Destructive conflict aims to destroy the other side. But constructive conflict can be a force for good.
In this episode we learn how good conflict helps move people beyond polarization, slogans, and angry tweets to a place where they can connect and grow— even as they strongly disagree. Hélène Biandudi Hofer says that when we have the vocabulary and basic skills to investigate conflict with curiosity, it can change everything.
Journalists Hélène Biandudi Hofer and Amanda Ripley co-founded Good Conflict, which works with news organizations, non-profits, elected officials, educators, religious leaders, and others to lean into conflict in a constructive, productive way. Hélène developed and managed the Solutions Journalism Network’s Complicating the Narratives project. She trained more than a thousand journalists across 125 newsrooms throughout the world.
Read moreAlmost everyone has an opinion about the impact of social media on political polarization. Most of us believe that Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, YouTube and other sites have made our civic life more angry and divided. But how much of this is true? Are consumers as much to blame as the platforms themselves?
15 years ago, in the very early days of social media, many Americans had a much more positive view of this new technology. It was bringing friends and families together, opening up new sources of information, and that was viewed as a good thing.
We discuss the surprising findings of research into social media and polarization with Professor Chris Bail, founder of the Polarization Lab at Duke University. He’s the author of the 2021 book, “Breaking The Social Media Prism.” Bail studies political tribalism, extremism, and social psychology using data from social media and research from computational social science.
Read moreHave you ever been asked by a political opponent to describe what's wrong or weak about your own side's arguments? That's what Richard and Jim do here. This episode could have been ripped from a Braver Angels training seminar, but to our knowledge, no other podcast has tried this before.
Liberal-leaning Richard takes on three hot topics, picked by Jim, where the left is wrong. Jim does the same thing for his side, discussing three examples picked by Richard.
The ground rules are simple: No "your-side-ism". When describing the failings of their own side neither host was allowed to criticize their opponents. If they do, a loud bell rings. Listen to find out how many times the darn thing goes off!
Read moreWhy is American politics so dysfunctional? Is it because we are too polarized or too fragmented? Throughout this fall we will be exploring different aspects of polarization— arguably the most important threat to both effective governance and a stable democracy.
This episode includes an edited recording of a lively conversation from the podcast, "Politics In Question", between Rick Pildes, Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU School of Law, and political scientist Lee Drutman, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation.
Lee has been a guest on several previous episodes of "How Do We Fix It?". Author of the book, "Breaking the Two Party Doomloop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America", Lee is known as an advocate for proportional representation with ranked-choice voting, arguing that it would reduce political polarization and minimize the risks of democratic backsliding.
Read moreToxic polarization is "the problem that eats all other problems... It's the sludge at the base of everything else," our guest Mónica Guzmán tells us. In this really useful repeat episode from 2022, we learn how to fight back against the confusion and heartbreak of living with rigid divides.
This show is a curtain raiser for a series we are doing this fall with funding from Solutions Journalism Network. We will be examining threats to our society from polarization and recent efforts to build a national movement to bridge divides.
Monica is a bridge builder and author of the highly-praised book "I Never Thought Of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times". She serves as a Senior Fellow for Public Practice at the national depolarization organization, Braver Angels.
Read moreWhy aren’t Democrats doing much better in elections for Congress and also in state races? We explore several reasons. One is that Democrats have been losing the support of many black, white and hispanic working class voters. We heard a forceful argument about that in "How Do We Fix It?" episode #389 with Ruy Teixeira.
In this show we expand the argument and look at another group of voters often ignored by Democratic party leaders— Christians and especially Catholics who are among the largest group of swing voters.
This is a shared podcast with "Talkin' Politics and Religion Without Killin' Each Other". Their show and ours are members of the Democracy Group podcast network, Our guest is Lanae Erickson, Senior Vice President at Third Way, a center-left think tank that champions pragmatic liberal ideas. She spoke earlier this year with Talkin' Politics and Religion's host, Corey Nathan. Thank you, Corey, for giving us permission to share an edited version of a rich and thoughtful conversation.
Read moreGlobalization, technology, devastating impacts from the foreclosure crisis and the opioid addiction have wreaked havoc on communities left behind by the modern economy. Some of these discarded places are rural. Others are cities or suburbs. Some vote blue, others red. Some are the most diverse communities in America, while others are nearly all white, all Latino, or all Black.
In this episode we visit four cities and towns with deep poverty and gutted public services— where entire communities are struggling to hold on.
Our guest is Michelle Wilde Anderson, a professor of property, local government and environmental justice at Stanford Law School. Her recent book is "The Fight to Save the Town: Reimagining Discarded America".
