Alex: welcome to the Congressional Communities Podcast, where we bring Congress closer to you. We're your hosts, Alex Clark and Dan Caraceno, and today we're joined by Joan Blades and John Gable. Joan Blades is the co-founder of Living Room Conversations, an open source effort to rebuild respectful civil discourse across party lines. By helping people connect through shared values and personal experiences. Joan first co-founded and sold the software company Berkeley Systems in 1997. An attorney and mediator by training, Joan then co-founded Move On, one of the largest online civic engagement organizations in the United States. And Mom's Rising, a grassroots organization advocating for mothers and families. She's the co-author of award-winning books, including the Motherhood Manifesto. Joan is originally from and is coming to us live from Berkeley, California. And this year she's working on the trustworthy elections collaboration. Joan, thank you for being here today.
Joan Blades: Excited to be joining you.
Alex: Amazing. And we're also joined by John Gable. John is the co-founder and CEO of All Sides, an organization dedicated to helping people better understand each other across political differences and in life. In the 80s, John began his career as a Republican political aide for three US senators, a presidential campaign, and worked on the political team for the Republican National Committee. He then moved into technology, where he served on the original teams behind Microsoft Office, Netscape Navigator, and Mozilla. John now focuses on bridging political divides by helping Americans navigate today's increasingly polarized media landscape. John is originally from Stearns, Kentucky. John, thank you for joining us.
John Gable: Great to be here. This'll be fun.
Dan: Hey Joe and John, thanks again for for joining us today.
John Gable: Yeah, thank you, Dan.
Alex: Really excited. So I want to open up with a question about how you all begin your work. To an outside observer, it looks like you both have crystal balls hiding in your offices. You have anticipated key trends in technology, internet, political division. And I want to talk to you about the foresight you had when beginning your current endeavors. So, Joan, I'll start with you. You you founded Move On in 1998. It's since become one of the largest progressive advocacy groups in the country. It's amassed millions of members. Similar can be said about mom's rising. Then you start living room conversations in 2010, halfway into President Obama's first term. Long before President Trump begins campaigning. What did you see in 2010 that inspired you to co-found living room conversations and achieve something different from your previous successes?
Joan Blades: You noted that I live, I was actually born in Berkeley, California. And I became and I have to mention that move on started around a rather unifying message that Congress should censure the president and move on to pressing issues facing the nation. So people that really disliked Clinton and people that really liked him could both agree that the best thing for the nation was to censure. And move on. But finding the place where we can agree is the way we become a functional society and the way we actually solve problems because I am a mediator by training and inclination. Back in the early 2000s, I started working with a group called Reuniting America because I was really concerned about climate. Well, that was one of the top reasons. And I didn't understand what the why we weren't all focused on this together.
Alex: Right.
Joan Blades: And in that context, I had the opportunity to meet with a lot of people on the right and become friends and better understand what the obstacles were and the way we were seeing things differently, which was the inspiration for living room conversations in 2010. So,
Alex: Mm.
Joan Blades: you know, it's got gotta be all history. The reality is that power with actually gets you to where you want to go to. Power over turns out to be you win battles, but you have more and more battles following that. So to be a functional, successful society, finding ways to work together. And that means working with people we really disagree with on some very key things is essential. But that's why John and I often do things together because we come from very different perspectives. But
Alex: Right.
Joan Blades: I trust him deeply. I know who he is. And even though I sometimes think he's really wrong about something.
John Gable: Yeah.
Alex: Okay.
Joan Blades: We find we're in agreement more than not. And certainly around
Alex: Yeah. Yeah.
Joan Blades: this there's a deep agreement that we have to be working seeing seeing everybody's humanity is at the core of this work and going from
Alex: Yeah, yeah.
Joan Blades: there.
Alex: That's so interesting. So you start you come at this finding a space where you can talk about something that's important to you, which is climate. and through that end up finding conversation with a completely new group of people and saying this is actually where the meat of it. Is we need to continue doing this. John, I want to ask you about your work beginning in all sides. So you begin your work in politics. You're working with the Republican Party. You then move into early stages of internet and technology. And then in 2012 you launch All Sides with the hope of tackling media bias. And media bias is not a new term, but it's it's a different time than the conversations that we're currently having about social media algorithms. And 2010 you couldn't even download Instagram on an Android phone. It's a it's a different world. so what were you seeing then? in politically divided information that others were not.
