Cross Tabs

Farrah Bostic
  • 5.0 (10)
  • Politics
  • Weekly

Our world is governed by numbers — surveys, polling, algorithms, and data. On Cross Tabs, we bring you the stories behind these numbers. This podcast is your introduction to the people, perspectives, and agendas that shape our reality, and call it “public opinion”. We invite experts to discuss pressing issues and walk us through their methods. You’ll hear about the issues that matter from some of the brightest thinkers in policy and politics, tech and business. Join us and you’ll learn about how polling works — or doesn’t work — and how research can be manipulated to advance a political agenda. Discover the history of topics in the news and hear insights on culture and society. And learn what’s really at risk in the race to influence and optimize, well, everything. The show is hosted by Farrah Bostic, founder of The Difference Engine, where she works as a qualitative researcher and strategist working outside The Beltway to understand what drives business leaders, experts, and people like you so we can all make better decisions.

  1. 5d ago

    Who the Party Answers To, with Mike Podhorzer

    Two days before the election, Rep. Haley Stevens, who lost Michigan's Democratic Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed his Republican opponent. A month earlier, Farrah sat down with Mike Podhorzer — former political director of the AFL-CIO and author of the Weekend Reading newsletter — for a conversation about the question that move raises: who is a party actually accountable to? Mike argues that parties are coalitions of the organized interests that back them in primaries, that Democrats stopped doing politics and started treating voters as customers, and that the problem with AI, the economy and much else isn't the thing itself but who controls it. Plus: what Zohran Mamdani understands about picket lines, why winning an election isn't the same as having power, and why Mike thinks that if we think of 2008 as analogous to 1932, Herbert Hoover won. GuestMike Podhorzer is the former political director of the AFL-CIO and a former senior adviser to its president. He founded the Analyst Institute and the Research Collaborative, was a longtime co-chair of Catalist, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and writes Weekend Reading, a newsletter on politics, economics and democratic crises that began in 2017 as an off-the-record email to election practitioners. Weekend Reading: https://weekendreading.netSubstack: @michaelpodhorzer Notable quotes"They are there because they passed the job interview." — Mike Podhorzer, on members of Congress"Economic power is political power, and they have almost all of it, and we have almost none of it." — Mike Podhorzer"Think of the Congress as becoming the most genius customer service center for capitalism." — Mike PodhorzerReferenced in this episodeRep. Haley Stevens's endorsement of Mike Rogers in Michigan's Senate race (PBS NewsHour)The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson"AI as normal technology" (Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor)Zohran Mamdani's Knicks championship speech (June 18, 2026), and the whole celebration can be watched again here.Rebecca Traister's New York magazine reporting on the Maine Senate race and Troy Jackson's campaignJust Evil Enough by Alistair Croll and Emily RossKim Lane Scheppele (Princeton) on Péter Magyar's efforts to dismantle Orbán's system in Hungary — see her Journal of Democracy essay "Can Péter Magyar Restore Hungary's Democracy?" Stay in Touch📬 Subscribe to our newsletter at crosstabspodcast.com for new episodes, insights, and behind-the-scenes content. 📹 Watch video episodes on YouTube @CrosstabsPodcast 💬 Follow us on BlueSky: @crosstabspod.bsky.social and @farrahbostic.bsky.social 📍 Produced by The Difference Engine 📨 You can also email me directly at farrah@crosstabspodcast.com

