America: Is it only a dream?

just die. Welcome to Calling Bullshit, the podcast about purpose washing, the gap between what companies say they stand for and what they actually do, and what they would need to change to practice what they preach. I'm your host, Time Montague, and I've spent over a decade helping companies define what they stand for, their purpose and then help them to use that purpose to drive transformation throughout their business. Unfortunately, at a lot of organizations today, they're still a pretty

wide gap between word and deed. That gap has a name. We call it bullshit. But, and this is important, we believe that bullshit is a treatable disease. So when the BS detector lights up, we're going to explore things that a company should do to fix it. Today we're examining one of the biggest and most powerful organizations in the world, and it became big and powerful, at least in part because of a great story and an aspirational purpose. I'm talking,

of course, about the United States of America. It's tough to pin down a succinct purpose statement for America. Is it in the Declaration of Independence or in the Constitution? Is it in a president's speech or on a coin. Elements of America's purpose can be found in all of these artifacts. But to me, there's one thing that truly

captures the spirit of this country's purpose the best. Let's call it the American Dream, which goes something like this, no matter who you are or where you come from, if you live here, work hard, and generally operate as a good citizen, there is no end to how far you can go. America is a true meritocracy, a land of opportunity that is open to all. But is this even true? Is our current polarization assign that the dream

is just a bunch of bullshit? Get out your BS detector and join me and special guest Andrew Yang on a quest to find out. As we prepped this episode, it became clear that even as a tight knit podcasting team, we had differing opinions about the whole idea of the American Dream, and so we hit the record button on ourselves. Can I ask you, um so, when I say the words the American Dream to both of you, like, what

what do those words mean to you? I just felt like a struggle with the term because I wouldn't be here if it weren't for my Jamaican parents coming from their native country and trying to find a better life for their family here in America, having access to jobs and medical care that they might not have had in Jamaica. So I'm definitely thankful that I'm able to be a first generation American. That's MICHAELA Read, a producer on Calling BS. But yeah, I feel like to call it a dream

makes it sounds better than what it is. Everyone should have access to housing like that shouldn't necessarily be a dream. It should be a requirement. Everyone should have the ability if they're sick, to go to a hospital and have the right amount of care for their illnesses, regardless of

their income. Yeah, that makes sense. The story I thought I saw unfolding in America previously was people who wanted to improve their lot in life decided to leave their home country a totally non trivial decision and come here and use that motivation to advance themselves on their own cause. And what I was taught in school was this was the strength of America, the fact that motivated people came because we opened that door. We became a country of

motivated people. We benefited from that, and we fed off one another energy and created something exceptional. So I'm a more nuanced person than to say that I blanketly don't agree that nothing good has ever come out of people coming here from other countries. And that's basil super producer and researcher. It's complicated, but I do think that there's a reason that people want to be here. Who knows why they're doing it. Are they doing it because they're

fed the idea of an American dream? Or is it like because it's it's really dire and and it doesn't matter how bad it is here, right, Yeah, I'm just thinking, like, maybe America just has really good marketing. America does have really good marketing, and that's because it tells an irresistible story. From revolution to independence, from freedom to wild financial success.

The American legend has been undeniably inspiring and on this show, we explore how well organizations actually honor the narrative they're crafting for themselves. So the question is do we still believe that story and how much of that story has been conveniently left out in order to keep the brand strong. I think that we became a successful country and like the powerhouse of the economy of globally, you know, through exploiting workers of all kinds, and that goes back to

like children and women and people of color. So for me, when we talk about America being great, I don't think it was ever really. Yeah, I mean I definitely feel I guess some elements of bitterness when talking about American what it was founded upon, like mass genocide of indigenous peoples and how it was built upon the backs of

enslaved people. It's just difficult to think of a country that is viewed as something that is a place for opportunity, and the opportunities that they're providing aren't exactly accessible to all Americans. Yeah, I hear that both of those perspectives.

I guess it raises some questions for me, Like you know, from my perspective, and again mine is a perspective of privilege, but there is some good to have set up in view a country that is supposed to be and certainly has not been in every case, but it's supposed to be a meritocracy, and we did open a door for people to come here and make their own way, rise to the level of their own abilities, and so there's got to be some value to that. I don't think

that's the truth. I think even if people did come from worse off countries, they came here as immigrants and lived in tenements and just made the rich richer. That's frustrating, you know. It's not like they just came here and like we're like middle class. You know, someone who grew

up in poverty. When we talk about things like people not be able to make a living wage, or like some people being shocked by how we've responded to COVID as a country doesn't shock me as someone who couldn't get health care, growing up as a trans person who can't get trans healthcare, you know, in an accessible way. So for me, like I've seen the this this isn't new. This conversation got me really curious. There are so many ways to interpret the American dream. How many Americans still

believe that the country has a higher purpose. Is the dream still worth believing in? Or is it dying? To try and understand all of this, the team decided to fan out and speak with a wide variety of Americans, some of them in our own families, and we asked them for their definitions of the American dream. First up, Basil's brother in law, Jonathan Craig, a pool technician in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. American Dream. M hm. So you come from a third world country as they come from Afghanistan.