John Gable: Well actually go back to ninety-seven when I was
Alex: Yeah.
John Gable: where I think of the beginning thoughts about all sides. So Joan's mediator by training, she saw that people weren't listening to each other. I'm a philosophy major from Vanderbilt and and lots of math. And I that year when Joan sold and her co-founder sold Berkeley systems was the year I joined Netscape. And it was also the year I gave a speech and I had just written that that actually kicked off where we are now. So I had just read this book called Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, which described how news changed when it went from the written word to television, because the written word was in the medium where it had a past, present, and future, while television was emotional and immediacy. And so it said that the content of news would change to fit that medium. And it did. And and I was thinking back then, well what will happen When news moves to the internet, what are the major components of the medium, the internet, when news is really being read online? And I thought the internet was a little bit like a this is similar to this, kind of metaphor thinking. And that would train you to think in terms of stereotypes. And I saw some advantages of metaphor thinking over just kind of, you know, emotional reactions. But It also teaches you to think of terms of stereotypes. And I thought back then it would it would train us to discriminate against each other in new ways. We now call that filter bubbles. A lot of things happen differently than I thought, but that part kind of was the core. So I thought that just the way information travels, the communication travels online, would lead to this kind of a division. I didn't never imagine it'd be this bad, but I thought it would go in that direction. So I watched it for a while. And then in 2012, I kind of had enough. I saw the Obama Romney campaign when I worked in politics earlier. there was always at the end of an election just kind of rallying, getting your side excited to turn out. But there was always this period of time where it really was a debate over the concepts about where the country should go, what it should be like, philosophies and policy. That didn't really happen in that campaign. I mean, it's gotten worse since then, but I was like, this my worst fears have really come to roost. And I I remember a couple of years before that, I tried to help my I I lived in California at this point, and I tried to help my friends figure out how to vote on the initiatives. We have lots of initiatives in California. We had like twelve or more on that particular election, maybe fifteen. I can't remember how many. But I thought, well, maybe if I had to spend time. Writing a little bit about each initiative. I'll do a little research on the left and right. I'll make the best argument for both. I'll describe where the money's coming from, what's supporting, what's likely to happen, but I'll do the best job I can. I'm a product manager, team lead for Netscape Navigator. I know about the internet. I used to work in politics. I should be able to figure this out. That was really hard to do in a fair and balanced way. Really, really, really hard. And I concluded that the internet was broken. That I mean, when we were
Alex: Why would
John Gable: early on the internet, the whole idea was that it could be used to better understand the world, understand things better, understand each other, because you could meet people all around the world,
Alex: Right.
John Gable: and it seemed to be doing the opposite in politics. And that's yeah.
Alex: Why was it so difficult?
John Gable: Well, it was hard to get through it all. the internet, there's so much
Alex: Mm.
John Gable: information out there that we're overwhelmed with information. And the way that technology works is to deal with that. It comes up with its own algorithms to make you happy, not to make you wiser or smarter or more able to decide
Alex: Yeah.
John Gable: for yourself, but more happy. And so you get overwhelmed with just one side of a picture or the other. And so you become constantly ignorant. You know, you know much less, but you know it a thousand times.
Alex: Yeah.
John Gable: And so you're really convinced it's true. And then getting out of that bubble, seeing the whole picture. was just really, really difficult to do. It's so overwhelmed with people just pitching emotional stuff, you hardly get to the core. And
Alex: Right.
John Gable: it's actually gotten worse along those lines. And so for those of us working in the internet, where the whole idea was to be able to give you that ability to really decide for yourself, really understand, get to know each other, to extend and the internet's done amazing things, it's done that in lots of ways. When it comes to politics and when there's lots of money involved or lots of power involved or celebrity. It's sometimes doing the exact opposite of what was intended to do.
Alex: Wow, so you're you really it's like sitting in the front seat during the time of working and early internet, you are immediately seeing how quickly you call it filter bubbles are coming up. And you're like, this is just gonna explode and get worse.
John Gable: Well to be fair, I never thought it explode to that to the level that exploded. There's a lot of things about the
Alex: Interesting.