  2. Oct 15

    Out of Pocket, with Ashley Kirzinger of KFF

    With the elections a little over 2 weeks away, "affordability" is everywhere — and KFF's Ashley Kirzinger thinks a big share of it is about health care. Ashley, KFF's director of survey methodology, joins Farrah to talk about how KFF reaches people most polls miss, why health costs now tie gas prices as Americans' top household worry, and how majorities of Republicans backed extending the ACA tax credits right up until the issue turned partisan. Plus: why asking voters to choose between "the economy" and "health care" may be a false choice, and why about three in ten voters trust neither party to bring costs down. GuestAshley Kirzinger is director of survey methodology and associate director of KFF's Public Opinion and Survey Research Program, where she helps direct KFF's polling work. She holds a Ph.D. from LSU's Manship School and lives in Portland, Maine. KFF Public Opinion & Survey Research team: https://www.kff.org/team/public-opinion-survey-research/Bluesky: @ashleykirzinger.bsky.social Notable quotes"When we put out a poll and if Democratic and Republican lawmakers are both mad at us, I feel like that's when we're doing our job right." — Ashley Kirzinger "They may have said the economy and they mean health costs, and they may say healthcare and they mean health costs." — Ashley Kirzinger "You have to take care of your health, but you can't afford to take care of your health." — Ashley Kirzinger Referenced in this episodeKFF Health Tracking Poll: Health Care Costs and the Midterms (April 2026) — the worry chart, the party-trust chart, the impact-on-voting chart, and the "most-wanted change" questionKFF Health Tracking Poll: Health Care Costs, Expiring ACA Tax Credits, and the 2026 Midterms (January 2026)Tracking the Public's Views on the ACA — the long-run favorability chart Farrah and Ashley walk throughKFF/Washington Post Trans Survey — 515 trans adults from three probability-based panelsKFF/LA Times Survey of Immigrants — 3,358 immigrant adults, 10 languagesAnnie Lowrey's writing on the "time tax" of public servicesJohnny Harris' video about democracy, “I don’t get democracy” Stay in Touch📬 Subscribe to our newsletter at crosstabspodcast.com for new episodes, insights, and behind-the-scenes content. 📹 Watch video episodes on YouTube @CrosstabsPodcast 💬 Follow us on BlueSky: @crosstabspod.bsky.social and @farrahbostic.bsky.social 📍 Produced by The Difference Engine 📨 You can also email me directly at farrah@crosstabspodcast.com

  3. Oct 1

    The Cloud Isn't Up In the Cloud, with Zoe Padgett from SurveyMonkey

    Zoe Padgett, who runs public opinion research on SurveyMonkey's survey science team, joins Farrah to walk through three years of tracking data on how Americans actually feel about AI — not the LinkedIn-hype version. They dig into an unusual generational "crisscross" (Gen Z's trust in AI dropped from 2023 to 2026 while every older generation's rose), why brands selling AI tools are still just selling the category itself rather than differentiating, and what happens to the research pipeline when AI quietly absorbs the tasks junior researchers used to cut their teeth on. The conversation ends on data centers — the physical, local, increasingly contentious infrastructure behind all of it — and the way it is scrambling normal demographic and political coalitions. Guest Zoe Padgett is a public opinion researcher on SurveyMonkey's survey science team. She previously worked on federal survey design and analysis at the American Institutes for Research, ICF, and the Department of Education and holds a Master's in Survey Methodology from the University of Maryland. Resources SurveyMonkey's latest AI & Jobs Survey ReportSurveyMonkey Research: AI Sentiment Study. The quarterly AI tracker, including the data-center findings (Sam Gutierrez, July 2026).CNBC|SurveyMonkey Quarterly AI & Jobs Survey, Q2 2026In AI We Trust (HubSpot × SurveyMonkey, 2025) Stay in Touch 📬 Subscribe to our newsletter at crosstabspodcast.com for new episodes, insights, and behind-the-scenes content. 📹 Watch video episodes on YouTube @CrosstabsPodcast 💬 Follow us on BlueSky: @crosstabspod.bsky.social and @farrahbostic.bsky.social 📍 Produced by The Difference Engine 📨 You can also email me directly at farrah@crosstabspodcast.com