Read moreWhy do we connect emotionally with some places and not others? Why does that matter? What does loving the place you live in have to do with healing the partisan divide? We explore these questions and hear about solutions from author, researcher and speaker Peter Kageyama.
This shared episode is an edited version of a podcast released earlier this year by "Village Squarecast". Our show includes extracts from a speech delivered at a special meeting of The Village Square in Tallahassee, Florida.
Peter Kageyama is the author of For the Love of Cities: The Love Affair Between People and Their Places, the follow up, Love Where You Live: Creating Emotionally Engaging Places and his latest, The Emotional Infrastructure of Places. He loves cities and is the former President of Creative Tampa Bay, a grassroots community change organization and the co-founder of the Creative Cities Summit, an interdisciplinary conference that brings citizens and practitioners together around the big idea of ‘the city.’
Read moreAmerican politics are evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. But our guest argues that it doesn't have to be this way. He tells fellow Democrats: "Given the problems the Republicans have, why aren't you beating the hell out of these people?"
Political scientist and author Ruy Teixeira says that recent election results have been a lost opportunity as the left pursued identity politics instead of focusing on class. While more white college-educated voters have abandoned the Republicans in the past decade, Democrats have lost ground among white and hispanic working class voters.
"That's a fundamental question that Democrats should be confronting, but don't," he tells us.
Ruy Teixeira is among America's best-known political thinkers. He's a senior fellow at The American Enterprise Institute, where he writes and does research about changing party coalitions and the future of electoral politics. He calls himself a social democrat.
Read moreEver since the 2008 financial crisis and recession, central bankers and most economists have agreed that it's good to keep interest rates as low as possible. Making it easy to borrow money very cheaply helps the economy recover from recessions and the COVID pandemic.
But what if very cheap money has unintended consequences such as asset bubbles and bank failures, and benefits the haves much more than the have-nots of society?
Our guest is financial analyst, journalist, and historian Edward Chancellor, author of the new book, "The Price of Time, The Real Story of Interest". Edward specializes in financial crises— bubbles, crashes and panics. He uses examples from history to challenge conventional wisdom about near-zero interest rates, and walks though his arguments in a relatable way.
Read more"America is rigidly divided between red and blue." That's what we're constantly being told by pundits, politicians and media outlets, both left and right.
But what if that wasn't quite true?
On a surprisingly large number of issues, Americans agree on the broad outlines of public policy. Author, conflict mediator, and social entrepreneur, Bill Shireman makes the case that the middle 70% of the public should have a much greater say in who gets elected to make laws and decide policy.
"All it takes is a small number of folks who are aware of how we're being gamed to build a bridge between the political left and right, Bill says. "We need a relatively small percentage of voters who will not divide the way we are triggered to divide." Bill argues that the media and political industry make money and gain power by dividing Americans and making us mad at the other side.
Read moreGenerative Artificial Intelligence has the power to transform lives and change our jobs. In this episode, we discuss the potential for good and bad from large, creative AI models such as ChatGPT.
Our guest is Nathanael Fast, who serves as Director of the Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making and Co-Director of the Psychology of Technology Institute. Professor Fast teaches in the MBA, Ph.D., and Executive Education programs at USC Marshall in Los Angeles.
ChatGPT reached over 100 million active users within two months of its release. Consumers have used it to write essays, take tests, crack jokes and write poetry in response to questions or prompts. We raise the questions we need to ask about rapidly changing forms of artificial intelligence. Should we be scared or excited… or both?
Read moreThe Coronation of King Charles III promises to be very big on pomp and circumstance, but it may also play a leading role in healing divisions between post-Brexit Britain and the European Union. Leading EU officials will be in attendance at Westminster Abbey.
This podcast shares a personal perspective on some of the momentous changes in the UK over recent years, and includes comparisons between the hot topics on both sides of The Atlantic. Our co-host Richard last lived in London in the 1970's and 80's. During late March and April he returned, spending a month there.
Richard tells us that forty years ago London was "darker, smellier, poorer, louder and less orderly than the great city of today." He shares examples that illustrate this shift, as well as discussing the great impact of Brexit on the UK economy and politics.
Jim and Richard examine the special relationship between the US and UK plus similarities and differences in debates over cancel culture, populism, immigration and abortion.
Read moreThe news media and journalists themselves are faced with a crisis of confidence and trust. The internet broke the old business model of locally-based newspaper reporting and replaced it with national opinion journalism written by and for well-educated metropolitan elites.
