Politics & Polls unpacks the history of politics and current events in the U.S. Hosted by Julian Zelizer and Sam Wang, the show features some of the best minds in politics, journalism, academia, and even the arts. The result is a respectful, intellectual — and oftentimes fun — debate and discussion.
Our engaging and (not entirely predictable) guests analyze diverse topics with Zelizer and Wang to connect past events to our current political climate. Since 2016, Zelizer and Wang have offered contrasting views of a quantitative analysis with a qualitative historical overview.
Politics & Polls is produced weekly by Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
OUR HOSTS
Julian Zelizer has been among the pioneers in the revival of American political history. He is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and a CNN political analyst. He has written more than 900 op-eds, including his popular weekly column for CNN.com and The Atlantic. He became the distinguished senior fellow at the New York Historical Society in 2019, where he is writing a biography of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel for Yale University's Jewish Lives Series. He is the author and editor of more than 19 books including, “The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society,” the winner of the D.B. Hardeman Prize for the Best Book on Congress. In January 2019, Norton published his new book, co-authored with Kevin Kruse, “Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974.” In spring 2020, Penguin Press will publish his other book, “Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party.” He has received fellowships from the Brookings Institution, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation and New America.
Samuel Wang is a professor at Princeton University, appointed in neuroscience with affiliate appointments in the Program in Law and Public Affairs and the Center for Information Technology Policy. An alumnus of Caltech, where he received a B.S. with honors in physics, he went on to earn a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the Stanford University School of Medicine. He conducted postdoctoral research at Duke University Medical Center and at Bell Labs Lucent Technologies. He has also worked on science and education policy for the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources. He is noted for his application of data analytics and poll aggregation to American politics. He is leading an effort at the Princeton Gerrymandering Project to build a 50-state data resource for legislative-quality citizen redistricting. His work to define a state-level legal theory to limit partisan gerrymandering recently won Common Cause’s Gerrymandering Standard Writing Contest. His neuroscience research concerns how the brain learns from sensory experience in early life, adulthood and autism.
OUR TEAM
Egan Jimenez produces imagery for the show and is the visual design specialist at Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Egan earned his bachelor’s degree in visual communication from the University of the Philippines. Soon after graduation, Egan served as the video production specialist for Cunard Lines and other ocean liners, traveling around the world to capture stories through photography and videography. In 2013, Egan and a small team of creative partners founded Gamara Manila, a visual design and branding startup company, where he served as design lead.
Daniel Kearns is the show’s audio engineer and the broadcast engineer at Princeton’s Broadcast Center and has been involved in television and radio production for over 30 years. After completing his master’s degree, Dan went on to complete advanced certification in digital media at Ohio State and taught Advanced Television Production at Neumann University. He served as the technology specialist for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and produced and directed the visit of Pope Francis to the Cathedral Basilica in Philadelphia in 2015. In 2010, he founded Kearns Media Consulting and continues productions for several large non-profit, charity based groups and for the Univision and EWTN television networks.
B. Rose Huber is the show’s producer and is the communications manager and senior writer at Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Prior to coming to Princeton, she was the science writer at the University of Pittsburgh and, before that, the assistant director of public relations at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). She's also worked for non-profit organizations in Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh. Rose earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Baltimore and a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and English from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Bonelys Rosado is the show’s audio editor and is the media services specialist at Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Before coming to Princeton, Bonelys worked for eight years at Columbia University as a technical support specialist. Prior to that, he worked as a freelance sound technician and stagehand for live events in NYC. Bonelys attended the New York City College of Technology to study electrical engineering technology.
The show is/has been supported by production assistants: Hope Perry '24, Brillian Bao '20, Henry Barrett ’22, Sophie Helmers ’19 and Morgan C. Tucker.