Aaron Tang: "Re-instill This Idea That We Can Sit Around and Talk to Each Other"

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Gist - Aaron Tang: "Re-instill This Idea That We Can Sit Around and Talk to Each Other"
Date: June 1, 2026 | Host: Mike Pesca | Guest: Aaron Tang (Host, Breaking the Deadlock; Law Professor, UC Davis)

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Gist features law professor and PBS host Aaron Tang in a deep-dive conversation about his panel show Breaking the Deadlock. The show aims to revive high-level civic discussion and model reasoned disagreement, inspired by classic formats like Fred Friendly Seminars. Pesca and Tang discuss the show's structure, methodology, its strengths and limitations, and broader questions around civic norms and political discourse in America.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Purpose and Format of Breaking the Deadlock

• Breaking the Deadlock is inspired by panel discussions from PBS’s Fred Friendly Seminars. The aim is to recreate an environment where people “can sit around and talk to each other" and disagree respectfully.

  • Tang: “We can listen to each other, disagree and not hate each other. Not trying to own the other side, maybe be a little better off because of that conversation.” (08:33)

• The show avoids asking panelists to reach consensus; instead, it focuses on constructive dialogue.

• Each episode follows a carefully crafted hypothetical scenario that challenges participants to step outside political talking points and engage with hard dilemmas.

  • Tang: “We don’t tell the panelists what the show is going to be about...They’re completely ambushed. They’re surprised.” (09:27)
  • However, panelists do know the general topic in advance. Roles are assigned unexpectedly to encourage open-mindedness.

Scenarios, Roles, and Realism

• Panellists (lawmakers, pundits, experts) are put into roles that mirror real-life stakes but with a personal or familial twist—making policy questions relatable.

  • For example, in the gambling episode, panelists played the parents of a young adult with a gambling problem (14:47).
  • Tang: “Americans are not all...the vice president of the Heritage foundation or the former governor of New Jersey. Americans are...parents of kids who are struggling...voters who have family members that maybe they don’t agree with...” (15:45)

• Real episodes have included topics such as gambling, reproductive rights, the nature of truth/social media, and disputed elections.

The Impact and Modeling of Behavior

• The show seeks to model civility and good-faith engagement—even if it means sacrificing the drama of heated confrontation.
  • Pesca questions whether the show’s “best angels” conduct offers a realistic reflection of actual political dialogue.
    • Pesca: “Breaking the deadlock is, in a way, an example of the best angels of human nature, but in a way, an extremely poorly concocted experiment, because it doesn’t have much to say about how our conversations are really held.” (30:51)
  • Tang’s counterargument: The only way to rebuild civic norms is to model them repeatedly, even if it's in a controlled environment.
    • Tang: “If you want to rebuild civic norms in this country, the ability to sit down with someone you disagree with and talk to them, the only way to do it is to do it.” (32:02)

Dealing with Panelist Biases and Limitations of the Format

• Tang acknowledges potential pitfalls:

  • Panelists might moderate their positions for the cameras (“be artificially copacetic”).
  • It’s not an environment for hard-hitting journalism or follow-up fact-checking on every claim (24:17–25:57).
  • The reach is limited—several hundred thousand to a million, but not the entire country.

• The show relies on panelists to challenge or fact-check each other. Factually misleading claims may slip through, but Tang believes viewers can spot obvious overreaches.

  • Tang: “I'm a storyteller, I present questions. But it’s not my role to fact-check people...I have to trust and hope that the other panelists will fact-check each other.” (25:57)
  • Notable moment: AI expert Alan Levy makes a sweeping claim about AI and gambling, only gently rebutted by another panelist. Pesca wishes for sharper pushback. (24:36–27:18)

The Limits and Strengths of Hypotheticals

• The fictional state of “Middlevania” and role assignments are compared to using poker chips instead of money in casinos to get panelists to engage more freely, avoiding preloaded talking points. (32:16–33:01)
  • Tang: “What you do is you free the journalist, you free the politician...to speak from values rather than from political experience and political gain. And speaking from values...has the possibility to reunite us as a country.” (33:01–34:02)

Civic Differences: Breaking vs. Owning the Other Side

• Tang and Pesca compare Breaking the Deadlock to YouTube phenomena like Jubilee’s debate formats, arguing Jubilee encourages destructive confrontation, “survival of the glibbest,” not civic progress.
  • Tang: “That is painting an image and encouraging a vision...of civic discourse as an effort to destroy the other side, an effort to own the other side, rather than an effort to understand.” (34:44)

Realism and Aftereffects

• Elected officials on the show often default to “Boy Scout” answers, which might not match their real-life political behavior (19:38–20:17).
• Tang finds most panelists remain true to type, but being forced into familial/human perspectives sometimes pushes them beyond talking points (37:10).
• The show has even received support from Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Amy Coney Barrett, who jointly recorded an endorsement, modeling cross-ideological friendship. (36:13–36:57)