  4. Sep 17

    Cross-Pressured with Baxter Oliphant and Gabe Borelli of the Pew Research Center

    Every few years, Pew stops asking Americans whether they're Republicans or Democrats and instead lets the data decide where the lines actually fall. This year it landed on nine groups — and the most-discussed one is defined less by policy than by style: 53% of the "No Apologies Right" say they like it when politicians they agree with humiliate their opponents. Senior Researcher Baxter Oliphant and Research Associate Gabriel Borelli join Farrah to talk about how you build a typology from scratch, why the 62% of Americans who aren't in the four "anchor" groups are the most interesting people in the data, and why everyone wanting a third party is not the same as everyone wanting the same third party. Also: what a typology genuinely can't tell you, and why that's worth saying out loud. GuestsJ. Baxter Oliphant is a Senior Researcher at the Pew Research Center, focusing on U.S. politics and policy — including partisan polarization, trust in government, gun policy, and U.S. foreign policy. https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/baxter-oliphant/ Gabriel Borelli is a Research Associate at the Pew Research Center focusing on U.S. politics and policy. He ran the modeling for the 2026 typology. https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/gabriel-borelli/ Notable quotes"They're the group that really stood out for saying they like it when politicians that they agree with humiliate their opponents. That just wasn't a group that would have popped fifteen years ago." — Baxter Oliphant, on the No Apologies Right"There are laws of physics, but there's not really laws of politics. There's just tendencies." — Baxter OliphantReferenced in this episodeBeyond Red vs. Blue: The 2026 Political Typology — Pew Research Center, June 10, 2026. Take the political typology quiz How political typology groups feel about the midterm elections and Trump How foreign policy values and issues cut across the political typology groups Appendix B: Typology group creation and analysis Appendix C: The history of the political typology — the nine typologies going back to 1987 (1987, 1994, 1999, 2005, 2011, 2014, 2017, 2021, 2026). Worth browsing as a set of time capsules.The 2021 political typology — the previous version, with its Stressed Sideliners and Outsider Left groups, referenced by Gabe as a comparison point. Stay in Touch📬 Subscribe to our newsletter at crosstabspodcast.com for new episodes, insights, and behind-the-scenes content. 📹 Watch video episodes on YouTube @CrosstabsPodcast 💬 Follow us on BlueSky: @crosstabspod.bsky.social and @farrahbostic.bsky.social 📍 Produced by The Difference Engine 📨 You can also email me directly at farrah@crosstabspodcast.com

  5. Sep 10

    The Weighting Game with Ariel Edwards-Levy

    Before things get heavier this fall, a conversation about the plumbing: CNN Polling and Election Analytics Editor Ariel Edwards-Levy joins Farrah to talk about why survey response rates keep sliding, what fraud and burnout look like from the respondent's side, and a fun experiment Ariel ran called "Why Are You Talking to Me?" — which breaks down, by age, race, and party, the real reasons people bother answering a poll at all. GuestAriel Edwards-Levy is CNN's Polling and Election Analytics Editor, where she covers public opinion research and helps shape how CNN reports on polling. CNN profile: https://www.cnn.com/profiles/ariel-edwards-levyX / Twitter: @aedwardslevy In this episodeWhat actually happens at AAPOR (the annual gathering of, as Ariel puts it, "survey nerds")Why response rates keep falling, and what that forces researchers to do with weightingThe fraud problem in online panels: bots, incentive arbitrage, and people gaming their way onto U.S. panels from outside the country"Fit for purpose" research: why the right sample depends on whether you're trying to measure opinion, predict an outcome, or build a persuasion strategyLow propensity voters, low social control, and why the people least likely to say their voice is heard elsewhere are often the ones most willing to take a political surveySurvey-design experiments that backfired — including one where researchers tried to end a survey with a joke and had to kill the test because it tanked completion ratesAriel's own AAPOR presentation, "Why Are You Talking to Me?" — a 2025 survey experiment asking respondents their real motivation for answering: making their voice heard (43%), the incentive (29%), or just enjoying the questions (22%) — broken down sharply by age, race, and partisanshipWhy "make your voice heard" recruitment messaging pulls in a very different (older, more partisan) respondent than other messagingWhat it takes to get people who don't trust polling, or don't think of themselves as political, to participate anywayHow Ariel thinks about her job as a journalist covering public opinion — presenting what people think without telling readers what to do with itA behind-the-scenes moment from CNN's State of the Union video-response project, and why hearing an actual respondent's voice changes how the data lands Notable quotes"Don't jerk survey respondents around." — Ariel, on what she took away from a wave of survey-design experiments at AAPOR "When there's no incentive to lie, people tend to be lazy and not lie." — Farrah, on why paid respondents tend to answer honestly "I worry for anybody who feels very prepared for an election season — that demonstrates to me a worrying level of confidence." — ArielReferenced in this episodeAAPOR (American Association for Public Opinion Research) annual conferenceVeraSight's AAPOR omnibus (their annual free-question booth at the conference) Coming up on Cross TabsThis one's the calm before a harder run of episodes — next up, we're getting into the midterms, political identity, what people actually want out of policy, and the future of democracy. Stay in Touch📬 Subscribe to our newsletter at crosstabspodcast.com for new episodes, insights, and behind-the-scenes content. 📹 Watch video episodes on YouTube @CrosstabsPodcast 💬 Follow us on BlueSky: @crosstabspod.bsky.social and @farrahbostic.bsky.social 📍 Produced by The Difference Engine 📨 You can also email me directly at farrah@crosstabspodcast.com