John Gable: business models and and really highly financed special interests really working it that I never imagined. But the groundwork was there.
Alex: Yeah. So I wanna talk about be the beginning of All Sides first. So one one of my favorite things that I found when looking into All Sides is that Jonathan Haidt, who's one of my favorite authors, social psychologist,
John Gable: Same here.
Alex: I found yeah, I thought I thought so. I first discovered him through the righteous mind. People may now know him through the anxious generation. I saw that he reads all sides every day. And one idea from his work that always stays with me is that well-intentioned, reasonable people look at the same events and same facts and sincerely arrive at different conclusions. and I want to ask how that idea, and possibly Jonathan Haidt, because I know that you're also a fan, sort of has shaped the way that you built All Sides.
John Gable: Fundamentally, frankly, and it changed from what we first were doing. We were always about understanding. We really weren't about media bias. That was a means to an end. Media bias was so we could quickly see multiple perspectives on the same news story. So if we understand the bias of different news organizations, we could immediately, as news breaks, show different points of view. But actually I met Jonathan Hyde just before I met Joan Blades, and that was I I Joan, I checked it. It's been eleven years ago now.
Alex: Wow.
John Gable: but and and when Joan and I went on a walk, we immediately understood. She was coming from the human side, I was coming from the information flow side. We immediately realized we we gotta do this together. And Jonathan Haid, who I I met like at this this conference at Esselin, and I met Mark Gerzon who introduced me to Jones. So it's only a couple of months where I kind of entered this world. Of really getting deep into the human relationship and with Jonathan Haidt, the psychology of it. And
Alex: Yeah. Yeah.
John Gable: that changed us to realizing that, I mean, there is a lot of data out there that if you only see one side and you only see people just like you, we all become much more extreme in whatever we believe. And we also become much less tolerant of any person or idea that's different than us. And that's what we're seeing worldwide, not just in the US, but worldwide. And so Our first thought was to get people out of that information filter bubble. But as you dig deeper, there's also this relationship filter bubble and this being able to really listen to understand and appreciate other people. And so they both got to come together if we're really going to get to a place that where we really listen to each other and really solve problems. And we that's very possible. It's been in it done in the past. It's a very human thing. And for all the technology and money involved with. dividing us, we know more about human psychology and how to open ourselves to each other to listen than we've ever had before. It's just a matter of doing it and making that available for everybody.
Alex: Hmm. So you talked about meeting Joan going on a walk and realizing that you needed to do this together. Joan, I would love to hear about this moment that you guys put into action a lot of what you work on. How did you come to the realization that you needed to do this together?
Joan Blades: the walker on it it you know it's it's so clear for both of us that we need both to have relationships and to have good information. But yeah, when I go to academic institutions and talk, one of the early things they say is research shows We don't even listen to each other until we have
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: a relationship with each other. People keep on trying to persuade in very ineffective ways because they think that giving the facts is going to cause people to change their minds. And I often talk about the story about how my friend Jacob and I had very different top priorities, and climate wasn't even on his priority list when I met him. But it got on his priority list, not because I'm such a great advocate. But because he cares about me. And he has another
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: friend. We care about what the people we love care about. Not the same way. But it, you know, we all soften when we have relationships where we're caring. And that, you know, tapping into our shared humanity is the starting point for being a functional and you know thriving society.
Dan: when you're seeing this situation where you have a friend who, you know, climate change isn't on the radar, or they perhaps believe that it's overblown, and then you have somebody who passionately believes it. Especially like within families, and I come from a pretty big family, the t the tendency is To just not talk about those things. I so I'm just wondering, my understanding of what you're doing with living room conversations is I think it's the opposite of that.