Addressing Hot-Button Issues

• No topic is considered too controversial; the only off-limits are those that cannot generate an authentic ethical dilemma (38:18–39:10).
• Discussing Israel, for example, would start with acknowledging “two truths” shared by both sides, and building a scenario that probes them without referencing specifics.
  • Tang: “Each side has a truth that if spoken at a certain level of generality, most people would agree with...These are truths.” (39:42–40:09)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the show’s thesis:
  • “What breaking the deadlock tries to do is re-instill this idea that we can sit around and talk to each other. We can listen to each other, disagree and not hate each other.” – Aaron Tang (08:32)
• On modeling civic behavior:
  • “If you want to rebuild civic norms in this country, the ability to sit down with someone you disagree with and talk to them, the only way to do it is to do it.” – Aaron Tang (32:04)
• On panelists’ “best angels”:
  • “Breaking the deadlock is, in a way, an example of the best angels of human nature, but in a way, an extremely poorly concocted experiment, because it doesn’t have much to say about how our conversations are really held.” – Mike Pesca (30:51)
• On the need for personalizing political debates:
  • “Americans are...parents of kids who are struggling...voters who have family members that maybe they don’t agree with...” – Aaron Tang (15:45)
• On Jubilee and “owning” the opposition:
  • “That is painting an image...of civic discourse as an effort to destroy the other side, an effort to own the other side, rather than an effort to understand the other side.” – Aaron Tang (34:44)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 08:08 — Tang explains the core purpose: breaking deadlock without requiring consensus.
• 09:21 — On panelist preparation and the Hawthorne effect.
• 10:57 — How roles and scenarios are assigned to panelists.
• 12:43 — Describing the show's structure and its balance of seriousness and fun.
• 13:28–14:47 — The process of building dilemmas and the importance of relatable familial stakes.
• 19:38–20:17 — Boy Scout answers from politicians and realism.
• 22:06 — The writers' room and building realistic, challenging episodes.
• 24:17 — Potential pitfalls: lack of follow-ups, fact-checking limitations.
• 25:57 — How the show relies on panelist-to-panelist pushback.
• 30:51 — Criticisms about realism vs. role modeling.
• 32:16–33:01 — Using fictional settings to circumvent talking points.
• 34:44 — Why other debate shows may undermine civic discourse.
• 36:13 — On the Supreme Court justices’ involvement.
• 39:42–41:10 — Handling extremely contentious topics like Israel.

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Conclusion

This episode provides a thorough exploration of Breaking the Deadlock as a case study in public discourse. Through thoughtful hypotheticals and role play, Aaron Tang's program attempts to restore a space for respectful, values-driven civic conversation, while also confronting the unique limitations and criticisms of such a format. Both Tang and Pesca express some skepticism about changing broader societal patterns, but agree on the value of modeling better dialogue as a necessary foundation for democratic renewal.

Transcript

[Mike Pesca]

Foreign

[Aaron Tang]

It's Monday, June 1, 2026 from Peach Fish Productions. It's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. I tell you this Graham Platner fella sure is a character. And that's exactly what you want in a US Senator. He's totally toten cop. And now take it from Ms. Now

[Mike Pesca]

his wife came forward to the campaign and said that she was aware of sexually explicit text messages that her husband was exchanging with other women. The New York Times reporting that it was up to a doz. Again, sexually explicit messages.

[Aaron Tang]