  6. May 7

    Angrily Not Paying Attention: Polling in the UK with Matthew Price

    Britain has spent a century as a two-party country. That may be over - and this week's local elections may be the strongest signal yet of a big breakup. This week, I talk with Matthew Price, analyst and strategist at Focal Data in London, about what's happening to British politics right now — and what the polls are (and aren't) able to tell us about it. They cover what the 2024 MRP polls got wrong about Labour's vote share, how public polling shapes voter behavior (including the Conservative "stop the supermajority" strategy), the unprecedented rise of five-party competition in a system built for two, and why the modeling tools that defined the last election may not be up to the next one. This episode is a shorter one to provide some background to the elections this week - a follow-up episode on MRP methodology and UK polling institutions is coming soon. Our Guest Matthew Price is a Research Manager in Focaldata's Analytics team. He previously worked as a pollster at Deltapoll, and has contributed political analysis to BBC Radio, Newsnight, and the Channel 4 election night coverage. Matthew holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford and an MPhil in Philosophy from Trinity College Dublin. You can follow him on Bluesky at @matthewbprice.bsky.social. Stay in Touch 📬 Subscribe to our newsletter at crosstabspodcast.com for new episodes, insights, and behind-the-scenes content. 📹 Watch video episodes on YouTube @CrosstabsPodcast 💬 Follow us on BlueSky: @crosstabspod.bsky.social and @farrahbostic.bsky.social 📍 Produced by The Difference Engine 📨 You can also email me directly at farrah@crosstabspodcast.com

  7. Mar 27

    Governing Drunk: Sleep & Power, with Lindsay Scola

    What happens when the people making decisions on your behalf are running on fumes? In this episode, I talk with Lindsay Scola — former advance person for Barack Obama, Hill staffer, and now sleep health educator — about the always-on culture of American political life, and what it actually costs us. From the Celsius cans visible in every Capitol hallway walk-and-talk, to the pharmacy hand-delivering Alzheimer's medications to sitting members of Congress, to a president who prowls Air Force One checking who's asleep: the evidence that our leaders aren't getting enough rest is hiding in plain sight. Lindsay brings both the insider perspective and the science — and the result is a conversation that reframes sleep not as a personal wellness choice, but as a matter of democratic consequence. About Our GuestLindsay Scola began her career in politics the way a lot of people do: convinced it was a calling. Her first job was on the Hill, working for a congressman. From there, she joined the Obama campaign in 2007 as an advance person — one of the people responsible for building events from scratch ahead of the candidate, managing crowds of up to 75,000 people, then getting on a plane and doing it all over again somewhere new. She went on to work in the Obama administration and in entertainment before a diagnosis at age 35 changed the direction of her work entirely. After 19 years of symptoms being dismissed by doctors, Lindsay was diagnosed with narcolepsy — and spent the years since becoming an expert in what sleep actually does, and what we lose without it. She now works as a sleep health educator, offering one-on-one coaching, corporate talks, and an online course designed to help people understand their own sleep on their own terms. She is also the author of AI for ADHD: A Practical Guide for Starting and Actually Finishing the Things That Matter. 🔗 lindsayscola.com ReferencesOn the caffeine culture of Capitol Hill: The U.S. government runs on Celsius — The Washington Post On the pharmacy that hand-delivers prescriptions to Congress — including Alzheimer's medications: An old-school pharmacy hand-delivers drugs to Congress — Stat News / PBS NewsHourDC pharmacist provides Alzheimer's drugs for members of Congress — Metro US On cognitive decline among senior officials as a national security concern: Pentagon-Funded Study Warns Dementia Among U.S. Officials Poses National Security Threat — The Intercept On President Trump's sleep habits and their effect on staff: ‘The Superhuman President’ A good-faith attempt to ascertain the truth about Donald Trump’s health — New York MagazineAs Signs of Aging Emerge, Trump Responds With Defiance — The Wall Street JournalInside Trump’s Air Force One: ‘It’s like being held captive’ — CNN.com On the White House Medical Unit's distribution of stimulants and sleep aids: Trump's White House Was 'Awash in Speed' — and Xanax — Rolling StoneWhite House Medical Unit's 'severe and systemic' drug problems detailed — The Washington PostWhite House clinic improperly distributed controlled substances — NBC News Stay in Touch📬 Subscribe to our newsletter at crosstabspodcast.com for new episodes, insights, and behind-the-scenes content. 📹 Watch video episodes on YouTube @CrosstabsPodcast 💬 Follow us on BlueSky: @crosstabspod.bsky.social and @farrahbostic.bsky.social 📍 Produced by The Difference Engine 📨 You can also email me directly at farrah@crosstabspodcast.com