Joan Blades: I've learned a lot in the last many years. And one of the things when I was first doing living room conversations was to say, you know, family is the toughest place to go with this because you have this whole history of you know that the ground rules for a living room conversation about respect and listening and curiosity, sometimes you have a lot of baggage with you you gotta let go of to do that part. Nonetheless, we're finding more and more. That's the place where people want this the most because their family relationships have been diminished by the differences and one the great organizers in a part of California that's very mixed, El Dorado County, working in a faith community started with asking people to just talk to each other about where relationships fit in their priority scheme. And almost everybody relationships are their number one value priority. Yet somehow the politics of taking dominance. So having established that with this group, he then talked about how he included had stopped talking about certain things with people and went through a whole exercise, including a abbreviated living room conversation, to give people some practice at building those curiosity and listening skills to be. just hearing each other and then r modeling how you might speak to someone that you hadn't been talking about certain things or that you might even have caught cut off relationships with. So it's really a very conscious choice. And you know building rebuilding trust when it's lost takes a lot longer than losing trust. That's you know what we're experiencing. nationally in personal relationships, often it's you've just stopped talking about things because you're worried about it hurting your relationship, but that also hurts your relationship. And this building the capacity to truly be curious about where someone's coming from, to ask them, you know, how did you how did you come to that understanding? And really wanting to know is powerful. Yeah, that tell me more question is a wonderful opening. And you know, as with every conversation, not everybody's going to be open to it. But for a lot of people, that starts an exchange that deepens the connection and the understanding on both sides.
John Gable: Yeah, I I feel
Alex: Yeah.
John Gable: like I can add a little bit more. It's interesting. I become more like Joan and it's funny, Joan and I talk a lot a lot, and she often promotes all sites. I promote dialogue and living room conversations.
Alex: Yeah.
John Gable: We went to a group that was having these conversations in in Berkeley, actually. And I I want to first of all remind people that yes, we're be we're wired to become tribal and divide and all that. We're also wired to connect. And I think that a great deal of the division is basically where you're very, very human beings are very, very responsive to the environment they're in. If you're in an environment where anger and division is normal, you tend to go that way. If you're an environment where listening to understand is the norm, you tend to go that way. And so there's a great opportunity for us to kind of change the the environment that people find themselves in, and the best will come out. But the Interesting thing is that for all the concerns about family, I actually see the most ex extensive or amazing stories from within families. I'm thinking, I can't remember exactly where we were in Berkeley Joan, but one person is coming up how describing she was progressive and her father is very conservative, and they were angry about with each other about what they thought about Obamacare. She was a very, very, very big proponent of it. He was very, very, very anti-it. And she was describing how they just couldn't talk anymore because it made her so mad. And at one point, she said she finally got to the point where she was actually curious about why he felt that way, not trying to prove him wrong, but actually trying to understand. And she asked him to explain to him her a little bit more why it was important to him. And he said that his entire life has been to provide for his family and to train his kids. To stand for themselves, and a huge part of that was healthcare. To so it was his job as a father to provide and teach his kids how to take care of themselves who are along the lines of healthcare, and the government was taking that away from him. And so emotionally it was horrendous theft from his point of view. And she didn't agree with that, but she understood that. And they and she said they can now have a good relationship just because she understood where he was coming from. And so the arguments about how it'd get more expensive or whatever that he had if he went to more nationalized care or how the, you know, veterans medicine, whatever, wasn't working very well. And that was kind of a smaller guess. And all the all the great data she had, they didn't really convince each other. But when they kind of understood where they were coming from, each other, that changed relationship.
Alex: Yeah, I think that's such a that is a key, I mean, principle of living room conversations and something that stood out to me is participants are encouraged to speak on experience and not opinion. And that is the guiding light to get to those moments of we're not actually talking about a disagreement over Obamacare. I wanna know why. This is so important to you because I don't understand that right now. don't I
John Gable: Those conversation
Dan: Joan,
Alex: under
Dan: I'm
John Gable: guides are magical.
Dan: sorry to interrupt.
John Gable: They're magic they really are magical. And I want to emphasize
Alex: Yes.
John Gable: that because Joan won't go that far, but they really are. they they really I I describe it to people,
Dan: Th the the actual the actual conversations.
Joan Blades: Yeah.
John Gable: the the conversation guides that they have. I describe
Alex: Mm.
John Gable: it to people who want to get to the point as you kind of accidentally discover the humanity of the other person and then you make progress from there. And it they really are pretty po very powerful in the way that they're structured.
Dan: Can you give an example that differentiates between the two so that people can understand it?
