Utterly Moderate Podcast
The Utterly Moderate Podcast is the official podcast of Connors Institute for Nonpartisan Research and Civic Engagement at Shippensburg University. The core mission of the Connors Institute is to disseminate high-quality nonpartisan information to the public. Utterly Moderate is hosted by Lawrence Eppard, a researcher, university professor, and director of the Connors Institute. On each episode, Eppard is joined by a guest (or two or three!) who helps listeners understand important topics by focusing on just the weight of the empirical evidence and none of the unneeded opinions or political agendas. We are aggressively nonpartisan in our approach. Be sure to visit us at ConnorsInstitute.org to learn more about all that we do!
Episodes
This episode of the Utterly Moderate Podcast deals with liberal bias in higher education and what to do about it, with a specific focus on the field of sociology.
According to Gallup, a strong majority (68%) of Americans believe that higher education is headed in the wrong direction. Barely more than a third (36%) of Americans express a high level of confidenc...
America is separating into two nations with two different experiences of reality itself: Red America and Blue America.
As Robert Talisse, Vanderbilt University political theorist and today’s Utterly Moderate podcast guest, writes:
“[O]ur everyday social environments are increasingly segregated along partisan lines. I...
From all of us at the Connors Institute at Shippensburg University, we thank you for listening and hope you have a truly Happy Thanksgiving!
Wherever you spend the holiday and whoever you spend it with, we hope you have lots to be thankful for and good people to be thankful with.
On this episode of the Utterly Moderate Podcast, social ...
Before we begin, don't forget to check out Lawrence Eppard's new book, The Poisoning of the American Mind, and to read the newest piece in the Connors Journal on single parenthood in the U.S.
Now on to the podcast. . .
Kimberly Wehle, a constitutional law expert at the University of Baltimore's School of Law, joins the Utterly Moderate Podcast to discuss her new book,&nb...
Single parenthood has risen dramatically in the United States over time. Today, 34% of all children live in a single parent household, up from 9% in 1960.
There are regrettable negative consequences of these statistics, as The Bulwark’s Mona Charen notes:
“[C]hildren in mother-only homes are five times more likely to live in poverty than children with two paren...
On this episode of the Utterly Moderate Podcast, the authors of the brand new book, The Poisoning of the American Mind, talk about the book and its implications for America.
So what is their argument?
We want to express our deepest sympathies and condolences to the family of Corey Comperatore. He was killed during the attempted assassination of former President Trump.
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On this episode of the Utterly Moderate Podcast, host Lawrence Eppard and Connors Institute co-director Jacob Mackey discuss techniques and shortcuts that you can use to spot real expertise in a world where people with expert credentials are sometimes frauds and where people without expert credentials are often very knowledgeable. They also discuss crucial techniques for examining your pers...
Before we talk about this episode, we hope you didn’t miss the latest research from the Connors Institute on the gender pay gap. Check it out now!
We talk quite a bit on this podcast about some of the things that many liberal and conservative Americans believe that just ain’t so.
In fact, we just released a free online documentary about ...
Before we talk about this week’s podcast episode, don’t forget to check out the Connors Institute’s new documentary, The Poisoning of the American Mind, an illuminating film about how conservatives and liberals in America regularly fall for misinformation and disinformation.
On this week’s episode of the Utterly Moderate Podcast, we are join...
We’ve talked a lot on the Utterly Moderate Podcast about how both liberals and conservatives in America are bombarded with misleading information on a regular basis.
On the left, unfortunately, a lot of this bad info comes from an academic research community which is overwhelmingly liberal. A recent study found the least imbalanced discipline to be engineering, wh...
It is extremely hard for the average citizen to understand what the “state of the science” is on many issues. We can all type our queries about a particular topic into Google but, when we get the flood of results, most of us are not trained to be able to (a) understand the complicated statistical methodologies employed in many research studies, (b) compare studies and evaluate t...
On this episode of the Utterly Moderate Podcast we are joined by Jacob Mackey to discuss two big gender-related stories in the news.
The first story is positive, and we have covered it in the Connors Newsletter—a big new research study shows that we have made great progress combatting sex discrimination in the labor market. This is great news!
On this episode of the Utterly Moderate Podcast we are joined again by Lisa Selin Davis, a writer who covers issues related to gender and gender affirming care.
Davis joins the program to discuss a recent UnHerd article “Why did three journals reject my puberty-blocker study? Trans children deserve to know the facts,” written by Sallie Baxendale, a clinical ...
On this episode of the Utterly Moderate Podcast we discuss recent controversies at and concerns about colleges and universities in the United States—from highly publicized instances of campus unrest to a lack of intellectual diversity among faculty to hypocrisy on free speech.
This episode’s guest is Jacob Mackey, associate professor at Occidental College an...
Before we get to today’s episode, check out this article about the Connors Institute in The Sentinel newspaper!
On this episode of the Utterly Moderate Podcast we are joined by Robert VerBruggen from the Manhattan Institute to discuss a new documentary which claims to disprove that George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin, as well as a new research study which...
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the Connors Institute at Shippensburg University!
Since this Utterly Moderate episode is both our Christmas program and our 100th PODCAST EPISODE, we thought we would try to be as uplifting as possible.
In that spirit, we are being joined by Johan Norberg, author of a number of books including Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future.
In that book, Norberg pre...
Jim Swift from The Bulwark joins the Utterly Moderate Podcast to discuss the fraught nature of the immigration debate in the U.S.
Both sides in the immigration debate have important points to bring to the table, and good faith discussions and compromises are badly needed. Unfortunately, such efforts often get sidetracked by misinformation and disinformation about this thorny issue.
Swift discusses a story of hi...
Leading American poverty researcher Mark Robert Rank joins the Utterly Moderate Podcast to discuss his Poverty Risk Calculator, the record-low poverty rates that the U.S. saw in 2021, Dr. Rank’s research on the risk Americans face of experiencing poverty throughout their lives, a new book he has coming out on luck, and more!
Rank has spent his career studying poverty, economic inequality, and social policy in A...
Friend of the Connors Forum and frequent Utterly Moderate guest, Lee McIntyre, has a new book out titled On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy, a “powerful, pocket-sized citizen’s guide on how to fight back against the disinformation campaigns that are imperiling American democracy, from the bestselling author of Post-Truth and How to Talk to a Science Denier.”
McIntyre argues that the...
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