You don't speak of Lake English. You got your whole family here with you. You come here and pretty much you can be whatever you know and do whatever you want and sky Athalna. Here you can get a good education. We got a good American system, you know, as far as helping people get on their feet, you know, programs for school. And you come here from anywhere and you can get the help you need and shoot just like

you a guy down the road. They come from Saudi Arabia, didn't speak hardly in English three or four years ago. Now they got freaking four or five stores. You know, that's the American dream right there. You come here and then make a living, raised a family. The American dream you can achieve whatever you set out to do. Because I'm Jamaican, it meant that I could be here and opportunities would be available, not so much for myself, but

for my children. That's Michaelis grandmother, Yvonne Clark, a former law secretary in New York. And I am so proud to be an American and for them to be Americans and for the avenues for growth it has afforded them. And one of Yvan's children is Michaela's aunt and Dream Clark, a public school teacher in North Carolina. But the American dream is a pursuit of happiness, and really that's what

so many Americans want to do. For so many, the American dream is about the pursuit of happiness and opportunity. But as entrepreneur, cultural critic Queens New York resident and first generation Korean American J. K. Cho points out, there's

a dark side to that pursuit. I feel like when people say American dream is often associated with abundance, right buying the necessary ship in Bolke, Like you know, we have a hundred pairs of sneakers at home, Like when we're never going to run that much Black Friday holiday shopping. It's a flawed narrative that's like too often perpetrated by the imperialistic American agenda. This concept of consumerism is interweaved with the American dream, and it's also connected with democracy,

this thought of freedom of choice. But in reality, we really live in like a politocracy, government controled by those with a lot of wealth, which is continuously part of this pipeline that essentially served those in upper economic realms with our labor meager wages, which we used to buy more ship, watch more content to entertainers. And you know, I don't really believe in this concept of an American dream, per se. I believe in American survival. For some Americans,

the tough part of survival is economic. But for my next guest, survival means holding onto an entire way of life despite centuries of systemic oppression. What to the words the American dream mean to you? For me? Those words as a mama response to ta we means? Is a Stanford educated attorney who leads Thunder Valley, an indigenous not for profit organization that advocates for the liberation of Lakota people. She is the only person we spoke to who doesn't

identify as an American. I am from the Ogala La Kota and cistertan Wapatan Da Kota people nations, and we are a part of the Ocheti shakoe Um larger nation and currently reside in what is now called South Dakota, where the original caretakers and stewards of this land long before Columbus lost his way and inflicted years of European

genocide upon the people of this land. And so that is a trauma response for a lot of Indigenous people and other communities of color because of the the colonization and the genocide that was associated with the development of this land base into what is now called the United States of America. The conversation with tatewe really brought home the terrible price that millions of people have paid to

create the country that we live in today. How you feel about the American dream really depends on your vantage point and the version of American history that you've been taught. So many people have sacrificed for this country against their will, while others volunteer their lives to defend it. Next is Adrian Bonnenberger, a writer and veteran who served two tours of duty in Afghanistan. One of the extraordinary things of America and the American Dream, I think, is that you

can come to America from anywhere on Earth. You can start a business, you can get a job somewhere, and you will be the author of your own destiny. And I think that far more than um, you know, the ability to to get rich or whatever some people say the American dream is, is actually what makes America a place that people look to a place where they can live um with dignity. And you get your American citizenship,

You've got that passport in your hand. Only a real jerk is going to say you're not a real American. To me, the American dream means equal opportunity. That's David Sefabian, the current General counsel for the American Conservative Union, who has also held senior positions in the Bush White House. The ability for folks to follow their passion to work hard to achieve success, regardless of how you define success.

Having a system that not only makes it possible but encourages individual success, I think is what I would view the pathway to the American Dream. And Penelope super nine what would you say America's purpose actually is shoo, comes here and be yourself. Do you think America is actually achieving this? Uh? Sometimes no, because they are treating people differently, like gay people, by people, um and like Indian Americans,

black people and other people like that. Why do you think that is because they think that they're since they're different, that they could just treat them different. How do you How does that make you feel? That makes me feel sad? Is it because you love LGBT people and black people? Yeah? I don't care if they're any condition people. Yeah, they're rude. I don't want them. I'm with Penelope, I don't like rude people either. Nearly all of the people that I

spoke with identified as either Democrat or Republican. I'll leave it to your imagination to decide who is who. But no matter their affiliation, there seemed to be a common understanding of what the American dream was supposed to be. The difference in perspective stemmed from whether we're actually living up to it or not. America's bs score a conversation with Andrew Yang and an exploration into why we're so polarized. Right after this, before you head to the break. We'd

love to hear what you think about the show. Maybe you were inspired to take action, maybe you disagree with today's bullshit rating. Either way, we want to hear about it. Leave us a message at two one two five oh five to Zo five, or send a voice memo to CBS podcast at co collective dot com. You might even be featured on an upcoming episode. It is a joke when Republicans say that the urgency around this bill, the only folk of the ads is that what they wanted.

