The Beacon Project Podcast

For most of my life, the word “community” evoked images of boring town hall meetings and community centers with faded carpets and janky foosball tables. In the last few years, however, as I dug deeper into ideas for how to escape our current political mess, that changed. I started by reading the work of Robert Putnam, the influential sociologist who documented the crucial role of community associa...

Was America always this polarized? How did we get here? And what can we do to foster better communication across lines of difference among the next generation? I explore these questions in my conversation with Caroline Mehl, the Co-Founder and Executive Director at the Constructive Dialogue Institute (CDI). For the past decade, Caroline has been at the forefront of helping young people on college...

What does moral patriotism require of us in moments when institutions fall short? How should we navigate polarization without giving up on civility? What does everyday civic bravery look like in ordinary American life? These are the questions I tackled today with Ted Johnson, Senior Fellow at New America and columnist at The Washington Post. Ted Johnson is a deep thinker with a wide range of perso...

I had a blast speaking with author and speaker Mónica Guzmán , founder and CEO of Reclaim Curiosity. Mónica is one of the most dynamic, engaging, and thoughtful speakers how there on how to navigate our thorniest political disagreements. Her solution: radical curiosity . Curiosity is the antidote to our fears, or misperceptions, our biases. It opens our minds and breaks down walls. All of this is...

There are few people working in social psychology—or anywhere else, for that matter—who are as dynamic, creative, productive, or insightful as Jay Van Bavel . I was lucky enough to have Jay as an advisor in grad school. My first memory of Jay is stepping into his office on a whim during my first week and noticing a chess board on his desk. I asked him if he wanted to play and he agreed. We spent t...

I thoroughly enjoyed this wide-ranging conversation with Dan Cox , the Founder and Director of the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute. Dan has done some of the most impressive work around on the issues affecting Americans in their everyday lives, studying topics like social connection , dating , gender , community , parenting , and generational changes . He’s also...

Today I’m speaking with Ben Klutsey , the Executive Director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. I first met Ben at a convening in Chicago a few years ago and was immediately impressed by his curiosity, thoughtful perspective, and optimistic worldview. Ben comes from the “classical liberal” tradition—an intellectual viewpoint that prioritizes the value of markets to solve social pro...

Big things are happening at the Beacon Project! Last week we released our first article on a new framework for America’s Exhausted Majority ; this week we are launching a podcast! Over the coming weeks, I’ll be hosting a series of interesting conversations with leaders in civil society and academia on some of the biggest issues facing our democracy, on topics ranging from polarization to culture t...