Brain Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. To end the show today, we're going to open up the phones on how the 2024 election and to some extent our politics in general over the last decade, let's say the whole Trump era, has affected your relationships. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692 but we definitely want to know the 2024 post-election version of this conversation that we've definitely been having since around 2015. Now, how is the political divide in the Trump era affecting your family relationships, your friend relationships, your neighbor relationships, your relationships at work now that this election has taken place? Anything yet to report? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Here's just a quick scan of some recent headlines from the New Yorker. The election is dividing husbands and wives across America. From the New York Times, United by Love, Divided by Politics, and from PinkNews, JD Vance Admits He's lost friends over Donald Trump support. How is the 2024 election affecting any of your relationships? Have you lost a relationship or a friend over your support or their support of one candidate or the other? 212-433-WNYC. 433-9692.

What may be a new wrinkle for us in this conversation? It does seem like we have it every year going into Thanksgiving. That's definitely one of the things that you can talk about is have you changed any Thanksgiving plans? I know one person who let us know that they already have. They just can't bear to be with their, in their case, Trump-voting relatives at Thanksgiving this year. We definitely can hear about that, but a new wrinkle as we've been talking about the electoral map and how many people even in New York City who didn't vote for Trump before did this year.

Is the vibe in your building if you live in an apartment building or the vibe on your block if you live in a house any different than it was before Election Day or before this election season or with your kids or what about your kids and their experiences with their peers at school? Talk about the 2024 version of how election polarization is affecting your relationships in any of your milieu. 212-433-WNYC. Call or text 212-433-9692 and we'll take your calls right after this. Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your calls on the 2024 version of how polarization over Trump is affecting your relationships at work, at home, in your neighborhood, looking to Thanksgiving at school for you or your kids. Ted On Staten Island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ted.

Ted: Hi. Can you hear okay?

Brain Lehrer: I can. Hi.

Ted: Hi. As I was telling your screener, I've noticed a shift in the relationship with my siblings. We're all spread out across the country, but we meet on Zoom every Sunday night. This past week, the four of us that are on the Democratic side were chatting before the fifth sibling got on the line. It was all about politics and bemoaning what had happened, et cetera. Of course, we had to stop immediately as soon as the Republican sibling got on the line. Not that there wasn't this division before, but it feels like it's more pronounced, and not that there's not love on all sides, but you know what I'm saying.

Brain Lehrer: Yes. Is there a way to work through it, I wonder, and include some sort of respectful airing of your differences, you know what I mean?

Ted: Yes. We've done some of that on the calls, and I think I need to do a little bit more of it one-on-one with my Republican sister. Another interesting aspect of this is that my brother, who's a Democrat, is married to a Republican and she's more easy to talk to about it than my biological sibling is. So I don't know, that's off-topic, but yes, I think you're right that more dialogue would be helpful even though it's tough to get through.

Brain Lehrer: Yes. Ted, thanks. It's not easy, right? A lot of families decide, no, we're just not going to talk about that, and sometimes that is the best solution. Luthra at the JFK taxi stand at the airport. Hi.

Luthra: Yes, hi. Good morning. How are you, Brian? I'm the taxi driver. Yesterday the passenger told me, ''Do you vote?'' I told them true, I vote for Democrat, but she got angry at me. The election is over. Why the passenger acts to the drivers, I don't know. If I say Republican, she's Democrat, she's going to take it out on me anyway.

Brain Lehrer: Right.

Luthra: You know what I mean?

Brain Lehrer: I know. Why would she ask if she didn't want to respectfully engage? What did she say? How did she admonish you, if you remember her words?

Luthra: Admonish me on the tip.

Brain Lehrer: Oh, that's terrible.

Luthra: I know she got angry but it's okay. The tip is not important but I recognize the face. She got angry at me.

Brain Lehrer: Do you have any advice then for your fellow drivers out there when it comes to talking politics or not with your passengers?

Luthra: No. I will say to the passenger the election is over. Don't tell to the driver. If the driver say, ''I vote for Trump,'' they're going to get angry. Maybe she's a Democrat. If I vote for Harris for Democrat, she's Republican, she's going to angry anyway. Please don't ask the driver. The election is over.

Brain Lehrer: Luthra, thank you. Good luck out there. Call us again. All right, you hear that? Next time you call an Uber or a Lyft or hail a yellow cab or whatever you do, leave the driver alone about politics. At least that's what Luthra says. Molly in Davidson, North Carolina, you're on WNYC. Hi, Molly.