Opublican doesn't want you to know. Media the welcome back on this unique episode of calling Bullshit. We've applied the idea of an organization's purpose to an entire nation, the United States of America, and for the sake of this experiment,

we've identified the American Dream as that purpose. Now we continue these conversations by exploring America's mission, in other words, the steps that we can take as citizens and governing bodies to actually put the purpose into practice, and debating how or even if Americans can achieve this dream amidst so much division. Here's school teacher Andrean Clark opportunity for all.

That's America's mission statement that's I think what the founding fathers wanted, And if they wanted it any other way, they would have said equality for white men who own land and freedom for specific people. But they had a bigger dream, and they're bigger dream was equality and opportunity and freedom for all these systems in this country was not built for people that look like me, sound like me,

or grew up like me. Once again, the leader of Thunder Valley to tay we means you hear that it's a land of opportunity, but you have to really question for who. From my perspective as an Indigenous woman, the mission state of America is really exclusionary and genocidal, harmful. What could America be doing better to live its mission? In other words, if you were going to change some things about the country, what would you change? I would change its mission? You have to you have to start

at those rotten roots. The seeds of this country are rotten because of the these you know, initial ideologies and beliefs about the people that did not look like white men that were already here, and our view about what it meant to be inhabitants and occupants of this land.

Army veteran Adrian Bonnenberger. I would say our mission has been to expand that definition of citizen and citizenship as being something that's dependent on the individual's willingness to take part in community and not defined based on something that one of their ancestors did eight hundred years ago. It shouldn't be defined based on religion, it shouldn't be defined based on race, it shouldn't be defined based on class.

It was a revolutionary idea. We we we had to, you know, stage a revolution over it, uh towards Washington, when people said you ought to be king, he said, that's not what I'm doing here. You know, I'm going to be president and you're going to keep electing. So it's a process that is both durative and also it's a process that requires people to buy into it actively. And if you buy into it actively, then that's your stake and you own a piece of it, and nobody

can tell you different. I think America's mission statement is to be a beacon of freedom to the world. General Counsel for the American Conservative Union David sa Fabian and I personally view the American model, the American experiment as something that I know so many millions of other people see and go, That's where I want to be, That's

what I want for my family. So I think our mission is not just too continue the concept of American exceptionalism, but to make sure that we continue with American exceptionalism as a way to show the path to other governments, other countries, other cultures. How do you think about the polarization that's going on in the country right now. I things coming out of the left and the right that just nauseate me, to be honest, and there is very

little open communication and honest communication between the sides. I think what we've come to as a point where we are both so convinced of our righteousness that we have to condemn people that have opposing points of view. There is some sense that there was kind of an original sin in America and that that sin keeps coming back, you know, like once it's in you, it it's really hard to to get it out. How do you think

about that? I guess, you know, you really hit it when you called it original sin, And this is the first time I've really thought about it in this context or this frame. So I think that our past is something we all have to recognize but to carry it forward and say we are somehow less of an exceptional

nation and truly believe America is exceptional. Um to carry it forward as a scarlet, a scarlet s for slavery tattooed on our collective foreheads is neither going to fix any problem, nor does it reflect reality that we are a generous country. We are by and large a kind and welcoming country, and we are the one that should be the beacon of the world. So right now, I think we're in a crisis, in a moment of self realization or self actualization for America. What does America really

stand for? Are we free to pursue our own happiness and not harm others? Are we still living up to the ideals of the Constitution, which is freedom, opportunity, and equality? And I would say not. I think we're on the threat right now. There's a group of people who have been misled thirty years about America just being for white, Anglo Saxon Protestants, and they are afraid of the demographic

shift that is going on there. Are really terrified that they won't be able to pursue happiness again, won't be able to have their freedom door somehow they're opportunities being curtailed because the demographics of America shifting to be more brown. Everything's race related now, I mean it. You know, there's a serious thing Pool technician Jonathan Craig, you know, police

brutality all that. You know, it's crappy that properly does happened to black people, more African Americans, more than does most. But I mean, you ain't nothing. And then then needs to go with defund the police. Well, if you want to go that rat, well just let's just abolish to hold them system and everything. No police, no, none of that. And then we'll see whe're at in a year from now and see if you want to go to bring the baby. But we've definitely gotten away from our core

principles I believe. I mean, just as far as like to say, you know, everybody created equal. I mean even you know women, I mean they still get you know, it's not as bad as I'm sure it was, you know, thirty or forty years ago. But I mean that that could get a little better too. But uh, I mean it's I regret to say that at the current moment, I think the the experiment is is in danger. It's in danger mostly because of complacency. We've become victims of

our own success and our own privilege. And I think this is this, more than anything, is going to ruin us. Entrepreneur j Cho, So what would I change about America?