  8. Mar 19

    Once You Start Asking Questions... With Kathleen Weldon of The Roper Center

    The Roper Center at Cornell holds the world's oldest social science archive — over 25,000 data sets, nearly 900,000 survey questions, dating all the way back to the 1930s. It's a record not just of politics and elections, but of ordinary life: have you ever spent a night in jail? Would you tell a five-year-old not to lie about seeing a purple dragon? Do you remember the color of your first love's eyes? Kathleen Weldon, Roper's Director of Data and Communications, joins me to talk about what the archive reveals — and what it's missing. We cover a lot of ground - from Cold War surveys that tracked global opinions about American civil rights, to the women who built polling from the ground up but rarely got credit, to the data destroyed to protect respondents from the Nazis, to how pollsters understood the power not only to measure, but to shape public opinion from the very beginning. About Kathleen: Kathleen Weldon is the Director of Data Operations and Communications at the Roper Center. She joined the Roper Center in 2014 as Research Coordinator. Kathleen manages data provider relations, oversees the data curation process, plans archival development, and works closely with the IT development team in building new user tools. A graduate of Wesleyan University with a BA in English, she started her career in public opinion at Harvard University designing surveys with media and foundation partners. The Roper Center can be found here: https://ropercenter.cornell.edu Stay in Touch 📬 Subscribe to our newsletter at crosstabspodcast.com for new episodes, insights, and behind-the-scenes content. 📹 Watch video episodes on YouTube @CrosstabsPodcast 💬 Follow us on BlueSky: @crosstabspod.bsky.social and @farrahbostic.bsky.social 📍 Produced by The Difference Engine 📨 You can also email me directly at farrah@crosstabspodcast.com

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About

Our world is governed by numbers — surveys, polling, algorithms, and data. On Cross Tabs, we bring you the stories behind these numbers. This podcast is your introduction to the people, perspectives, and agendas that shape our reality, and call it “public opinion”. We invite experts to discuss pressing issues and walk us through their methods. You’ll hear about the issues that matter from some of the brightest thinkers in policy and politics, tech and business. Join us and you’ll learn about how polling works — or doesn’t work — and how research can be manipulated to advance a political agenda. Discover the history of topics in the news and hear insights on culture and society. And learn what’s really at risk in the race to influence and optimize, well, everything. The show is hosted by Farrah Bostic, founder of The Difference Engine, where she works as a qualitative researcher and strategist working outside The Beltway to understand what drives business leaders, experts, and people like you so we can all make better decisions.

Information

  • Creator
    Farrah Bostic
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    65
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Farrah Bostic
  • Show Website
    Cross Tabs

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