The campaign denies this, says it was only six women. Women that the married man was sexting with. Married since November of 23. So it's been two years, a year, maybe a year, maybe a week since they were sexting. It's okay. Platner has a young online following in Maine is America's oldest state. It is also 40th out of 50 in high speed connectivity. So maybe his greatest fans aren't the actual voters of Maine. New info has arisen. Quote, an adviser to Democratic U.S. senate candidate Graham Platner warned a former aide of Platner's she would be accused of lying and sabotage if she cooperated with news outlets reporting on sexually explicit messages Platner sent to women, according to a message reviewed by the Banger Daily News. Banger. I barely sexted her, said the pre epic oysterman. Morris Katz, using up a few of his nine political lives on this campaign, lashed out. He was the adviser lashed out to anyone who thought that half a dozen or more sexting partners was a problem for someone running for U.S. senator. Morris Katz, former Mamdani adviser, said there should be no place in our politics for incompetent opportunistic operatives who violate privacy, betray trust and prioritize vengeance over decency. Decency, of course, being what Platner embodies, who not only sex did, but has also said some crude things on Reddit. Who hasn't? Has said that all police are bastards, call themselves communist, said that he didn't know that his Totenkopf tattoo at Nazi associations when he got it, but then kept it for 15 years. And there's some evidence that he knew what it meant before he ran for office and that year sought to cover it up literally, that a Senate candidate wasn't fried by the old line that it's not the crime, it's the COVID up, but that not covering up would have been a crime. The important thing, really, the only important thing about this guy is who he's not. And that Susan Collins, who is a Republican. And that basically excuses. All right, no need for standards in a US Senator. Just vote for the D over the R. And I think if it comes down to COLLINS as the 50th senator, that might actually be defensible in a real politics sort of way. She will vote for Senate Majority leader who's a Republican. She will more or less give her vote to the Trump slash Republican way of looking at things, and she will confirm any Republican nominated Supreme Court justices. Then again, she might not. She's been an independent voice. If there is anything other than exactly 49 senators plus Susan Collins, her vote is extraneous to being the crucible to being the fulcrum vote in the Senate to. So what I'm saying is it does come down to a vote between standards, if a voter has any, and Susan, standards versus Susan, Susan representing the Republicans, the Republicans advancing the Trump agenda and all that that entails. It's not the easiest choice in the world for me. It would be pretty easy actually. But I can't tell you what to do and I understand everyone's consideration. Just think what the Senate will be able to do with 51 Democrats, one of whom is John Fetterman, not exactly the most reliable vote. And one of whom is Graham Platner, not the most rational, cautious, well thought out fella, but definitely a hulking tough guy of a senator who got the party excited because he embodies the form of alpha maleness that Democrats pretend that they and their voters aren't attracted to, but the evidence suggests they just might be. And they just might be no matter what on the show today. Well, I don't know how close the center vote in Maine's going to be, but if they need a breaking of the deadlock, have I got the PBS host for you. He's Aaron Tang, he's a law professor and he does host the PBS show named Just that, Breaking the Deadlock. It's a Fred Friendly esque panel discussion and it's very high minded and it calls to us in terms of civic virtues. And therefore I'm just going to guess that it's a ratings bonanza. And Aaron Tang is up next. But first I want to tease a little of how to where we talk to Joel Stein, expert on wine. I was listening to both of you. You were both so sweaty and status conscious that it was an ick factor. It's just wine, guys. It's like food. It's just food. And other insights, how to get into wine. But now how to get into not whining about US Politics, but breaking the deadlock thereof. Aaron Tang, Foreign. We all need advice, but it's not always clear who to ask, even in 2026. Enter how to the long standing advice show and Ambie Award nominated best personal growth podcast. That's back with new episodes and a new host. And that host. Here's the reveal. It's me, Mike Pesca. Each week I tackle a listener question ranging from travel to finance to relationships and beyond, with help from world class experts who actually know what they're talking about. Think of it as eavesdropping on someone else's therapy session without the copay or awkward silence. No question is too big or too specific. Some topics how to protect the elderly from scammers, how to take psychedelics therapeutically, and of course, how how to emigrate to the Netherlands as a throuple. You've got questions. We'll find the answers. So follow how to with Mike Pesca on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When I was a kid, I used to watch these things on PBS called the Fred Friendly Seminars. And I love them. I couldn't tell you who all the people were beforehand, but. But there was Fred Friendly. What a name, right? Former TV news executive, great interlocutor. And he'd say, supreme Court Justice. What do you think about that? And he'd say, newsman recognized by all of America. What do you think about that? Sure, it was a time of the monoculture, but I love those things. Then that format was taken over by a Yale Law dean and a few others, and it stopped being exploited for a couple of years. But now Aaron Tang, a professor at the school of Law at the UC Davis, has taken over the format, if not the exact Fred Friendly seminar. And they're calling these things Breaking the Deadlock. And I'm glad to welcome Professor Tang to the show. Hello, welcome to the gist.

[Mike Pesca]

Thanks so much for having me, Mike.

[Aaron Tang]

So first question, and it's just going to get worse from here. A deadlock's an unbreakable tie. How can you break the deadlock?

[Mike Pesca]

That's a fair question. First of all, you must have been an awesome kid if you were watching pbs. That was your idea of a good time. I love that we need more kids like you. So how do you break the deadlock? I don't think the answer is to try and convince everybody to agree. I don't think that's realistic. We've never had a moment in America where everybody joined hands and saying kumbaya is like, oh, you know what? We all agree on immigration. All of a sudden. What's different about this moment and what breaking the deadlock tries to do is reinstill this idea that we can sit around and talk to each other. We can listen to each other, disagree and not hate each other. Not trying to own the other side, maybe be a little better off because of that conversation. And that's what our show's trying to accomplish.

[Aaron Tang]

Yeah, ideally. But everyone that you invite knows that this is the goal. And most, maybe Ann Coulter accepted, are going in playing by rules on your show that aren't the rules of real life. So sometimes in the social sciences, this is known as the Hawthorne effect. People know they're being examined. What do you do to control for that?

[Mike Pesca]

That's totally right. So there's a couple of things we do. One is we don't tell the panelists what the show is going to be about. We don't tell them what their roles are going to be. They're completely ambushed. They're surprised. Now you might respond. They still are going to come and maybe sane wash their positions, maybe be a little bit more moderate, more willing to compromise. But even if that's right, I think, Mike, that that itself is valuable. Every time a viewer turns on the TV and watches Roger Severino, the vice president of the Heritage foundation, actually admit that, you know what, I was wrong, I made a mistake. I wish I had played that the other way. I wish I had been. Been more down the middle. Somebody on the left does the same thing that is teaching our, our muscle memory as Americans that, you know what, the people that I agree with don't always have to hate. Own the other side. Maybe I could have that kind of reasoned dialogue with a neighbor.

[Aaron Tang]

What do you mean? They. They don't come in knowing what you're talking about. Sometimes they're gambling experts or people who work for gambling sites or people with specific expertise. They must know that they're not talking about Law of the Sea Treaty.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, I mean, they might be betting on that on the show, but yes.

[Aaron Tang]

So they know walls minus three. Yeah,

[Mike Pesca]

I would put one cent on that right now if I was so the. So they know the general topic. So that's true. They know they're invited. This is going to be a show about gambling, but they don't know if they're going to be the parent of somebody with a gambling problem, if they're going to be a executive of a gambling show. They don't know if they'll be an Elected official. Right. So that's where the uncertainty comes in and forces them to sort of be open minded as they walk into the room.

[Aaron Tang]

Right. Sometimes you marry these people off. They don't even know that beforehand if

[Mike Pesca]

they're going to be or something. She's been married off every episode, although she got an upgrade. She was married to Rick Wilson and then Tiki Barber on episode two.

[Aaron Tang]

That is definitely an upgrade, at least in terms of yards per carry. Okay, so let's explain to our audience. I think there have been about maybe some have aired that I have that some have taped that haven't aired yet. But there's been what, about seven of these?

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, I think that's right. There's. There's been five have aired so far and there's two more taping still to air. Yeah.

[Aaron Tang]

So you have, I guess it differs by a little bit, but something like 10 people around a horseshoe shaped table and you're in the middle, right?

[Mike Pesca]

That's right, yeah.

[Aaron Tang]

And then there'll be a topic. So I'll read some of the episodes so that people understand what's going on. Breaking the deadlock. Gambling with your life. Breaking the deadlock. A matter of life and death. And that is reproductive rights One is truth under fire, Social media and truth one is a power play. This is a scenario where it's an election for president and all comes down to one school, one elementary school. And then you're. Or maybe that was the first one that you did called an election story. So you'll say you two guys are parents and your son comes to you and says, I just lost $800 on an app. Or you will say, you Jeh Johnson. Yes, we know Je Johnson from being in Homeland Security. You're the President of the United States and this is what's going on in a local election. You'll throw scenarios at them. It's a through line, one through story. And everyone will have to draw upon their expertise and also their wisdom to figure out what the right answer is, but also to represent the positions they had going in. Anything else that you add when you explain it to people or your elevator pitch so people understand the show?

[Mike Pesca]

I mean, that's pretty good. I think the one thing I would add is, you know, this is also fun and funny. There's, you know, unexpected moments of levity, surprises. So you know, the Variety magazine did a review of the first episode and said the TV show Breaking the Deadlock is more erudite than the West Wing and more suspenseful than 24. So you know that's the goal.

[Aaron Tang]

Right. And no ticking clock, I guess, you know, there's no set length for an episode. So when you concoct these scenarios, I would guess that a lot goes into them. You're not riffing. You have beats that you want to get to. And take your panelists through. Take me inside the concoction of these hypothetical situations. You lay on the experts.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, that's right. So, you know, each episode I think there's a big question that we want to explore. We want folks from both sides of an issue to discuss. So just to use the most recent episode, gambling with your life, you know, your viewers, your listeners know as well as anybody that we have a huge public health question about gambling. It's a, an, an, a question that afflicts young men in particular. It's generates a bunch of revenue for a lot of really happy interest. But it, you know, causes problems for a million plus families. So how do we talk about this issue? Right. We're not, we're never going to get rid of gambling altogether. It's not going to happen. There's too much money there. So are there solutions that people on both sides, industry players, maybe folks concerned with gambling that they can find as we talk through, you know, the very nitty gritty story of a single kid who's struggling with this problem?

[Aaron Tang]

Yes. And that's another hallmark of this series, that even though these are world, world renowned experts and sometimes just smart members of the media or other smart people, you always, I think this is true. I've watched all but two of them. You always have a personal level where they can interact with. So with the gambling one, it was your son, the son of the couple, Stephanie Rule and Tiki Barber. He has a gambling problem.

[Mike Pesca]

We'll start our story in the state of Middlevania at a Sunday family dinner at your house, Stephanie Ruhl and Tiki Barber. And you're joined by Sean Fuhardy. Sean, Stephanie's your sister. And Stephanie and Tiki, you have a son, Jeremy. Jeremy is 21, good kid. Hit some bumps in college, dropped out. Now living at home, working part time at Star Cups. But Jeremy brings up a topic that's near to many of your hearts. It's this year's March Mayhem college basketball

[Aaron Tang]

bracket with the presidential election One, it was Eddie Glaude and Stephanie Rule were. Oh no, it was someone else. They were married and their uncle was this election conspiracist. Why is that important to you to ask them to answer questions not just what the grand policy should Be. But what, what to do as a member of the family is affected by this issue.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. So very astute observation, Mike. It's important because that's who America is. Americans are not all the, you know, anchor of CBS News or the vice president of the Heritage foundation or the former governor of New Jersey. Americans are all, for the most part, parents of kids who are struggling with social media, phone use, gambling apps. They are voters who have family members that maybe they don't agree with and struggle with how to talk to that person. And so it's very important for us to have this show relatable to viewers in a way so that the person tunes in and they're like, you know what? I actually know what that feels like. I've had to wonder, how do I go to Thanksgiving and talk to my Uncle Bill who doesn't see eye to eye with me on politics? And if there's something that they can pull from our show, a way of interacting, a way of thinking about that puzzle, then we have achieved some of what we set out to do.

[Aaron Tang]

Yes. And viewers like you, this is what the entire PBS ethos is based on. Now, do you find that our experts, when asked, how do you deal with an uncle, struggle to find the right answer as opposed to what should be a much harder or more rare question. What do you do when there is a half faked video and you're an executive of Facebook? The audio is fake, but the video is real. This, that the personal questions, there are no right answers.