Like stop pushing American military might to control resources and have you know, young people died for old people's selfish agendas, you know, hoologize to the indivigenous people and respect nature, all of that ship, you know, Like I would change all of that, But I think the root of it all really comes from being willing to try to learn

more about people that might not look like you. And I think that America is a social experiment that can progress towards them because, like, how many societies do you know where an Asian kid growing up on hip hop and queens could naturally flow and have friends from all parts of the world, eat each other's food, make love with each other, and you know, eventually have kids and build families and basically create a whole new paradigm of

what a community could look like. Because I reflect on what I've learned in these conversations, it occurs to me that over the past several decades, we've become two nations. One nation actively pushing for us to remember and to reconcile, to acknowledge some of the flaws and mistakes in our history and to address them, and a second nation that fears the future and wants things to return to the way it always was, to return to a time of forgetting.

Maybe the way forward here is to remember something else. America has never feared the future and has never feared change. In fact, the founders knew we'd need to change and adapt to new and unforeseen circumstances. That's what the Constitution and the Amendments are for. As long as we respect one another, actively participate, and have the ability to agree to disagree civilly and respectfully, that America will find its way.

Andreane Clark says it best America is for all people if you believe in those ideals of freedom for all, opportunities for all, and harm none, And that is possible. And I'm extremely patriotic. I say, uh, the Pledge of allegiance at schools and some of my students wonder why when opportunities aren't there for them, And I say, well, then you've got to grab the bull by the horn. And wrestle with it and make it work for you.

If you believe in those ideals of freedom for all, be an American and be a good citizen, which means to participate and not let a certain segment of society take it from you or destroy it because they don't want to share in the dream of pursuit of happiness or equality. And so governments must work for the greater good, for the greatest many, for the greatest pursuit. Folks, it's time to make the call. Is the American dream still real?

Is America a place where all people are created equal, a place that welcomes people from all walks of life with open arms and opens the door to whatever future they want to create. Or has America itself become a bullshitter? Based on what I've heard today, I think we have to call bs. But remember, bullshit is a treatable disease, and so after the diagnosis, we always discuss a cure. America is a place that reinvents itself, and the Framers were wise enough to leave us with the tools we

need to drive that reinvention. I think it's also worth remembering we've come back from worse places before this after the break, we'll hear some concrete solutions from a special guest, Andrew Yang. Stick with us, Welcome back. We've decided that there is a gap between the dream that America is selling and the actions that America is taking. So we're calling BS. But on this show, we believe BS is

a treatable condition. So next, we're gonna talk about some potential cures with someone who has firsthand experience participating in our political system, Andrew Yang. You might know him as the person who introduced the country to universal basic income back in the last presidential Democratic primary. Running for office gave Andrew a critical vantage point to see what's wrong with a major part of our system, and he has

some fascinating ideas to fix it. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, I think you'll find his perspective as interesting as I did. Hey, Andrew, welcome to UH calling Bullshit, and thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it, no problem, my friend, happy to be here. So you recently made two exciting announcements a new book, Forward and a new political party, the Forward Party, And we're going to get into those in just a second. But before we get into that.

I want to continue down the path that I've been on for this episode, which is to try to figure out whether America is living up to its mission at the moment. So I've asked a handful of Americans to answer three questions, and I want to start the interview by asking you the same questions. The first one is what to the words the American Dream mean to you?

I'm the child of immigrants myself, so the American dream is that you can come here and build a life, and your children will have opportunities greater than the opportunities that you've had, that each generation is going to do better than the one before. Second question, what would you say America's mission in statement or purpose? Statement? Actually is the first things that came to mind for me are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I mean, I think that's

in the charter. Yeah, no, I think that's right. And and then the third question is how are we doing at living up to that mission right now? I believe

we are doing very very poorly. If you stack up the United States relative to other countries, we are approximately twenty eight across measurements of education, mortality, equity, freedom, of expression, life expectancy with a down arrow like and declining, and that I believe is driving a lot of the anger and frustration where our quality of life is sinking into the mud. And then if you look up and say, okay, well, what's happening in terms of measures to correct this, Uh,

it's really very little. Yeah, the statistics are are shocking. So yeah, let's let's get into the book Forward, which, among other things, really lays out the rationale for a third political party. What what inspired you to write this book? I ran for president, and after I came up the trail, I tried to figure out what the heck guy has

been through and what I've learned. So I wrote down not just my own experiences, but also trying to pin down why we feel so stuck and why polarization is getting worse, and why it doesn't seem like big solutions are imminent. And I concluded that our system is working exactly as it's designed. It's just not designed to succeed.