Molly: Hello. Very nice to meet you via this air radio.

Brain Lehrer: Same here.

Molly: Yes. I was talking to your screener about some really disheartening conversations I've had with people that feel like friends, that have been good friends that I've gotten really close to actually over the last four to eight years. Then I text them to check in after the election, thinking we're just doing a mutual care thing and then having them really starting to go off on the Dems did this wrong. They care too much about trans people. They care too much about queer people. I'm like, ''You know that that's my family, right?'' Referring me to really transphobic kinds of podcasts and things that they're listening to.

Not the most transphobic, those are not Trump voters, but to people who are doing the like, ''I'm just asking questions,'' but ignoring mountains of evidence about what we know is important for trans kids and then just totally shutting down when you present them with-- even in the nicest way you can. I am really good at being nice to people and getting people hopefully to try to listen to me. That's I feel like one of my skills and I can't get through. It just feels like if we can't talk to our good friends who we have long histories with about difficult things like this when emotions run high, it just feels hard to be optimistic.

Brain Lehrer: I've heard, and I hear how meaningful this is to you personally. It's obvious in your voice. How much of it was-- Because we've definitely heard this in well-meaning critique. Harris failed to engage with those commercials that ran a million times with the clip of her saying, ''We should pay for transgender surgery for incarcerated people.'' That she should have engaged with that and explain, when is this appropriate? Or the ''Save women's sports,'' and talked about the complexity of the issue of gender transition and competitive sports and kids especially.

If there are any complexities there, that this shouldn't go into like the clip we played earlier of Vivek Ramaswamy, who Trump is now appointing to a big position, who says there are only two genders, and that's a basic American ideal, which is hate speech. Are they making that distinction?

Molly: I think that's the same thing. It's the same problem. It doesn't matter how much she engaged with it. It wouldn't matter how many facts she presented. I'm a developmental psychologist. I can tell you that the field of psychology says there is no question whatsoever about the fact that kids who are questioning their gender need support from their families. This is agreed upon and it doesn't matter how many times we say it. People don't want to hear it. I don't think they're going to hear it, and I wish that weren't true, but that's where I feel like we are.

Brain Lehrer: Molly, thank you. Please call us again. Constance in Redding, Connecticut. You're on WNYC. Hi, Constance.

Constance: Hello, darling. I grew up in Manhattan in an apartment building on the Upper West Side. I remember you used to be able to have a civil discourse with people you disagreed with, and that is out the window now. Nobody seems to be able to discuss things without a certain amount of hatred and nastiness.

Brain Lehrer: How is it playing out for you? Where have you run into it for yourself recently?

Constance: Well, my husband and I go to a local bar, like Cheers, and I try to stay out of the conversation a lot, but I notice that a lot of people just-- You bring something up and they're like, ''Ah.'' It's like, wait a minute. Why are you so anti whatever I'm saying? I'm listening to you. I want to hear what your argument is. I want to hear what you have to say. They just shut it down.

Brian Lehrer: Constance, keep--

Constance: It's just like there's no ability for people to have a civil discourse anymore.

Brain Lehrer: Keep calling us, Constance. Thank you very much. I think we have time for one more, maybe two. Bratt in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bratt.

Bratt: Hi, Brian.

Brain Lehrer: What you got?

Bratt: Share it?

Brain Lehrer: Yes.

Bratt: With my family, we all agree with politics, but it just seems like with the election results, everything has very quickly reverted back to Trump's first term where now it's the constant news cycle. I'm constantly being updated on everything. I don't get a moment to just be in the here and now. I'm trying to remind my family that it's not the way we want it to go, but there's still a couple months until the inauguration. Let's get through the holidays. Let's just focus on the good things we have rather than just back to this constantly checking Twitter, constantly checking news, constantly sending each other things.

Brain Lehrer: 10 seconds. You're going to try to put any guardrails on the Thanksgiving experience.

Bratt: That's not really my role within the family. I'll try, but I'm the middle child, so I just have to go with, go with the flow.

Brain Lehrer: The middle child, the classic peacemaker. There you are, Bratt. Thank you very much for finishing us off. Not the last call-in we're going to have like this this holiday season, I have a feeling. Thanks, everybody, for today. That's the Brian Lehrer show, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, Esperanza Rosenbaum, and

Zach Gottehrer-Cohen, who edits our daily politics podcast. Andres Pacheco-Giron was our intern today. Megan Ryan, the head of Live Radio, Juliana Fonda, and Milton Ruiz at the audio controls.

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