[Mike Pesca]

Sometimes, yes, I think, you know, in a perfect world, if we have done our writing correctly, we've thought through our dilemmas, our beats correctly, all of the big questions are hard. All of the big questions in a perfect world lead an Eddie Glaud or a Stephanie Rule to just sort of sit there and agonize and go back and forth. But it doesn't always work. A lot of times folks will say, you know what? I, this one's easy for me. I will tell the truth. Or this one's easy for me. I'm going to, I'm not, I'm going to take the phone away from my uncle and I'm not going to take him to vote because I don't believe that he has a role to play in her mind. But what's interesting is that panelists don't agree with each other. And so, you know, one of the really striking moments from the first episode, an election story, a presidential election story. Jeh Johnson, as you mentioned earlier, was cast in the role of the incumbent President in the United States. And we tell him that he loses a very close, disputed election, and he has to decide is he going to try and convince a faithless elector, a member of the Electoral College, to switch his vote to vote for him and swing the election, even though he lost the popular vote in that state? And two panelists go at it. Eddie Glaude, who's a contributor on msnbc, and his sister played in the show by Elise Jordan, another MSNBC commentator. They disagree. Eddie Glad's like, no, you have to play by the rules of democracy. And Elise Jordan says, no, you have to fight. You have to be in the arena and fight with the rules as they are. These are the rules. And those kinds of moments are, I think, really important because those are folks who actually, you know, pretty much. Pretty much in alignment on a lot of policy issues, but they disagree about the strategy.

[Aaron Tang]

I have found that the elected officials never surprise you or have never surprised me. So when you ask Richard Blumenthal, senator of Connecticut, you get a chance to be the vice president if you just run with someone who accepts gambling money? No, of course I'm not going to do that. You know, maybe Richard Blumenthal certainly wouldn't in real life. But in real life, when faced with a choice like that, people make different choices. At another point, Kris Kobach, who used to run the elections of the state of Kansas, and Mick Mulvaney were talking to each other. They're more on the same side of an election issue. And Mulvaney, this was a great moment. He says, am I right? Tell me where I'm wrong, Chris. There was a lawsuit about the extra hours. And the lawsuit was, I assume, properly litigated, went all the way up to the state Supreme Court, maybe the US Supreme Court, and said, no, no, that was fine. That was the rule. The hour gets to stay. That's really the end of the discussion. But, Chris, help me out.

[Mike Pesca]

This is.

[Aaron Tang]

There's. There's no. There's no real decision here, is there? If the public announcement was made to, you know, over the media that everybody in the county gets an extra vote,

[Mike Pesca]

they get to vote, vote, then the

[Aaron Tang]

extra votes in the other polling places really can't be questioned. And of course, Chris can't really disagree in public or in a forum like that about, well, if all the facts are in, and this is how the election was run, and it was on the up and up, we have to stick to it. But I think if we've watched Kris Kobach's career, we know that there certainly seem to be a lot of examples where what he said on the show was not how he comported himself in real life.

[Mike Pesca]

I think that's fair. I think the elected officials who are not a majority of the panel, they're usually two or three out of the nine or 10. They tend to go. We have a. In the writer's room, we have a phrase. They tend to go boy Scout and, you know, right off a Tom Clancy novel, but not always. So just, you know. One of my favorite panelists who we've had on three episodes is a man named Roger Severino. I mentioned him earlier. He's the vice president of the Heritage foundation, was a deputy under secretary of Health and Human Services in the first Trump administration. Very pro life individual, very conservative. But I love him as a panelist because he actually wrestles. He agonizes with these questions. And so there's this moment in Truth Under Fire where he is running for governor of the state. Basically, he has a choice. Something has happened on social media that's really good for his campaign. He can ride that wave and become the next governor of our state of Middlevania, or he can tell the truth, which he's just found out, which is that that thing did not actually happen. And the first time he does it, he says, I think I would tell the truth. And he has a campaign strategist with him who's like. She's like, oh, can we just finesse that a little bit? And she persuades him to sort of finesse it, not tell the truth. He wins the election, and then he's riddled with regret. At the end of the episode, he's like, I don't think. I think I would have done it differently. Walter Isaacson, another panelist who criticized me, it's like, you have to take the long view. And so to watch a person in this position go back and forth and say, this was really hard for me, that is, I think that speaks to the heart of our dilemma. Americans don't see that nuance. We don't see that complexity anymore, the difficulty in these choices. We would do a lot better if we recognize that a lot of the choices we face these days are hard.

[Aaron Tang]

Tell me about the writers room. Who writes this show. How much time goes into it? What are you trying to accomplish with your scripts?

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, we have a big team. It's very much a team enterprise. We have a lead writer has most often been a woman named Joan Greco, who was involved in writing a lot of the original Fred Friendly seminars. Brilliant woman.

[Aaron Tang]

I worked does she ever, does she ever annoy you by saying, you know, Fred wouldn't have done it like that?

[Mike Pesca]

I would not say she annoys us when she says that. She contributes wisdom when she mentions that. And then of course the response is none of us are as good as Fred friendly. So we're trying. And then there's a team of producers, myself and you know, we, we workshop it, we spend a couple of months just, you know, is this a good dilemma? Is that a good dilemma? What's realistic, what's not realistic?

[Aaron Tang]

What are the strengths? Well, we've talked mostly about the strengths, about what this can elicit. What do you think the, this format, what are the pitfalls of it?

