Agree to Disagree? More Couples Willing to Clash on Faith Than Politics

Research shows Americans are much more likely to marry across religious lines than political ones.

Seth and Tracy Preminger of Chicago, Illinois, make for a rather unorthodox couple. Seth, 34, is Jewish; Tracy, 33, is Roman Catholic. Despite their different faiths, however, the couple shares a core set of principles. “We joked at the time when we were dating that we have the same beliefs and values, just a different God to get there,” remembers Seth. What might have been a more challenging divide for the interfaith Democrat couple to bridge? Politics. “Before I met Tracy,” says Seth, “I was talking to a Jewish Republican, and I was like: ‘I can’t deal with you.’”

The old maxim that one should never discuss politics or religion at the dinner table is well-intentioned advice, but it’s always been somewhat unrealistic. For one thing, those topics are two of the most thought-provoking ones that humans have ever devised for discussion, and checking them at the door seems an unnecessary act of conversational sabotage. But, perhaps more important, the maxim ignores that you have some say in whom you decide to sit down with at the dinner table — and for many that choice means selecting partners and friends who share similar views on religion and politics.

The nature of this self-segregation, however, is changing in some fascinating ways in the United States.

Banks have enjoyed decades of monopolistic control in Latin America. A growing band of new digital banks is now threatening their hegemony.

Gabriela Franco clutches her phone, frustrated. Her bank in São Paulo is on the other end. She needs to wire money right away to a separate account at her bank. But the representative is telling her she has “to be there — like, physically — at the bank in São Paulo to approve the transfer.”

The thing is, Franco works and lives in Mexico City, and getting to her São Paulo branch in an hour is, well, impossible. The answer to her problems may instead lie in a wave of alternative banking solutions now emerging across Latin America.

The Good Place actress uses her soapbox to rewrite the rules.

The world first meets The Good Place’s Tahani Al-Jamil moments after her death. The actress who plays her credits her own reclaimed self to narrowly escaping a trip to the afterlife. At age 17, Jameela Jamil was hit by a car while running across the street. She was only fleeing a bee that day — but Jamil already knew well how to escape pain.

Jamil survived but was bedridden for a year. In near solitude, she spent her waking hours consuming the daytime TV shows that served as her education in acting. The characters and their stories helped Jamil, now 33, process childhood trauma for the first time. “[Daytime TV] helped me identify the evils in my life and start planning how to get away from them,” Jamil told Lewis Howes in a recent podcast interview.