Political Reality

📰 Reporting on extent to which 2025 US strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckglxwp5x03o

⚛️ Details about Iran’s uranium enriched to 60%: https://www.armscontrol.org/issue-briefs/2026-03/us-war-iran-new-and-lingering-nuclear-risks

📄 March 2026 Congressional report about Iran’s nuclear capabilities: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN12665

☢️ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reporting on Iran’s nuclear activities and uranium stockpiles: https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/iran/iaea-and-iran-iaea-board-reports

🛰️ Satellite imagery of the Feb. 28, 2026, school strike in Iran: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/world/middleeast/iran-school-us-strikes-naval-base.html

🚀 Evidence that the school was struck by a US Tomahawk cruise missile: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/08/world/middleeast/iran-minab-school-strike.html

📺 Reporter Jeremy Vine correcting himself about the dancing video: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tv/article-15616555/jeremy-vine-alan-partridge-iran-blunder-channel-5.html

🤖 Examples of AI-generated war videos and photos: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg8wvz427vo

🐦 Example of a “shallowfake” posted on X: https://x.com/TehranTimes79/status/2027766149862117731?

🎬 Examples of “hype” videos shared by the US government: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/07/trump-iran-hype-videos

🔍 BBC verify: https://www.bbc.com/news/bbcverify

Full info on https://www.patreon.com/posts/152180612

More about Seth & his work: https://www.sethmasket.com


Seth’s book Learning from Loss: The Democrats 2016-2020


Preview of Seth’s new book (coming summer 2026): The Elephants in the Room: How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders


Subscribe to his (excellent) Substack, Tusk


Follow him on Instagram and Bluesky (he’s @smotus most places)

Full Episode https://www.patreon.com/posts/can-we-vote-our-151099132

https://patreon.com/politicalreality

Further Reading & Resources on Voting Theory

📘 1. Kenneth Arrow's amazing 1951 book, Social Choice and Individual Values:
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300179316/social-choice-and-individual-values/

a. A good writeup of the basics of the math if you don't want to buy a book:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arrows-theorem/

🧠 2. Arrow's 1950 paper introducing the idea (this paper is magnificent and you simply must read it):
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/256963

a. Non-paywalled version:
https://www.stat.uchicago.edu/~lekheng/meetings/mathofranking/ref/arrow.pdf

🔄 3. A nice primer on Condorcet's Paradox:
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/14-75-political-economy-and-economic-development-fall-2012/a9fd8e5ab75a325016094e6bbe625b2a_MIT14_75F12_Lec12.pdf

a. Even more on the math of voting systems:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/voting-methods/

🗳️ 4. Early work on approval voting by Steve Brams, a leading thinker on it:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/approval-voting/7CE5DEEE235794B0B12F76ADAE621482

a. Video of Brams talking about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZiS3U7EG0M

b. Uh oh! It's a video from forever ago of Andrea interviewing Brams about approval voting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAlxoW8WLX4

🏛️ 5. Some prominent advocacy groups on voting system reform:

a. Approval voting:
https://electionscience.org/

b. Ranked-choice voting:
https://fairvote.org/

🎓 6. Political science professor Lindsey Cormack speaking (admittedly briefly in these clips) about some tradeoffs around Ranked-Choice Voting (sneak preview, she'll be a guest on the show in the not-so-distant future; her instagram @howtoraiseacitizen is also a great resource on civics, politics, and current events (e.g., the SAVE act; more on that soon, too)):

a. https://www.instagram.com/p/DLGXzYVMOyX/?hl=en

b. https://www.instagram.com/p/DLPkrogss5K/?hl=en

https://politicalrealitypodcast.com

Follow Tom:


Tom Pepinsky’s website with links to his research & books: https://tompepinsky.com


Tom’s blog: https://tompepinsky.com/blog


His substack: https://tompepinsky.substack.com/

Selected books and peer-reviewed works by Tom relevant to this episode:


Recent paper on authoritarianism: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13510347.2020.1775589


Recent paper on voting in authoritarian vs. democratic systems: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/voting-in-authoritarian-elections/1C066CD75F6F070930181135B288F632


Book on global challenges to democracy: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/global-challenges-to-democracy/C50D0AC769FF0AA2C62DA9337F2C03E6


Covid paper we briefly referenced: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0249596


Book based on his research on partisanship and Covid: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691218991/pandemic-politics

Selected essays by Tom relevant to this episode:


Preventing a slide into authoritarianism in the US: https://www.vox.com/politics/477317/donald-trumps-ego-democracy-authoritarianism


Crucial characteristics of fascism: https://tompepinsky.com/2017/01/03/berman-on-fascism/


An absolutely fantastic “mini syllabus” on how to make sense of the Trump administration through a comparative political science lens: https://tompepinsky.com/2016/12/21/comparative-politics-and-the-trump-administration/


US’s lost leadership in East Asia: https://eastasiaforum.org/2025/11/02/a-united-states-that-is-disintegrating-and-no-longer-a-leader-in-asia/


Life in authoritarian states: https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/9/14207302/authoritarian-states-boring-tolerable-fascism-trump

Working papers by Tom relevant to this episode:


Democratic backsliding: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5363315


Biased learning from elections: https://osf.io/preprints/osf/q9zpm_v2

Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism