Village SquareCast
108 episodes - English - Latest episode: 16 days ago -Village SquareCast is the podcast your mother warned you about. We talk politics, religion and race — across color, creed and ideology — and we do it like the partners in democracy that we really ought to be.
At The Village Square, we've had hundreds of conversations with tens of thousands of people — and now we bring you our favorites of these conversations via podcast. We talk in bars, we talk in churches, we talk across a hundred continuous tables in the middle of a street downtown. And through all this talking, we've discovered something truly remarkable — people are hard to hate close up.
Oh, and we really think civics ought not to be boring. We hope you'll join us.
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Episodes
UNUM Series: The Soul of Civility
April 11, 2024 11:00 - 1 hour - 132 MB“Fragile Neighborhoods is an essential and engaging read for everyone who wants to better understand the challenges facing our cities, towns and our nation at large.” Richard Florida – Bestselling Author of “The Rise of the Creative Class” Find the program online here: https://tlh.villagesquare.us/event/soul-of-civility/ While our special guest Alexandra O. Hudson, author of “The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves,” finds the challenges to civility today ...
Fragile Neighborhoods with Dr. Seth Kaplan
March 28, 2024 11:00 - 1 hour - 116 MB“Fragile Neighborhoods is an essential and engaging read for everyone who wants to better understand the challenges facing our cities, towns and our nation at large.” Richard Florida – Bestselling Author of “The Rise of the Creative Class” Find the full program online here — https://tlh.villagesquare.us/event/fragile-neighborhoods/ As we continue our “Join or Die” year—exploring how we build lives of connection and belonging inside a polarized America—we’d be remiss if we didn’t turn ou...
God Squad: Everyone is Canceled!
March 14, 2024 11:00 - 1 hour - 92.8 MBFind the full program online here — and meet The God Squad: https://tlh.villagesquare.us/event/canceled/. We’re living in a time when a bad choice of words (much less a deeply held countercultural opinion) can tank your career, in a media environment where some are doing a near-professional job of elevating being offensive to an art form—almost begging to be “canceled” by those who care about maintaining at least a kindergarten-level decorum. Our culture wars have blinded us—gone are the ...
Dr. Jonathan Haidt | After Babel: "The Fragmentation of Everything"
February 29, 2024 12:00 - 1 hour - 141 MBWe wanted you wonderful SquareCast listeners to know that we didn't plan for this episode to drop on Leap Day and we didn't plan on it being (we kid you not) Episode 100. But both things just happened. At the very least, we think that's a sign that you really ought to listen. Were we "the universe has a plan" maximalists, though, we'd say it means you need to quit your day job and follow bridge builders like Jon Haidt and The Village Square around like Jack Kerouac groupies. You pick. Her...
The Big Sort with Bill Bishop
February 16, 2024 12:00 - 1 hour - 96.2 MBPulitzer Prize finalist journalist Bill Bishop joins The Village Square for Dinner at the Square. (See photos from the event here.) Turns out Americans have been sorting ourselves in every aspect of our lives – in the news we watch, the books we read, the churches we attend, even the neighborhoods we live in. Our special guest Pulitzer Prize finalist journalist Bill Bishop stumbled on this worrisome trend when he was doing research on an unrelated topic. That means that we’re increasingly...
Being Human in Divided Times: A fireside chat with Village Square founder Liz Joyner
February 02, 2024 14:17 - 1 hour - 119 MBIn this episode of SquareCast Village Square Founder & CEO Liz Joyner let Village SquareCast Corey Nathan talk her into being the guest in an episode. It’s hard to get away from the doom scroll that typifies our life and times right now — we’re clobbered with toxic sludge when we turn on the news, catch up with friends on social media or just try to live life without someone forcing us to choose whether we’re one of “us” or one of “them.” The signs of our difficulties are all around us an...
Rachel Brown: The Roots of Belonging & The Risks of Othering
January 18, 2024 12:00 - 1 hour - 134 MBIn this episode of SquareCast we're joined by the extraordinary Rachel Brown, the Founder of Over Zero—named in reference to the “zero sum game” that exists in sporting events, but becomes dangerous when it overtakes a society, as it has ours. Over Zero was founded to prevent identity-based violence and other forms of group-targeted harm around the world—and here at home. Rachel is one of the wisest, steadiest voices of our time in guiding us away from dangerous (but human) reactions, and to...
Stephen P. Kiernan: Authentic Patriotism
January 04, 2024 12:52 - 51 minutes - 71.1 MBIn this age of deep and growing civic divisions, perhaps it's time to revise the comic strip Pogo's iteration of U.S. Navy Master Commandant Oliver Perry's quote from the War of 1812: "We have met the enemy and it is us." From our special Dinner at the Square guest Stephen Kiernan's masterpiece book Authentic Patriotism: “The problems America faces are not going to be solved by either political party, nor are they exclusively the fault of any political party. I am reminded of the line in...
God Squad: Ending the Cycle of Mean
December 07, 2023 12:00 - 1 hour - 91.6 MBAmericans are sad and lonely, and we don’t feel like we belong. With depression and “deaths of despair” on the rise, over half of us say that no one knows us well—a truly alarming statistic that doesn’t bode well for our future. As if matters weren’t bad enough, we’re not just sad and alone—we’re becoming more mean to each other, and it’s likely part of the same cycle of pain. With fewer human connections in our lives, more of us seek belonging in our venally angry civic life, so this crisis...
God Squad: Shut Up and (Don't) Sing
November 09, 2023 12:00 - 1 hour - 90.4 MBWith our culture wars at a full rolling boil, apparently all it takes to send our enmity over the edge is…a good old-fashioned country song?? The furor over Jason Aldean’s “Try That in A Small Town” (and then there’s Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond”) is reminiscent of the old furor over The Dixie Chicks—only the “sides” have switched up. As The Village Square embarks on a pluralism project to build a hometown where everyone belongs, it’s possible that “round here we take care...
Dr. Todd Rose | Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions
October 26, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 116 MBAt the core of the deep societal divisions we navigate every day is an assumption that we share little with “those people” with whom we share a country—a belief that leaves us on dangerous ground as a nation. But author and entrepreneur Dr. Todd Rose says we’ve got that all wrong. According to Dr. Rose, not only do we agree more often than we think but we’re making terrible assumptions about what the people on our own side of the aisle think—then acting on those incorrect assumptions in a wa...
Robert Putnam & Shaylyn Romney Garrett | Join or Die: Why you should join a club — and why the fate of America depends on it
October 12, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 133 MB“Our national myths often exaggerate the role of the individual heroes and understate the importance of collective effort. —Robert Putnam This is when you meet a living legend and get the benefit of his thinking on the topic he’s been brilliantly, prophetically right about for more than three decades: the deterioration of our connectedness with each other across almost every demographic and every aspect of our lives—our loss of social capital. And yet here we are, painfully and tragically...
The Way Out: Overcoming Toxic Polarization, with Dr. Peter T. Coleman
September 28, 2023 11:59 - 1 hour - 123 MB“A remarkable combination of scientific insight, practical guidance, and grounded hope.” —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of THINK AGAIN Toxic polarization and conflict is exhausting. Whether it’s in your family, at work or in our perpetually acrimonious civic life, it’s like a suitcase full of big ole rocks we lug around while we try to get the usual tasks of life-y-ness done. Our UNUM journey has brought us thinkers and leaders from sea to shining sea, but now we’re tur...
TP&R Feed Drop | Tim Keller and Michael Gerson, A Tribute with Pete Wehner and Jonathan Rauch
August 31, 2023 11:00 - 25 minutes - 34.4 MBThe Village Square is truly delighted to offer you a feed drop episode of Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other—a podcast we loved so much, we convinced its host to also be our host (that's fandom). Along with Village SquareCast, TP&R is also a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it. Listen to TP&R Here. This episode, Tim Keller and Michael Gerson, A Tribute with Pet...
When the People Decide Feed Drop | Libraries as civic spaces
August 17, 2023 11:00 - 26 minutes - 36 MBThe Village Square is truly delighted to offer you a feed drop episode of When The People Decide, a podcast about how everyday people are shaping democracy. Along with Village SquareCast, they're a member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it. Listen to When The People Decide Here. This episode, Libraries as civic spaces is thoroughly enchanting to us—featuring special guests Shamichael Hallman ...
How Do We Fix It Feed Drop | The Middle 70%. In This Together: Bill Shireman
July 20, 2023 14:51 - 31 minutes - 43.4 MBThe Village Square is truly delighted to offer you a feed drop episode of the "How Do We Fix It?" podcast, from the coolest podcast hosting dynamic duo we know and love, Richard Davies and Jim Meigs. These two have real fun together and with their guests—and we all get to listen. This episode of How Do We Fix It? "The Middle 70%: In This Together" features Bill Shireman, host of the podcast "A Moment of BS Bill Shireman Disrupts the Dividers". President of Future 500, where he invites Gr...
Let's Find Common Ground Feed Drop | Patriotism: Pride, Race and Reckoning
July 06, 2023 11:00 - 31 minutes - 43.2 MBThe Village Square is truly delighted to offer you a feed drop episode of the "Let's Find Common Ground" podcast, from the extraordinary national leader in bridging divides Common Ground Committee. (Shout out to the co-founders Bruce Bond and Erik Olsen. We're groupie fans.) Meet them: With polarization dominating public discourse, can we find a path back to the common good? Tune in as journalists Richard Davies and Ashley Milne-Tyte explore diverse solutions to today’s most urgent issu...
Democracy Works Feed Drop: Separating News From Noise
June 22, 2023 11:00 - 49 minutes - 68.3 MBThe Village Square is truly delighted to offer you an episode of one of the best podcasts in the democracy space—Democracy Works. Meet them: The Democracy Works podcast seeks to answer that question by examining a different aspect of democratic life each week — from voting to criminal justice to the free press and everything in between. We interview experts who study democracy, as well as people who are out there doing the hard work of democracy day in and day out. This episode of De...
TP&R Feed Drop: Bob Cusack, Editor in Chief at THE HILL
June 08, 2023 11:00 - 59 minutes - 82.3 MBThe Village Square is truly delighted to offer our very favorite listeners (you) this feed drop of one of our very favorite podcasts (that isn't Village SquareCast)—Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other—with its host the one and only Corey Nathan. (Corey just happens to also be our co-host too we like him so much.) In this episode of TP&R Corey interviews Bob Cusack of THE HILL. We hope if you love Corey as much as we do you'll hop on over to listen to more and subscribe....
A Braver Story: The Braver Angels Story of American Citizenship
May 25, 2023 11:33 - 1 hour - 131 MBThe occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. —Abraham Lincoln. This episodes tells the story of one group of people who have risen. Built by patriotic volunteers, Braver Angels is a national movement to bridge the partisan divide, equally balanced between conservatives and progressives at every level of leadership. They work in communities, on college campuses, in the media, and in the halls of political power. We’ll offer up a behind the scenes view of...
God Squad: Political Football, Inc.
May 11, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 93.4 MBIs political branding of everything really good for anyone? These days politicians aren’t the only ones who have to state their opinion on every single political disagreement du jour. It seems like practically every religious, nonprofit and for-profit company has to do the same, with everyone from mom-and-pop operations to Fortune 500 companies forced to run the gauntlet through our cold civil war. Are you “us” or are you “them”? We’ll talk about just how advisable this situation is and if...
Created Equal | Walking Up Hill Both Ways: Black Women & The Fight for Equality
April 27, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 91.7 MBThroughout American history, Black women have been expected to serve and support others. Now, what should be done to support Black women? Despite Black women being the anchor for their families, networks, and community, they continue to be disregarded for economic opportunities, dismissed in health care, and deprioritized in society. Black women in America have historically faced an intersectional disadvantage due to both race and gender discrimination, and these challenges continue to per...
Broken News with Chris Stirewalt
April 13, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 120 MBDon’t miss this warm, funny professional’s guided tour of an industry that is failing us—the "Broken News." You'll laugh, you'll cry. You'll know a thing or two to do to fix it. Our very special guest, Chris Stirewalt—a former Fox News political editor— gives us an inside view of the rage-driven political environment we’ve found ourselves plunged into: “Rage revenue-addicted news companies are plagued by shoddy reporting, sensationalism, groupthink, and brain-dead partisan tribalism. Newsr...
God Squad: Love Thy Neighbor. No Exceptions?
March 30, 2023 09:31 - 1 hour - 88.8 MBLove Thy Neighbor. No Exceptions? Does the admonition to love one’s neighbor really come without exceptions? Must churches welcome white nationalists? Gay couples? January 6 sympathizers? BLM activists? Is everyone my neighbor? And what does love really mean? Joining us for God Squad are Father Tim Holeda of St. Thomas More Co-Cathedral, Pastor Joe Davis, Jr. of Truth Gatherers Community Church, Scott Martin of Element 3 Church, Pastor Latricia Scriven of Saint Paul’s United Methodist Chur...
Peter Kageyama: For the Love of Cities
March 16, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 82.5 MBWhy do we connect emotionally with some places and not others? And why does that matter? Author and speaker Peter Kageyama loves cities. Big cities, small cities, villages and small towns. Our special podcast guest is Peter Kageyama on his extraordinary book. Wherever you live, this program is for you. In fact, wherever you live, we think you ought to begin a love affair with your city. So what does loving the city you live in have to do with healing the partisan divide? Turns out the answ...
Local Patriotism: The "David" of local community vs the "Goliath" of national dysfunction
March 02, 2023 16:38 - 1 hour - 124 MBThe forces that divide us are big, strong, viral, international in scope and have seemingly infected every system of our body politic. It’s the degree of that rot that has led us back this year to where it all began — to people we’ve come to know over these years — to this place, these people. Through this tumultuous time, we have come to believe that if we’re going to care about the American idea — if we’re going to truly live it out (and maybe save it) — it will be in hometowns like this o...
Hate, Undone. With Daryl Davis.
February 16, 2023 02:51 - 1 hour - 132 MB"WHEN TWO ENEMIES ARE TALKING, THEY'RE NOT FIGHTING." When Daryl Davis was ten, he didn’t understand hate yet. But then he was the only black scout in a parade to honor Paul Revere’s ride to Concord, when he began getting hit by bottles. It was then that he formed a question in his mind that he’s spent much of a lifetime answering: “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?” Failing to find his answer in books and history, as an adult and an accomplished musician, he realized who be...
God Squad: Let Friendship Redeem the Republic
February 02, 2023 10:31 - 54 minutes - 74.8 MBIn our year-long celebration of the superpower of healthy friendships across differences, you’ll meet God Squad’s friends who they don’t quite agree with. Then we’ll let friendly disagreement rip (and live to tell). Join us for this chat about how to tackle difficult topics within the relationships that matter to us the most… and how to keep friendships healthy even when conflict arises. Joining the God Squad are Pastor Betsy Ouelette Zierden of the United Methodist Church, Father Tim Hol...
God Squad: Holy Misconceptions, Batman!!
January 19, 2023 10:31 - 1 hour - 92.4 MBIsn't Hanukkah the most important holiday to Jews? Don't Catholics object to sex unless reproduction is the goal? Don't all religions worship the same God and (more or less) teach the same things? Doesn't the Bible say that God helps those who help themselves? The God Squad will consider many of the myths, truths, and misunderstandings that everyday people have about religion in America. Joining us for God Squad are Dr. Gary Shultz of First Baptist Church Tallahassee, Father Tom Dillion of...
Who Stole the American Dream?
January 05, 2023 10:31 - 1 hour - 106 MBHedrick Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and editor and Emmy award-winning producer/correspondent, has established himself over the past 50 years as one of America’s premier journalists. His best-seller, “Who Stole the American Dream” is a startling and revealing portrait of the past 30 years of U.S. political and economic history, hailed both for its compelling stories and ”brilliant analysis.” In 26 years with The New York Times, Smith served in Saigon, Cairo,...
The Theory of Enchantment with Chloé Valdary
December 16, 2022 01:21 - 1 hour - 119 MB“Chloé has an independent cast of mind and a roving curiosity that leads her to ask probing questions, pursue original lines of inquiry, and reach provocative and often brilliant conclusions. Every time I see her, I walk away with my mind buzzing with new ideas—her ideas.”—New York Times columnist Bret Stephens Chloé Valdary has a refreshing and humanizing approach to the fraught moment we're in and a completely different take on how we can heal racial division and hatred inside our organi...
Respect, Rebel, Repeat: Subversive Friendships for Divided Times
December 02, 2022 00:48 - 40 minutes - 55.4 MBBack in the day, many political foes were friends in real life—hanging out for a beer after a tough legislative floor fight, attending their kids’ weddings over the weekends. It’s a sure sign of the times when any across-the-aisle friends that still exist out there in the wild tend to keep their friendship on the down low, in case they’d be accused of fraternizing with “the enemy.” From the halls of Congress to our hometown, this makes becoming or staying bipartisan friends an act of straigh...
“I Never Thought of it That Way" with Mónica Guzmán
November 17, 2022 10:31 - 1 hour - 130 MB‘The way you show people that they matter is aiming your curiosity at them. Ask yourself “what kinds of people do I talk about, but never with?” Whoever is underrepresented in your life will be overrepresented in your imagination.’ —Mónica Guzmán Ready to fight back against the confusion, heartbreak, and madness of our dangerously divided times? Find the answers you need by talking with people—rather than about them—and asking the questions you want across the divides you want, curiously. ...