[Mike Pesca]

So one of the pitfalls you mentioned is the possibility of panelists adopting a, you know, an artificially copacetic approach. A view of, you know, saying, saying only what they feel comfortable saying on TV rather than what is in their heart of hearts. I don't know that there's much we can do about that. I do think that anytime you get somebody to say something, democracy promoting on tv, that's unexpected because they think that's the right answer, even if that's not what they would really do behind closed doors is actually probably a good thing. Even if it's not what they would originally do. That is one pitfall. Another downside is, is frankly, you know, we're talking about several hundred thousand viewers, a million viewers on social and on YouTube streaming and airing on live on PBS. That's a great audience. But this is I think a message that the entire country needs to hear. And that's not really a pitfall with the program so much as it is with our modern media climate. Maybe, but that I think that's another challenge.

[Aaron Tang]

I'll give you a couple more. One is that it's not an interview. So it's not follow up questions and hard hitting journalism. But there was a moment in the gambling one where an AI expert I think maybe with a. Do you remember who this Levy, a

[Mike Pesca]

South African tech founder.

[Aaron Tang]

So Alan Levy articulates that with the coming advent of mass AI, perfect information, massive amounts of information are going to be available to everyone who gambles. And so this is a boon to the gambler was his intimation or maybe flat out statement. And then Stephanie Rule jumped in with a fine point in semi rebuttal. But I was just standing there staring at my screen saying no, what you have put forward as a mitigating factor to the harms of gambling are, is in fact one of the most exacerbating factors in that who's going to have access to the best information and the cutting edge information. The average person just using the platform know the sharps who are going to take advantage of the high school kid or college kid or average person who is sometimes called a fish or a donkey, or the kind of person whose lack of savvy but he thinks he's savvy is what these gambling sites depend on. So that's just one example. But have there been other times where someone said something and it wasn't rebutted? And then afterwards you guys were like, ooh, I don't know if we were doing our journalistic job by putting it out there unrebutted like that.

[Mike Pesca]

Totally. So it is true that in the hypothetical universe that we inhabit, I'm a storyteller, I present questions. But it's not my role to fact check people. Right? I. If I were to do that, I think I would lose some credibility on both sides if I'm, you know, if it looks like I'm stacking the deck in favor of one position or the other. So I have to trust and hope that the other panelists will fact check each other. Stephanie tries to do that in that bit, but you're right, there are things that will be said that may be objectively false, may be misleading. I don't think that makes us any worse than, frankly, cable news where, you know, fact checking of this kind, you know, we can all hope it happens, but is not batten a thousand by any means. But I do think that one thing that happens, and even in this moment that you refer to with Alan Levy, people tend to, when they get out in front of their skis and make these huge claims, they tend to falsify themselves. I think a lot of viewers watching that, that that moment where the AI expert is like, oh, you know, all we're doing is providing perfect information, and information itself can never be bad. I think the average viewer is like, I'm not sure if I'm going to buy that. I'm not sure if this is really what AI is doing for us.

[Aaron Tang]

I just wish Blumenthal rule, whoever would be like, are you kidding? Are you saying that because you're trying to fool us? You know, I would.

[Mike Pesca]

We do illustrate, you know, that later in the script, and this is a little, you know, maybe it's a little spoiler, but, you know, we do illustrate sort of the pitfalls of AI at the end of the episode when we turn and it turns out AI has Been used to generate a, you know, virtual girlfriend for our struggling adolescent. And, and Alan Levy has an amazing answer there. And he's like, you know, this, this might be the cutting edge. This might, he might be in the vanguard. Everybody will have virtual companions and like,

[Aaron Tang]

ooh, we're back in a minute with more of Aaron. We're back with Aaron Tang, host of Breaking the Deadlock. And I have to say, on your show, there are some moments. I'll take one Rachel Bite Coffer, who is a left leaning former college professor, a pollster, and a Democratic liberal political pundit. And she's best known for her embrace of negative partisanship and wanting to throw punches at Republicans and basically being the left leaning embodiment of eschewing any idea of when they go low, we go high. Okay, so she's one character on the show. And then there's Kris Kobach, who I mentioned. He's the former Secretary of state of Kansas and someone who, for instance, believes Donald Trump won the 2020 election and is probably willing to help him do so again. Now, I have to say, when I saw these two people on the same show, I wanted them to yell at each other. I wanted them to get into it. Did you?

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, in a way. In a, in a good, healthy kind of way, I did. But it's interesting. They didn't get into it on the show. And the reason they didn't is they both did the same thing. So we see this happening on the left and the right. They both moderated, modulated maybe their positions. Right. So you mentioned Kris Kobach already in the context of Mick Mulvaney. They're presented with an opportunity to swing an election in a state legislature in favor of their candidate. They choose not to. Rachel Bitticofer is given the sort of symmetrical opportunity she gets to advise Jeh Johnson, would you try to steal this election back by persuading a faithless elector? She's like, absolutely not. I would not do that. We would concede the election, which I'm not sure is consistent with her Persona. Like, you're like you described, sort of the firebrand, firebrand liberal. You know, we play with all the dirty tools in the playbooks, if that's what's, if that's what's going to help us win. So they both go back to sort of, you know, mainstream centrist positions. And so they didn't really get at it. Um, I wish they had.

