutional. The main constitution literally says you have to use a plurality vote. The word plurality is actually written in the constitution. As opposed to a majority. Correct. And ultimately the main legislature passed a law that

that delayed implementing ranked choice voting. - This is one more example of where

The politicians are standing against the will of the people. And it set off this whole fight where people rallied against the state legislature and held another vote in June. Literally this past June. People gathered at the state house this morning. To get around the delay. Through what was billed as a people's veto. That passed. By almost the exact same margin, if not slightly more, than when it passed originally in 2016. At some point, the Maine Supreme Court gets involved.

And really, the details of this are all kind of a mess. But what it boils down to is this.

In the upcoming elections, like the midterms that are happening now, Maine will use ranked choice voting for its congressional races. We have three of them this year. We have a first congressional district race. It'll be used in that contest. And also in Maine's second congressional district. Which is a swing seat, one of, you know, a dozen or so nationally. A.K.A. one of the districts that everybody's going to be watching in the midterms.

And on top of that, they're going to use ranked choice voting for the Senate. The U.S. Senate campaign, it'll be used in that contest. Do you know, is this the first time it's going to be used for a position in the federal government? Yeah, no other state has ever done it. Oh, wow. But at the same time, because of their state constitution. It's not being used in the gubernatorial race. So does a ballot just like look insane? Like part of it is like this ranked choice voting thing and...

And part of it is isn't like they're just separate. So there's separate ballots for the federal races and then there's a separate one for the statewide one. So I haven't actually seen how many ballots that voters are handed. So this is really going to happen now, like like this week. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Two main claims of ranked choice voting are being put to the test.

in its very first rollout in Maine. Voters in Maine will head to the polls later this month. Whether it can work for third party or independent candidates. But it's also a test case about whether or not it does what it promises. He just told another big fib right in front of everybody in Maine. Which is reduce voting.

But

Also, I guess I just wonder if the people of Maine are going to come out of this election feeling a little bit more like democracy is working for them. Wouldn't it be interesting if in Maine, somebody who was, you know, everybody's eighth choice gets elected to Congress? It could happen. I don't know. We'll see. Yeah.

Now, of course, since we first aired this in 2018, that election in Maine did happen. And while no, everyone's eighth place choice was not elected in the second congressional race. Something interesting did happen. Jared Golden, a Democrat, was losing after the first count to the Republican incumbent, Bruce Poliquin, but ended up winning after the transfers were allocated. So the person who would have lost in the traditional count ended up winning.

Outside of Maine, Rank Choice is now being used in municipal elections all over the country, from Las Cruces, New Mexico, where they elect their mayor, city council, and judges with it, to now New York City, which uses it in mayoral primaries and city council elections. But here's the biggest news of all. Since 2022, Alaska has been using it to elect its governor, its state legislature, its

It's representatives in the House and the Senate, and we'll even be using it in the presidential election this year. So keep your eyes out. By the time we replay this episode again, if you are not already, it is very possible you too will be ranking your choices. We'll be back next week with a brand new election episode. Until then.

Also thanks to Rob Ritchie at FairVote.

Don Sari, Diana Lagerman. Thank you to Anna Lerman and the rest of the team at the Varieties of Democracy Institute in Sweden, as well as Carolyn Tolbert, Bobby Agee, and Edward Still. I'm Robert Krolwich. And I'm Latif Nasser. And thanks for listening. And go vote! What the hell? Right? Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Hi, I'm David, and I'm from Baltimore, Maryland. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna,

Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.

Hi, this is Ellie from Cleveland, Ohio. Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney, or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well-informed colleagues at The New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.