God Squad: Souls to the Polls?
November 03, 2022 09:31 - 58 minutes - 55.8 MBIt’s an election year. Should churches have political candidates speak at Sunday services? Should clergy tell congregants how to vote? Should congregations organize political rallies or get-out-the-vote efforts? What are the proper lines for religious involvement in politics? And what are the consequences (to the body politic and to religious communities) when these lines get crossed? Joining us for God Squad are Father Tim Holeda of St. Thomas More Co-Cathedral, Pastor Joe Davis, Jr. of T...
Bridge Building + Bipartisanship
October 20, 2022 09:31 - 1 hour - 85.9 MBBridge building?! (We’re not talking about the Golden Gate, people.) An industry that was recently unknown and almost nonexistent has exploded in recent years, as average citizens begin to see the sharp growth in political divisions as an emergency that requires our attention. In the midst of a divisive election season, we’ll take a pause to chat with leaders in the bridge building field about the outlook for cooperation across political differences and potential improvements on the horizo...
God Squad: Wanted - A Few Civic Heroes
October 06, 2022 09:31 - 58 minutes - 79.7 MBIn celebration of The Village Square’s determination this year to celebrate what’s working and worth emulating (in a world in which so much seems broken), God Squad will kick off their 13th season thinking about our fellow humans who have behaved heroically during these challenging times. But—beware—one person’s hero might be the other’s villain in these divisive “us or them” times. If we can’t agree, we’ll imagine what a hero might look like, and ask—might it fall to us to save ourselves? ...
How to have better political conversations OR Ending this Zombie Apocalypse
September 22, 2022 09:30 - 1 hour - 108 MB“There’s people wandering around in packs, not thinking for themselves, seized by this mob mentality trying to spread their disease and destroy society. And you probably think, as I do, that you’re the good guy in the zombie apocalypse movie, and all this hate and polarization, it’s being propagated by the other people, because we’re Brad Pitt, right?” —Dr. Robb Willer, Polarization and Social Change Lab at Stanford University When it comes to navigating our deepening ideological divide i...
Race to Truth with Neil Phillips
September 08, 2022 09:31 - 50 minutes - 70 MBIn the year prior to his assassination, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King isolated himself in a house in Jamaica where he wrote what was to become his final book. King said he felt at home there: “In Jamaica I feel like a human being.” “One day, here in America,” said King, “I hope that we will see this and we will become one big family of Americans.” 50 years later, it is an aching American tragedy that we find ourselves with issues of race, arguably, as emotional, divisive and conseque...
Seven Deadly Sins: The Decline of Moral Community and the Rise of Public Corruption
August 25, 2022 09:31 - 1 hour - 72 MBWhy don’t liberals seem to care about moral behavior and the moral communities that support it? Why don’t conservatives seem to care about rampant public corruption at the heart of our political system? If we care about doing the right thing, can’t we care about both? There is perhaps nowhere in our civic debate where the conversation has grown so calcified as the one about morality. We’ve long since stopped any form of real communication, instead hurling accusations at each other across wh...
Flip the Switch: Corey Nathan interviews Liz Joyner and Vanessa Rowse
August 11, 2022 09:31 - 1 hour - 59.6 MBJoin us as podcast host Corey Nathan of Talkin’ Politics and Religion without Killin’ Each Other flips the switch by interviewing The Village Square's Liz Joyner and Vanessa Rowse about how we make pigs fly. We were fast friends with Corey right from the start because of our shared goal to have constructive and respectful conversations about those taboo topics of politics and religion. Corey started TP&R to take back some of the airspace from the screamers who feed off our divisions. He s...
When the People Decide
July 28, 2022 09:33 - 36 minutes - 35.9 MBOn this special edition of Village SquareCast, we’re excited to introduce you to one of our BFFs in the saving democracy space. Jenna Spinelle of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy has a new podcast we think you'll love, so we're sharing episode #1 in our feed. When the People Decide is a new eight-episode narrative series on ballot initiatives that tells the stories of activists, legislators, academics, and average citizens who changed their cities, states, and the country by taking i...
God Squad: Spiritual Lessons of a Pandemic
July 14, 2022 09:31 - 1 hour - 47.9 MBIt's really easy to be in touch right now with the dark side of human nature that's been so thoroughly highlighted through the pandemic, but is there something else to see? Maybe transcendence, empathy and heroic self-sacrifice? And where there isn't much to look at that's positive, can we turn our trauma into a spiritual evolution — personally or even as a culture? Join us as we welcome God Squad regulars Father Tim Holeda of St. Thomas More Co-Cathedral, Pastor Joe Davis Jr. of Truth...