[Aaron Tang]

Right. But they were also nicer to each other in this realm and that I've seen that take place A number of times. So in a way, it's good that we could model some good behavior. That if we get a bunch of people wearing nice outfits in a room, even people who maybe a hundred times in the past have ripped each other's head off on social media, they can behave well and we can say model behavior and disagree without being disagreeable. Only that's not the real world. And as much as we say social media is not the real world, that's what we see. That's the hundred times where they're ripping each other's head off. That's what we're actually trying to guard against. That's what we're trying to mitigate against. Breaking the deadlock is, in a way, an example of the best angels of human nature, but in a way, an extremely poorly concocted experiment, because it doesn't have much to say about how our conversations are really held.

[Mike Pesca]

I think. I think that's a very fair. Harsh, but fair charge. I think I understand why you might take that view, but I think my response, Mike, would be, if you want to rebuild civic norms in this country, the ability to sit down with someone you disagree with and talk to them, listen to them, the only way to do it is to do it. And the only way we can do it right now is in the context of these hypothetical scenarios that rhyme with real life. Because if you get these 10 people around a table and you ask them, what do you think about Trump? It's not going to be civil. It's not going to be polite. There's going to be people tearing off their earpieces. And that reinforces in an image of the world where we are hopelessly divided, America might not make it another 250 years in that world. But if you can have enough conversations with someone who you really disagree with, but you're civil and 10, 20, 30 episodes, God willing, we'll have five, six, seven more seasons of this. And it becomes more and more prominent. People are coming on the show and we're having these conversations. That's, I'm afraid, the only way I have kids, right, the only way you can get your kids to behave well is if you model it yourself. If I'm out there cussing at, you know, the Cleveland Cavaliers because they got, you know, embarrassed four games in a row, and believe me, I wanted to, because I'm from Cleveland, you better believe my son is going to say, that's how I should watch basketball games. So the only way to model this behavior is to do it ourselves. That's that's what we're trying to do

[Aaron Tang]

in your last answer where you talked about the situations that rhyme with real life. The state that this all plays out in is called Middlevania. And that is to say, well, it's not your state, it's not her state, It's a state. It could be any state. And you have hypothetical concocted scenarios where people never have the job they have and never have the title they have. Is this a little like maybe gambling's on my mind with that episode? When you go into a casino, they give you poker chips and not money? Because if it's money, it affects your behavior and you treat it like money, but if it's poker chips, you treat it a little looser or you treat it a little. A little. What. What is the. What is the reason that you having these scenarios that only rhyme with real life?

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, it's to get us out of talking points usa. Right. Like, we live in a. In a world where each side has reduced to an art form the buzz phrases that they want to hit on over and over again. It's like a very basic algorithm. I hear immigration. If I'm on the right, I'm going to say this. I hear the economy, I'm on the left, I'm going to say this. And we're not really talking to each other at that point. We're just, you know, trying to really. Libs are trying to own the conservatives and vice versa. If you put it in this hypothetical, in a state of Middlevania with a president who's not really the president, a person who has certain views. Right. What you do is you free the journalist, you free the politician. Our panelists to speak from values rather than from political experience and political gain. And. And speaking from values, it turns out, I think, is what has the possibility to reunite us as a country. Or maybe not reunite us, but bring us closer together as a people.

[Aaron Tang]

Do you watch. Do you know what Jubilee is? Do you watch this YouTube channel?

[Mike Pesca]

I have seen it, I admit. I have a hard time watching more than a few minutes of it at a time.

[Aaron Tang]

Okay, so what they say is they're doing a version of what you're doing. They're getting people who disagree and putting a camera on them.

[Mike Pesca]

And has wokeness pushed America past the breaking point? Or is the product progressive movement the only answer to maga? I'm John Rigolato, and from Jubilee Media, this is surrounded where one brave soul faces a room full of disagreers. Today we're unpacking what it Means to be far left. The backlash to wokeness and what your

[Aaron Tang]

vote stands for in the upcoming midterm election, creating a. It's a little bit of a concoction. Why isn't that helpful to civic discourse, would you say?

[Mike Pesca]

I think that is painting an image and encouraging a vision of us as. Of civic discourse, as an effort to destroy the other side, an effort to own the other side, rather than an effort to understand the other side. You know, now, not every viewpoint is worthy of being understood. Somebody who advocates political violence on either the left or the right is probably not the kind of person that we should be sitting down and saying, oh, let me better understand why you think we should be killing people we disagree with. Right. That that's off limits. There are things that are off limits. But so much of the divide in this country is actually grounded in beliefs, reasonable beliefs that people hold. And we have to be able to sit down to each other and say, you know, I disagree with you, that that is the right priority at this moment. But I understand why you might think that, given your lived experience. That's not what Jubilee is trying to do. Right. Jubilee is. Is. It's like survival of the fittest. That's not a path forward for our

[Aaron Tang]

survival of the glibest. Yeah. So the very first episode of your series, Breaking the Deadlock was preceded by a message from two Supreme Court justices. One was Sonia Sotomayor, and one was Amy Coney Barrett. Now, I saw from your bio that you clerked for Sonia Sotomayor. Was the mechanism that you booked them, is you called your o. Your old justice and said, would you do me this favor? And then said, and could you ask someone on the other side to model the behavior and help you record this promo?

