Outrage Overload: Why Politics Keeps Us Mad—and Who Benefits

Mike talks with David Beckemeyer, fellow Democracy Group podcaster and host of Outrage Overload, about why American politics so often feels like a permanent rage machine. They dig into why people badly misread their political opponents, how outrage media works on both the left and right, why more information doesn’t necessarily make us more reasonable, and how social media creates false consensus and rewards the most extreme voices. Mike and David also discuss the deeper civic problem: Americans often misunderstand not only the “other side,” but the political system itself—checks and balances, coalition-building, compromise, and the messy realities of governing. The conversation ends with practical ways to resist outrage overload without pretending that genuinely outrageous things don’t exist.

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The Politics Guys is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.