It's in many ways it's designed for polarization and stasis and increasing frustration, which at a national scale will result eventually in unrest and political violence, which we're already seeing so in that environment, I thought, well, someone needs to do something to try and moderate the polarization and change the incentives. And I ound a genuine solution where Alaska adopted open primaries and ranked Troy's voting last year, which, among other things, freed up Senator Lisa Murkowski to be

the only Republican senator to impeach Donald Trump. So, realizing that there's actually a structural fix too, uh these incentives and are increasing polarization, I then thought, well, we should

definitely do that. And if you're going to support ballad initiatives in red and blue states around the country, it certainly is, in my mind, almost impossible to do so as a member of one party or another, because then obviously if you showed up to UH a state where it was governed by the other party, they'd be like, you know, you're problem. They're playing into their hands in

a way. So I want to talk. I want to, you know, for for the listeners, sort of ease into it a little bit and say, um, you know, there were some stunning statistics about economic inequality. You know, it's sort of the roots of this polarization in the book, And I wondered if you could talk a little bit more about those. One of the things you said, for instance, is we're in the midst of the most extreme winner

take all economy in the history of the world. The bottom eight percent of Americans own only eight percent of the stock market, and the bottom owned zero. What are some other data points that you would consider to be the sources of this polarization. Well, one thing I've seen very consistently is that mindset of scarcity ends up impeding your executive functioning by a measurable degree. One study had

it at thirteen i Q points, so that's one standard deviation. Um. The simplest way to think about it is that if I put you in a situation where you're not sure how you're gonna pay next month's rent, uh, it doesn't just stress you out. It consumes your bandwidth to a point where you're more susceptible to bad ideas, You're more susceptible to negative impulses. And so we're doing that to

a bulk of the American population at this point. I had dinner with a friend yesterday who said that what he figured out was that used to think about problems among the bottom of Americans and now he's realized that he had it in reverse. It's actually the bottom eight percent of Americans that are in tough straits. And there is a pattern where if you eliminate a middle class of a country, it becomes much more susceptible to, for example,

authoritarian impulses. So this has been happening by the numbers for two to three generations in the United States, right, And as you just said, it has this huge blast radius on our culture. You know, unbelievable levels of anxiety and depression and epidemic of suicide and drug overdoses out there in the world. So this sense of slipping behind that to your friends point of Americans at some level are experiencing has led us to this sense of kind

of impending doom, which partially is creating this polarization. You talk about the concept of political stress as well, and this was an eye opener for me. You you reference a study that compares the level of animosity between the left and the right just before the Civil War and today,

and I found that to be pretty disturbing. We should be disturbed and tie one of the messages I'm trying to convey to people is that everything is on the table in America now and by that what I generally mean the bad stuff, like whatever kind of dark dystopian scenario you can conjure, it's on the table. Uh. And this political stress index is measured by a scholar named

Peter Urchin and his colleague. He goes through various variables mapping out the levels of political stress and different historical time periods. And we are apparently right now at Civil war levels of political stress by his measurements, which you can probably see and feel. I mean, right now, forty two of partisans regard their political opponents as evil or their mortal enemies. Uh. And that lead to again unimaginable scenarios becoming real. And we saw an example of this

on January six, right exactly. And you point out that this is particularly dangerous simply because so many people in America are armed, like to the teeth three million firearms, most heavily armed society in the history of the world. Lest listeners think that this is all doom and gloom, or that the book was all about doom and gloom, that is far from the case. It bristles with new ideas to attack these problems. Too many actually to go into today. But I want to get to the main

set of ideas that you have for solving this. You're proposing a new political party, the Forward Party. What are you trying to accomplish? The Forward Party is a popular movement that consists of registered Democrats, independents, and registered Republicans who want our system to work better. And what we're trying to do is improve the incentives and enable genuinely resilient to my oocracy moving forward. So I just want

to go back to first principles for a second. If you look at the U s Constitution, there's nothing about a political party anywhere. It turns out the founding fathers were quite anti partisan. John Adams said, the biggest nightmare would be if you had two parties just clashing all the time. And and and I know it's pretty funny. And it turns out that if you're trying to avoid authoritarianism, duopoly is one of the worst types of structure as you could erect, because then you have a one party.