[Mike Pesca]

That was not the mechanism. We reached out to a lot of people who we thought could speak to the two different sides of this debate, who we thought would be great spokespeople. And yes, Justice Sotomayor was very generous. And did it hurt that I. I had worked for her? Probably not. But Justice Barrett, who, with whom I had no connection, was also very happy to do it. The two of them are actually friends in real life. Right. They've been on public speaking tours before, even though they disagree a lot on, as, you know, a lot of the big cases. So it wasn't, you know, a matter of personal favors. It was a matter of this is a mission. They believe in the goal of bringing people together, talking, listening, disagreeing in a. In a thoughtful way.

[Aaron Tang]

Have you seen any of your panelists Go on to act in real life in a way that you were disappointed or shocked by, given how well they played in your sandbox.

[Mike Pesca]

Disappointed? Shocked, Certainly not. I mean, you know, the, the folks who appear on our show are known quantities, right? I mean, I think, you know, everybody knows that. Who, who Scott Jennings is. He's a, you know, a brilliant communicator, CNN contributor. Right. And he's a brilliant communicator. He's very quick on his feet. He is not a consensus builder on cnn. So it's not surprising to us when he goes and does more episodes at that, you know, he's expressing a viewpoint and very effectively. But he is more. When you bring him into our scenario and you tell him you're the parent of a 60 year old girl who's pregnant and he has to wrestle agonized with the choices facing his family, suddenly those talking points go out the window. Right. He becomes a little bit more circumspect, maybe is the right word. So I don't know that I would say shocked by how folks act outside of the context of our show.

[Aaron Tang]

You've done reproductive rights. You've done the very nature of truth. Are there any topics out there right now that are too hot, too third rail right now for you to tackle?

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, the Cleveland Cavaliers.

[Aaron Tang]

Yeah, they're not, they're not hot. They're.

[Mike Pesca]

No, I don't think there is a topic that's too hot to cut. I mean, I don't think there's any topic that's harder to talk about than reproductive freedom, than abortion. That is a topic that for, you know, five decades, ever since Roe versus Wade is, and frankly before then, has brought out the most vitriolic views from folks on both sides. And I think, you know, we covered it in a way that was, I thought, productive. So I don't think there's any topic that we, we would shy away from because it's too politically explosive. The real question is whether it is a topic that lends itself to hard ethical dilemmas. The kind of choices that panelists can really struggle with, that we can learn something from because not every, you know, not every topic can do that.

[Aaron Tang]

So how would you do Israel? I know you could get the right voices who are, they don't have to be moderate, but they're used to explaining their positions and doing it in a way that maybe the most prominent voices on the Israel question don't do it. And one of the reasons, you know, Hassan Piker gains prominence is because he does do it without a sense of caution. But what would the brainstorming on how to construct the hypothetical to get at Israel as a topic. How would you try to address that?

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of times what we. What we start with is two truths. Each side has a truth that if spoken at a certain level of generality, most people would agree with. It's a core value. Right. So in this case, those two truths, I think are. Are pretty consensus. Right. We believe that a people, a group of people should have a right to exist, determine their own future democracy, elect their own leaders, have a say in their own government.

[Aaron Tang]

That's kind of the same truth for

[Mike Pesca]

both sides in a way that's exactly almost. It's the same truth. Right. And the other truth is actually probably the same truth for both sides too, which is we should be able to defend ourselves from. From violence. Right. So these are truths. And so what you try to do is you try to create a world, a situation where those two truths can be probed at perhaps in unexpected ways. So sometimes we like to flip sides. We like to put, you know, take. Make an authoritarian left president, for example. You know, how would. So this is the. One of the themes in the second episode of Power Play. What happens when the left president is like, I want to go after my political enemies. I want to go after people who criticize me. John Tester, former senator of Montana, is in the seat of a vice president at the end of that episode. And he has to think, what am I going to do? How do I stand up to this, this president? Right. So there are ways to explore it that, you know, abstract us from, you know, 3,000 years of history that make it hard to really talk about the question. But, but that's, I think, how we would start.

[Aaron Tang]

Yeah, yeah. Same thing with policing. I could see doing it. I could see doing a great breaking the deadlock segment. I think you'd have to leave out the all cops are bastard sentiment or someone who really believes that, I think. Am I right?

[Mike Pesca]

I think you would want that viewpoint represented on the panel. You would want somebody. You would want a hard dilemma for that person. Right. I think, you know, you might hit that person with the dilemma. Like somebody's breaking into your house. Who do you call? Right. And if.

[Aaron Tang]

Ghostbusters.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. And so if, you know, if they are a. Abolish the police kind of person, you know, like the person is breaking in, they have a gun. Right. Are you going to call social work? Social services? Right. So you would want to confront people with the difficult consequences of the positions they express and see how those hold up.

[Aaron Tang]

Aaron Tang is a professor at the University of California at Davis, and he is a host of the PBS show Breaking the Deadlock. Thank you so much, Professor Tang.

[Mike Pesca]

Thanks for having me, Mike.

[Aaron Tang]

That's it for today's show. The Gist is produced by Cory Wara. Jeff Craig does How To Ben Astaire is our booking coordinator. Cat Kathleen Sykes does the Gist list. And Michelle Pesca is extraordinary in her role as coo Uproo G Peru Duparu. Thanks for listening.