Welcome to the tenth episode of our podcast, Thanks for Listening! What’s the most partisan group in the U.S. today? If you answered the United States Congress, you’ve got company. Recent polling puts Congress’s disapproval rating among Americans at 71%, with 60% ranking partisan bickering, gridlock, and caring about politics more than the country as their top complaints about Congress. Our guest is working

Our guest, Liz Joyner of The Village Square, has been wrestling with questions around bridging the divide around racial justice and the very nature of dialogue. She shares her experience and perspective borne of fifteen years helping people engage across their differences, not by helping people agree, but by helping them to disagree, and keep talking anyway. She describes ongoing and upcoming initiatives from The Village Square to convene difficult conversations about race—and how even well-intentioned conversations all too often devolve into a toxic “us vs. them” dynamic, what she calls “the woodchipper of partisanship.”

Welcome to the eighth episode of our podcast, Thanks for Listening! Our guest, Pearce Godwin, founded and now leads the Listen First Project, and has been steadily building the Listen First Coalition—some 300+ member organizations all working to bridge divides and bring people in this country back together again. Pearce shares his insight about the challenges of coalition–building, the

Welcome to the seventh episode of our podcast, Thanks for Listening! This episode explores the challenges inherent in online political engagement. While some of us may have had positive experiences connecting with others around political issues online, we also have seen online spaces become unhelpful, potentially harmful echo chambers for what we already believe, rather than

Welcome to the sixth episode of our podcast, Thanks for Listening! What can communities do to bridge divides and address simmering tensions before they boil over? Our guests on this episode, Becky Monroe and Bill Froelich, ask this question each day in their work at the Divided Community Project, based at the Moritz College of Law

Last time on Thanks for Listening we examined divides – real and imagined – in Kentucky coal country.  In this episode, we explore a project that connected folks from Letcher County, Kentucky, with residents of Leverett, Massachusetts.  After the 2016 election, when Leverett voted 86 percent for Clinton and Letcher County went 80 percent for

On July 6, 2016, Philando Castile was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. In the weeks and months that followed, systemic issues that had been present below the surface in Falcon Heights and surrounding cities erupted into the open. The atmosphere was one of rage, pain,