Let's say it succumbs to bad leadership, and then everyone's political and seidim sort of followed that leader, and they can cast the other one side as the as the you know the worst of two evils, and then you have virtually no institutional safeguards. Um, if you look around the world, the UK has five parties, Germany has seven parties, Sweden has eight parties, Netherlands has eight teen parties. And so in that system, if you have a party sucome

to bad leadership, then it's a problem. But it's not an existential threat. Is not authoritarians. It's like, oh, that party has a real lack of at the helm, Like, let's just wait for them to figure that that out. But a do apply is actually uniquely vulnerable. It's very

very poorly designed. And and so what the Forward Party is trying to do is one reduced polarization by installing mechanisms of open primaries matrois voting, and to give rise to a genuinely multipolar system where not about us the third party. I hope there are five or seven or nine parties, because that would just be a much more resilient, dynamic system that would be resistant to authoritarianism to a

much higher degree. Right, like a lot of regular Americans, I don't really understand how the party system works or why it is the way it is today. People have tried to start new parties in the past. Why has that not worked to date and why will this one work? Oh? Thank you, ty, this is a very good question. So our current version of this duopoly has been up and running for let's call it a hundred fifty years, give

or take. And so the political parties just kind of came up and made their own rules and then debeat it up. We're like, okay, we're gonna have just you and us, and then if there is another party that emerges, d apply. Makes it very, very difficult. And part of it is the voting system, but it's also ballot access, it's access to resources. So the single biggest change really needs to be open primaries and ranked choice voting because in a closed party primary system you really have next

to no chance. I can use New York City as an example. So there's a Democratic Party primary and it's closed and Democrats out number Republicans in this environment something like five to one. So the Democratic primaries where all the real action is or the decision making is um and that's the norm. So it does turn out that there are there's an independent running from air, there's a libertarian running mayor that that probably like all these people,

but their their chances are next to nothing. So if you had open primaries and rank choices voting, then people can make their own case to everybody. Um. And then even if you'd still have Democrats win, because of the numbers, they would be much more likely to integrate aspects of other people's platform. You'd have different candidates emerge, and some of them would actually, in my opinion, not just influence policy,

but some of them might pull up sets and win. UM. So a lot of it's a mechanics problem where if in the absence of open primaries and rank choice voting, it would be very, very difficult for any third party to emerge. And if you look at the numbers right now, six of Americans want a third party sixty percent. Thing both sides are out of touch. Independence out number Democrats or Republicans by almost two to one. So if you look at those numbers, there's a massive void to be filled,

a massive vacuum. But the reason why the vacuum is so big is because the two parties have made it almost impossible for a third party to meaningfully emerge. You know, it's sort of circular, so you have to have a mechanism switch in the primary system understood and rank choice voting and open primaries, as I understand it, are kind of two great tastes that go great together. Could you unpack those a little bit for listeners, just explain how

those two things work. Right now, Congress has a national approval rating of but the re election rate for individual members is you're almost assured of getting your job back if you want your job back, which most of them do. I mean, that's that's just crazy, that's in't that's unbelievable. Yeah, So then you look at the structures and say, how is this possible? And it turns out that three of the seats are safely democratic or safely Republican. If you

get to the general you win. And so the entire name of the game for these three percent of representatives is just to avoid getting primaried. So how do you avoid getting primaried. You have to remain ideologically pure. You can't compromise is with the other side. If you do reach across the island compromise, you're more likely to get a challenger. So these incentives then push people into their

corners and say working together is wrong and evil. So that's the system in part because if I am a member of Congress, I'm not taking my case to the general public. I'm taking my case to the ten or twenty most extreme voters in my district who are going to vote in the primary, either on the Republican side

or the Democratic side. So the first step is to say, look, how about we have open primaries where anyone can vote uh when you're up a reelection, and that way immediately, instead of just having to appeal to the seventeen percent most extreme voters, you have to appeal to the general public,

which would be an enormous moderating influence. Now, the mechanics of it are such that if you had open primaries without rank choice voting, then a scenario could occur where you have two Republicans and one Democrat, or two Democrats and Republican and you kind of cannabalize each other's votes. And that's the spoiler effect that everyone gets so upset about. So if you have ranked choice voting, then it eliminates

a spoiler effect. You can vote for multiple candidates. If your top choice doesn't go through, then your vote flows through to the second person until someone gets a majority.

Like you said, there to taste that taste great together, where if you have open primaries and ranked choice voting, they're actually both kind of moderating impulses because to succeed in a ranked choice voting field, you have to get a majority of people to at least be okay with you, and that tends to reward the coalition builders and punish the extremes. Yeah, incredibly important. So one of the other um planks I guess of this party is something that

you term human centered capitalism. That's a topic that is near and dear to my heart. You know, we're not trying to throw capitalism out, we're just trying to evolve it. Can you talk about you know, the way that you think about that. Right now, you have these economic indicators that are GDP and stock market prices, and they're going been up even as more people are sinking into the dirt.

