Joseph started a new show. Here's why
And what Frank Luntz can teach every public affairs practitioner about why their messages aren’t landing.
For the last few months, I’ve been working on something alongside Craft Politics. It’s called Masters in Public Affairs, and I want to tell you about it.
The premise came from a frustration I’ve carried for years. Public affairs doesn’t have a shared curriculum. There’s no agreed-upon set of foundational texts. No canon. Lawyers have their core cases. Economists have their essential readings. MBAs have their strategy bibles. Public affairs practitioners? We improvise. We learn on the job, pick up frameworks from colleagues, absorb whatever books happen to cross our desks, and build our own mental models from scratch.
That’s fine when it works. But it means most of us have significant gaps in our foundations, and we don’t always know where those gaps are until we’re in the middle of a campaign wondering why our perfectly crafted message is landing wrong.
Masters in Public Affairs is my attempt to fix that. One book per episode. Deep dives, not summaries. I’m pulling out the durable ideas — the principles that hold regardless of which country you’re in, which party is in power, or which technology platform is dominant this year — and translating them into mental models practitioners can actually use.
The thesis behind the show is borrowed from elite athletics: the best performers work the fundamentals. They don’t chase tactics. They master the structures underneath. I think the same is true in public affairs, and I think the fundamentals are sitting in books that most of us haven’t read carefully enough.
Three episodes are out now. Lippmann’s Public Opinion. McRaney’s How Minds Change. And the one I want to walk you through today: Frank Luntz’s Words That Work.
Why I think this matters for Craft Politics listeners
If you’ve been listening to Craft Politics, you already care about the craft of public affairs. You’re already thinking about how to do this work better. Or maybe you're simply fascinated by it all. Either way, Masters in Public Affairs is the deeper layer underneath that. It’s where the foundational thinking lives.
Craft Politics covers the practice — the campaigns, the strategies, the conversations with people doing the work. Masters in Public Affairs covers the theory that makes the practice make sense. They’re complementary. One explains what’s happening now. The other explains the structures that have always been true.
I don’t expect every Craft Politics listener to want both. But if you’ve ever wondered why a message that should have worked didn’t, or why your perfectly logical argument bounced off an audience that seemed to agree with you in principle, the answer is probably sitting in one of these foundational books. That’s the gap Masters in Public Affairs is built to close.
The episode on Words That Work is out now. I’m cross-posting it to the Craft Politics feed this week so you can hear what the show sounds like. If it resonates, subscribe to Masters in Public Affairs wherever you get your podcasts. If it doesn’t, no hard feelings. Craft Politics isn’t going anywhere.
Pick your preferred podcast app:
Masters in Public Affairs is a new podcast and essay series building the canonical foundation for modern public affairs. New episodes published regularly. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.