In the last episode Jim Meigs and Richard Davies celebrated more than nine years as co-hosts. They also announced that their podcasting partnership was ending. But "How Do We Fix It?" is not going away. Instead we plan to focus on something we've covered a great deal recently, and is of urgent importance right now: The broken nature of American politics. In the weeks to come, Richard will be the solo host of the show. We'll feature a series of creative, constructive conversations with bridge bui...
Jul 18, 2024•59 sec
When we first started our podcast in the spring of 2015, Jim and Richard came from different political tribes. They still do. But during more than 400 shows they've deepened their friendship and learned a tremendous amount from each other, and our remarkable guests. While "How Do We Fix It?" podcast will continue its journey, Jim and Richard's nine years as co-hosts ends with this show. We discuss why the partnership is ending (spoiler alert: it's amicable!) and what they discovered about podcas...
Jun 28, 2024•25 min
Supporters of Ranked Choice Voting argue that we need to a big change how we vote. Our “choose-one” elections, they say, deprive voters of meaningful choices, create increasingly toxic campaign cycles, advance candidates who lack broad support and leave voters feeling like our voices are not heard. We examine the case for this form of proportional representation. Ranked Choice Voting could boost electoral turnout, reduce polarization, and cut the public cost of running elections. This relatively...
May 30, 2024•27 min
Liberalism is out of fashion. You might say that it's under siege. From the populist right to the progressive left, liberal touchtones of limited government, personal freedom, the rule of law, and a mixed economy have come in for harsh criticism. Liberalism is assailed by many critics, but it has not failed, argues Yale Political Science Professor Bryan Garsten . "A liberal society is unique in that it offers refuge from the very people it empowers" through "institutions and different political ...
May 17, 2024•33 min
In 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...
Apr 19, 2024•24 min
Diversity equity and inclusion: Sounds like a good thing in an incredibly diverse country such as ours, especially when teaching young people at American colleges and universities. But the DEI industry - or DEI Inc. — has arguably gone off the rails. There’s a big difference between the intentions behind a lot of diversity training and the results. We learn about the crucial difference between training and education, and hear the case against the Stop WOKE Act in Florida. History professors Amna...
Mar 22, 2024•36 min
News coverage of Super Tuesday and other party primaries focused mainly on base voters— Democrats and Republicans. But most Americans are actually on the political sidelines or somewhere in the middle. Many have a mix of conservative and liberal views. This episode is about them. Our guest is Shannon Watson , the Founder and Executive Director of Majority in the Middle . Her Minnesota-based non-profit group works to give voters and elected officials a place to gather outside the extremes. "We tr...
Mar 08, 2024•30 min
Only four-in-ten Americans say they have a lot of trust in the news media. That's a big problem for our democracy, especially in this volatile presidential election year. While journalists are supposed to tell the truth and get the story right, just 35% of right-of-center voters have some trust in what they see on the news. Democrats and independents are much more likely to trust journalists, but Americans of almost all shades of opinion are skeptical of the journalists, not only questioning the...
Feb 09, 2024•26 min
What is the point of a good education? Do we need it to learn a narrow set of skills ro help us get ahead in the workplace, or should knowledge and learning to be used over a lifetime to acquire wisdom that enables us to think more deeply about our place in the world? This question has profound resonance at a time of angry divides over American politics and moral confusion at elite American universities. The President of Harvard, Claudine Gay, resigned after months of campus unrest and controver...
Jan 26, 2024•30 min
From the economy and prospects for a Biden vs Trump rematch to the future for global energy and artificial intelligence, Richard and Jim make their forecasts for 2024. And we re-visit our predictions from exactly a year ago and report on precisely how we did. "It's sort of like weather forecasters and opinion pollsters going back and owning up to their mistakes," says Richard. "I mean, who often do we see that!" Once again, Meigs and Davies make their best guesses about what's to come this year....
Jan 12, 2024•26 min
We continue our discussion with Yascha Mounk, one of the leading public intellectuals of our time. The subject is a hugely influential ideology that attempts to put racial, sexual and gender identity at the center of our social, cultural and political life. The "identity synthesis", Mounk argues, denies that members of different groups can truly understand one another and this stifles public discourse. In this podcast episode, we learn why an obsession with identity undermines social justice, fu...
Dec 29, 2023•32 min
Having skewered right-wing populism and its demagogues in his two previous best-selling books, politics professor, writer, and podcaster Yasha Mounk turns now to the threat posed to liberalism from those progressives who champion "woke" identity politics. We discuss his latest, " The Identity Trap : A Story of Ideas and Power In Our Time ." This episode— the first of two with Yasha Mounk — looks at the complex roots of a highly influential ideology based on personal identity— specifically race, ...
Dec 15, 2023•32 min
Yes, it's our 400th episode. But instead of looking back over the past eight-and-a-half years of our podcasts, we consider the future: How collective optimism or pessimism can have a huge impact on the economy, risk taking, and the acceptance of new technologies that spark growth and innovation. Our guest is scholar and journalist James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute, author of " The Conservative Futurist : How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised." In this episode he ar...
Dec 01, 2023•36 min
Affective polarization in America – the gap between voters' positive feelings about their own political party or "side" and negative feelings toward the opposing party – has sharply increased during the past two decades. We speak with two leaders in local government and a nationwide students group about effective ways to bridge divides. Erica Manuel is CEO and Executive Director at the Institute for Local Government in Roseville, California. She has over 20 years of experience helping public, pr...
Nov 17, 2023•30 min
It's easy to look at the impacts of rigid polarization and blame our leaders and political parties, the media, or the education system. In this episode, we hear an argument that the first thing all of us should do is focus on what we can control: ourselves. We discuss how to learn to live with others despite deep divisions. All democracies need protests and debates to flourish. But we also need to respect ourselves and acknowledge the dignity of others. Alexandra Hudson is the author of the new ...
Nov 03, 2023•29 min
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 C...
Oct 20, 2023•28 min
Almost 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...
Oct 06, 2023•34 min
Have 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...
Sep 22, 2023•26 min
Why 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 rese...
Sep 08, 2023•31 min
Toxic 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 n...
Aug 25, 2023•29 min
Why 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 gro...
Aug 11, 2023•28 min
Globalization, 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 ar...
Jul 28, 2023•38 min
Why 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....
Jul 14, 2023•27 min
American 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 ...
Jun 30, 2023•33 min
Ever 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 Chanc...
Jun 16, 2023•32 min
"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...
Jun 02, 2023•29 min
Generative 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 ...
May 18, 2023•29 min•Ep. 386
The 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 an...
May 04, 2023•29 min•Ep. 385
The 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 , 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...
Apr 20, 2023•27 min•Ep. 384
In 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...
Apr 06, 2023•28 min•Ep. 383