So what I believe we should do is take our human well being and look at it the same way we do stock market prices and say, Okay, how are the kids doing, you know, how how are people doing, how are communities doing? And then if you saw that, you would see we're doing very poorly. And then you'd look up to our leaders and say, hey, you know, still bad this year, Like, maybe you should focus on on how we're doing as opposed to um, you know,

scoring political points. And so as someone who's run organizations, if you have the wrong measurements, you'll head in a very specific direction, right, And and so that is that leads to that that question you've you've long maintained that GDP is absolutely the wrong thing to be measuring. What should we be measuring. We should be measuring our health, our mental health, our kids ability to learn, our environmental

quality are affordability and access to healthcare and education. And when I went around the country and I asked people about how they're feeling and doing, I mean it's pretty tough for for a lot of folks. Anxiety, depression, deaths of despair, or substance abuse. I mean, like those are

the things they're seeing more and more. Right, One of the other ideas that jumped out to me beyond universal basic income, which obviously you got this into the national conversation, and it does appear to be slowly gaining traction, particularly during the pandemic. For instance, you also bring in the idea of grace and tolerance. One of the things that you say on the on the Forward Party website is

most parties need an enemy. Our enemy is those who would cast our fellow Americans as enemies and as an existential threat. And I just wondered if you could talk more about that, because that that seems like the hardest thing to do. In a way, it's the softest language, grace and tolerance, but it's it's the thing that seemed to be most important, is to just stop demonizing each other.

Grace and and tolerance, to me, is what's missing in American political life, and part because our incentives are all around getting people upset and angry. Where if I want to raise money for a cause, I'll talk about, hey, these people are trying to take away this. These people are wrong, immoral, and we need money to fight them, and that that's typically more successful than Look, they're human beings like us, they're Americans. You know, we we disagree,

but let's try and find common ground. But you need a positive, unifying voice and force in American politics to try and tamp down the polarization that's just getting worse and worse. And part again, because all the incentives are driving us into corners where we'll attack the other side. Yeah, I mean on this topic of grace and tolerance, some would say that, you know, in quote, the other side, no matter which side we're talking about, is so far

gone that they're irredeemable. What do you say to folks who feel that way? I think if you feel that way, you really need to get down and talk to folks who might represent the tribe or group you're thinking of.

Seventy five million people voted for Donald Trump. Like trying to categorize seventy million in one ideological bucket, or like having certain attitudes I think is impossible, really, you know, and like I have family members who voted for Trump, and so you could take any group of people and as long as you start humanizing them, you realize that

we're being played and said against each other. One of the big lessons I learned and I tried to present in my book is that all politics is now tribal um. You think it's about policy, it's not. The correlation between what someone does politically or the way they identify and what they think about policy is actually very low. It's point to five according to one study. So in that context, you think Okay, it turns out we agree on let's call it lower drug prices or maybe even basic income. Now, um,

so what is it we're disagreeing about? And we're disagreeing because we've been tribalized and trained to feel like the other tribe has lost it? Now. Are there dark and unsavory elements, uh, and extremes in any large group? Yes, but you don't want to characterize like a massive group or in this case literally tens of millions of people are half the country in a way that really erases their humanity. And that's what I think we're in danger

of doing. Yeah. Some would argue that grace and tolerance have always been scarce in America, basically depending on who you are. And you opened by talking about the fact that you're a child of immigrants, Immigrants, people of color, indigenous people haven't experienced a lot of grace and tolerance from the beginning. What would you say to them? Well, what I would say is that, Uh, this country has a promise and this country he has not lived up

to its promise in many, many historical circumstances. And there is an unfairness to ask someone who has been put in that position to embrace grace in tolerance if it has not been shown to you. But that is our better bet really in my view. You know, and because it's more difficult or even unfair, it does not make it any less necessary or powerful and actually makes it more powerful in my opinion. Yeah, and the alternative is unthinkable.

So the alternative is going to lead us to ruin, and I don't believe that's going to lead us where we want to go. I mean that that leads me to another question I had, which is, you know, you launched on October fourth, so it's still pretty recent, but

how do you feel about the reaction so far? The action has been tremendous, and one of the things that most encouraged by is that groups of independent voters and third parties have actually already reached out to the Forward Party to say, hey, let's make common cause and work together because they see that this is something that everyone

who wants to modernize the duopoly should be behind. I think if you're you know, like a partisan, you should behind this too, because you're like, look like the system is just really really vulnerable. You know, this is not very smart. Right, So in terms of you and and your plans. You know, you've You've run for president, You've run for the the mayor of New York. Are you

going to run again in the future? Do you? Or do you feel like you Your job is to concentrate on coalition building and get this party off the ground. I'm determined to try to lighten up this polarization that's really threatening to destroy us. And so that means these balt initiatives, elevating like minded candidates. He'll be endorsing candidates and campaigning for them. So that's where my attention is.