Our guest is Nikki Usher, an Associate Professor at the University of San Diego, who studies journalism, politics, tech, and power. Nikki's recent book is "News For The Rich, White and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism".
In our conversation we look at the loss of place in American journalism, the gap between "news haves and have-nots", and how technology can be used to challenge old journalistic models and lead to new ways of delivering news to audiences that have been poorly served in the past.
Read moreIn much of the country local news has collapsed, threatening civic pride and a sense of community for countless towns and cities. This dramatic change has also deepened America's divides.
As our guest, journalist and public policy researcher Anna Brugmann explains in this episode, "the internet disrupted the local journalism model". Newspaper advertising revenue fell 80% since 2000. Thousands of local and regional publications closed. Most surviving newsrooms faced drastic cutbacks. Coverage of all kinds of local events— from city hall, school board meetings and football games to local businesses and zoning decisions — disappeared.
First, Craigslist displaced print-based classified ads. Then Google, Facebook and other online firms became the main source of consumer advertising. We discuss the impact on local journalism. In recent decades, the news we read and listen to has largely shifted from local reporting to often highly polarizing national opinion journalism.
Read moreRising interest rates and the end of easy money were two factors in the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and a subsequent stock market run on shares of regional banks. Questions were raised about the safety of the entire U.S. banking industry.
We examine risk in banking, investing and the broader economy.
Federal regulators faced harsh criticism for the latest bank failures. Progressives blamed politicians who eased regulations on medium-sized and small banks. Some on the right claimed that DEI — Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — distracted SVB from focusing on risk management.
Our guest is economist and risk expert Allison Schrager, author of "An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk". She also writes frequently for Bloomberg Opinion and City Journal.
This episode looks at the causes of the recent bank panic and the current outlook for the financial industry.
Read moreThe people of Ukraine are facing down a military giant. Their unity and bravery in the bloody, cruel year since the Russia invasion are an inspiration to the rest of the world.
Instead of talking about politics or the state of the war, we consider the battlefield of ideas. Above all this show is an attempt to put the war into context: What’s at stake for Western democracy, and what space does Ukraine fit in our history?
We speak again with Marci Shore, professor of European cultural & intellectual history at Yale University. She first appeared on "How Do We Fix It?" a year ago. In 2018 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship for her current book project, a history of phenomenology in East-Central Europe, tentatively titled “Eyeglasses Floating in Space: Central European Encounters That Came about While Searching for Truth.” Her most recent book is “The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution”. This show is a companion piece to episode #380 with Jacob Mchangama.
Read moreBy any measure, this has been a momentous week for global politics. President Biden’s surprise trip to Kyiv, his “freedom” speech in Warsaw, the visit of China’s top diplomat to Moscow, and Vladimir Putin’s decision to suspend Russian participation in the last remaining nuclear arms treaty with the U.S. are all signs of deepening big-power tensions.
This coincides with the first anniversary of the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War Two. In the early hours of February 24 last year, Putin’s tanks rolled across Ukraine’s borders.
Our podcast guest is well-known human rights advocate, Jacob Mchangama, CEO of the Danish think tank Justitia, and author of the recent book, “Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media”. We discuss the Ukraine war's broader implications for fundamental values that are a vital part of the growing struggle between the West autocratic powers.
Read moreThe last time the U.S. faced a major showdown over the debt-ceiling was a decade ago. Much like today, House Republicans insisted on spending cuts before they would vote to raise the amount of money the government could borrow. Then-President Obama and now President Biden said they would not negotiate.
Who will blink first?
Nearly all economists and financial experts say that a debt default would have extremely serious consequences for the everyday economy and America's place in the world.
We look at the massive U.S. debt mountain, who has leverage in the current game of chicken, and discuss why both political parties are so reluctant to get serious about the debt. Our guest, fixed income specialist and economist, Chris Low of FHN Financial comes up with potential fixes.
Read moreSixty years ago in his most famous speech, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of his vision of an America transformed. "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," he said.
Was this an argument for a color-blind society, or should racism be thought of as structural and systematic? Ibram X. Khendi, author of the best-selling book, "How To Be An AntiRacist", argues that "the most threatening racist movement" is the drive for race-neutrality. Our guest, Bion Bartning, argues that instead of emphasizing our common humanity, the approach of Kendhi and others lumps people into simplistic racial groupings.
Bartning founded the non-profit group, The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). In its mission statement, FAIR calls for "advancing civil rights and liberties for all Americans, and promoting a common culture based on fairness, understanding and humanity."
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