God Squad: The Skeptics Have Their Say
June 30, 2022 09:31 - 1 hour - 48.1 MBMeet "The Skeptics," a DIY lay version of God Squad — they're a group of politically and spiritually diverse group of people who've been meeting once a week for years (in some private location that for some reason they're not letting on to). Lucky us — we'll meet four of the Skeptics (a Catholic, a Protestant, a Mormon, and an atheist) who have forged deep friendships by gathering regularly to discuss spiritual topics in a respectful manner where disagreement is both welcomed and appreciated...
Talkin' Politics & Religion without Killin' Each Other - featuring Christine Todd Whitman
June 16, 2022 09:31 - 1 hour - 59.3 MBOn this episode of Village SquareCast, we’re thrilled to introduce you to one of our besties in the saving democracy space. Corey Nathan, host of Talkin’ Politics and Religion without Killin’ Each Other, is committed to taking some airspace back from the screamers who feed off our divisions. He says politics and religion are too important to be left only to the extremes, so he hosts engaging, provocative and fun conversations about the most pressing issues of our times. We're sharing an ep...
Majority Minority with Dr. Justin Gest
June 02, 2022 09:31 - 1 hour - 65.1 MB“Trenchant and groundbreaking work.” —Molly Ball, National Political Correspondent, TIME Magazine “The go-to source for understanding how demographic change is impacting American politics.” —Jonathan Capehart, The Washington Post and MSNBC How do societies respond to great demographic change? This question lingers over the contemporary politics of the United States and other countries where persistent immigration has altered populations and may soon produce a majority minority mileston...
Intellectual Humility in a Polarized World
May 19, 2022 09:31 - 1 hour - 67.9 MBDr. Kurt Gray of UNC Chapel Hill joins us for this timely and intriguing discussion about intellectual humility. Simply put, we'll be exploring the importance of knowing you might be wrong (gasp! yes, even you), why this is so important, and what we can do about it to help build human connections and bridge our divides. At a time when complex technology of all sorts is exploding and voluminous information about the world is at our literal fingertips, one commodity in oddly short supply is in...
What 100 Coffees can teach us about being human
May 05, 2022 09:29 - 52 minutes - 55.5 MB100 Coffees. Coffee and people are two of the joys of Alex Workman’s life. He has a long-standing goal of trying to have coffee with someone he’s never met (or doesn’t know very well) once a week. In 2021, Alex embarked on a challenge to meet 100 people for coffee – he reached his goal by May and kept right on going. 163 coffees later he tells us what he learned. We think it will change your life. Countless dinner guests. Alex and Chelsea Workman are a husband-and-wife creative team in T...
The podcast mom warned you about.
April 29, 2022 09:31 - 2 minutes - 3.69 MBAre you tired of us vs. them, good vs. evil, partisan politics? Join us on Village SquareCast, "the podcast your mother warned you about,” for a fresh take on the topics you're not supposed to discuss in polite company—politics, religion and race—between people who don't look or think alike—with respect, friendship, even laughter. Over 15 years, The Village Square has hosted hundreds of gatherings with tens of thousands of people—in bars, in churches, and even across 100 continuous tables in...
God Squad: Lonely and Extreme
April 21, 2022 09:31 - 1 hour - 53.3 MBA conversation about how to really fix extremism. Given the dangerous rise of political extremism in America, it's well past time we stopped wagging our fingers and do a bit of soul searching of our own about why our society is producing so many citizens unmoored from the connections that support moderation. Many experts point to the epidemic of loneliness or mass loneliness, what Hannah Arendt called "the seedbed of tyranny." Others believe changes in relationships between men and women ...
When the Stars Begin to Fall with Dr. Theodore R. Johnson
April 07, 2022 09:31 - 1 hour - 68.1 MBOvercoming Racism and Renewing the Promise of America “We can be different and united—the value of the American experiment is contingent on the truth of this proposition.” —Theodore Roosevelt Johnson III Dr. Theodore R. Johnson is the great-grandson of sharecroppers who, unfathomably, believed in what Johnson calls “the Promise,” that we Americans are created equal and that “each of us will respect and defend the rights and liberty of others.” Willie and Annie Johnson so believed in that...