Is this democracy reform package, this structural incentive fix. It's gonna keep me very busy for the time being, but I'm fired up about it. I don't know what my future holds in terms of my running for office as a candidate, genuinely, you know, like I'm not playing coy, Like I really don't know what that looks like. Awesome, Andrew, last question, I asked this of every guest on the show.

You know, our thesis is that we're trying to point out companies or organizations or countries in this case where there maybe a delta between the mission and the current state of affairs. And we've created a scale. We call it the bullshit scale. So zero is the best scores zero bullshit. There is no delta between word indeed, and one hundred is total total. So in on that scale, if our mission is life, liberty in the pursuit of happiness, how are we doing right now? Wow, that it's tough

to throw a number on this. What what what I've said in my book and what I feel and believe is that right now we're not going to come close to full feeling the promise of America because our system is not set up for success. So if you were to say to me, hey, like, how are we doing on the BS meter? Unfortunately, the BS meter is going off when it comes to the United States and it's ability of fulfilled probs. It's one reason why we're all feeling like we're in deep trouble. I mean, like the

promises not being fulfilled by a long shot. And so that that's what we have to change, and it's going to require very significant systemic change like that. This is not like an incremental type situation, you know what I mean? We can all feel that. That's like the energy and the anger is building up, it's it's hitting in very very nasty directions, and so we need to try and get that BS meter closer to zero as quickly as possible. But right now it's it's running into the danger zone. Yeah,

I would have to agree, unfortunately. But the future is a big place and you're going to play a big part in it. So I wanna thank you for being here today. Andrew's been great talking with you, and I really wish you the best for the Forward Party. Thank you, TI really grateful and again everyone listening to this. At this point, everything is on the table, so we might as well make good stuff on the table as well as bad stuff. So let's get some more good stuff

on the table. Amen. Brother. One of the emerging themes of this season is purpose led organizations that have lost their way for one reason or another. America is one of them. To find our way back, we have to rejuvenate our shared purpose because a shared purpose is the glue that holds people together. That's true for companies and

it's true for countries too. Making sure that you have a great purpose and that you are living that purpose is a way to make sure that the glue remains strong, and it makes organizations of all sizes, resilient over the long haul. I'd like to end the show it today by giving America an official Bullshit score based a lot I've heard today. I'm giving America a sixty two. That's pretty high, and I'm sure we all want to see

it come down. To weigh in with your own score, or to leave us an audio message with your take on this episode that could be played in our season wrap up, visit our website Calling Bullshit Podcast dot com. We'll also track America's behavior over time to see if we can bring that score down, and you'll also be able to see where America ranks on BS compared to the other companies and organizations we feature on the show.

And if you're running a purpose led organization or you're thinking of beginning the journey of transformation to become one, here are three things you should take away from this episode. One, A powerful and unique purpose can give you a major advantage over your competitors by helping you attract more time, haunted, and more motivated people. There is no better example of that than America. Our purpose, when it was first expressed over two years ago, attracted so much motivated talent that

we quickly moved to a leadership position in the world. Two, A great purpose invites people to not only join, but also to participate. A smart question to ask yourself is how can people actively participate in helping us to achieve our purpose? In America's case, Andrew Yang talked about some great ideas today for making our system easier to participate in open primaries and rank choice voting. And Three, a great purpose is only as good as the actions you

take to make it real. In America's case, no matter how many times we say we're the land of opportunity and that all of us are created equal, if we don't make those things true for more people through action, they'll lose faith. A lot of us already have. Your purpose will undoubtedly be different than America's, as will the actions you'll need to take to make it real. Just

remember doing is believing. I'd like to thank everyone who joined us today, Adrian Bonnenberger, Andrean Clark, Yvan Clark, Jonathan Craig, Jaki cho Today we means, MICHAELA. Read, David Safabian, Basil Soaper, Penelope Soaper, and Andrew Yang. Find out more about our guests today, including their social handles on our website Calling Bullshit Podcast dot com and check out Andrew's latest book,

Forwards on the future of our democracy. If you have ideas for companies organizations we should consider for future episodes, you can submit them on the site too, And if we made you feel like pledging allegiance today, subscribe to the Calling Bullshit Podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And thanks to our production team Hannah Beale, Amanda Ginsburg, Andy Kim d s Moss, Hailey Pascalites, MICHAELA. Reid, Parker Silzer, Basil

Soaper and me John Zulu. Calling Bullshit was created by co Collective and is hosted by Me Time onto you. Thanks for listening before you go, we'd love to hear what you think about the show. Maybe you were inspired to take action. Maybe you' disagree with today's bullshit rating. Either way, we want to hear about it. Leave us a message at two one two five oh five zero five, or send a voice memo to CBS podcast at co Collective dot com. You might even be featured on an upcoming episode.