Joan Blades: One of the most powerful stories I got told was by a pastor in Idaho and he talked about a it was a guns and responsibility conversation. And the particular table he was at had two men that were ready to die for their Second Amendment rights and a woman that had been traumatized by guns, not once but many times. And the kind of questions asked in that is, you know, how did you learn about guns? Have you know have guns had impact on your life? And so they heard, you know, she heard about how these guns were a part of these men's growing up, their connection with their fathers, their connections, you know, with the next generation.
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: And the men heard just how traumatized she had been in the different situations. And there were a couple other people at the table too, but everybody talked about their experiences. And they went away with appreciation for the other point of view. And you know, we can, and it's really valuable on polarized issues like guns and immigration. But it's also really beautiful with conversations like forgiveness and the search for purpose. And just more often a very good place to start in a conversation with someone that you are not fully comfortable with is a place where you talk about your values, technology and relationships. Left and right doesn't matter, age makes all the difference in the world as you talk about how technology has impacted relationships in both good and bad ways. It's it's a
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: wonderful starting place. The other thing I'll note is I had the the climate conversation in Utah a number of years ago with people that were going to do a panel the following day. And the conversation ended at nine. And they had to be kicked out at level. Because what it does is it opens people up to all of a sudden being able to talk much more deeply. So the conversation is very defined container that
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: has you answering questions and everyone taking turns and listening. It's a listening practice.
Alex: Mm.
Joan Blades: But once you've completed that, then you are you have these increased skills, these new relationships, and you have built some trust so you can go way further. The living room conversation is a launching pad for so much more.
Dan: How how did the pastor get those people in that room and how many people typically are in a room for for a living room conversation?
Joan Blades: Okay, so it started in living rooms, but there are faith communities and libraries and schools that do them regularly. And in that case, people break up into small groups. So this faith community had been having monthly living room conversations and they, you know, they were politically diverse and they had chosen to talk about the challenging things that people weren't talking about. And because In a family and in a faith community, if you cut off certain conversations, it makes that community feel less connected and they wanted to be truly connected. And so this was one of the monthly gatherings, and generally I think they had 30 to 50 people come for
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: a conversations and break into groups.
John Gable: And then we should talk
Dan: Okay.
John Gable: about what Joan and I have been doing together to go greater scale. So
Alex: Yes.
John Gable: even though we always want to have conversations in small groups, you can have hundreds of thousands of small groups.
Alex: Mm.
John Gable: we started that in schools, not only within a school, but even between schools in something we call mismatch. We have schools in the north or south, or one of my favorite hearings is a very conservative Utah school and a very progressive New York school. talking with students in small groups of four to six online. And in fact, this I think Right after this podcast airs, August eleventh, that week we're having a national round table on the American dream. And we're expecting over a thousand people to participate online. And they're automatically mismatched, like the world's worst dating app. We mismatch people into different groups that are different than they are. And then they follow a Living Room Conversation guide and talk with each other about what the American dream means to them and how to achieve that. And then All Sides use some of our own technology to to analyze all these conversations anonymously and then share with all the participants. And Nesweek's gonna be doing a new big news story and we're an Sharing it nationally, on what we learned, on what we learned about the different kinds of perceptions on what the American dream means to people and how to get there. And so you have both people the opportunity to have a real, healthy, authentic, real conversation with people who are different than I am and than you are, as well as being able to share that with the people who aren't quite ready for that conversation to see that's a normal thing and to learn about each other.
Joan Blades: And when you think of mismatching,
Alex: go ahead, Jim.
Joan Blades: it's not just politics, it's age, it's gender,
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: it's geography, it's you know circumstances. And it's really fun. That's the thing. We're
John Gable: Urban, rural, ethnicity, everything. Yeah.
Alex: Right, right.
Joan Blades: we're really serious about this. But the reality of having these conversations
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: is it's fun. You know, we go on vacations to have adventures. Here's an adventure in your own living room. Right. It's kind of amazing.
John Gable: If you don't if you don't believe
Alex: Right.
John Gable: her, our stats show when we go back and we've done this before, in the different events we've done, somewhere between eighty eight and ninety-three percent of the people want to do it again. so it's
Alex: Wow.
John Gable: it's fun. It really is.
Dan: That's really great.
John Gable: People are told to be afraid to talk with each other and we want to do it so much across
Alex: So unique Yeah.
John Gable: differences that we when we finally have a chance to do it in a healthy way, it's glorious. It's fabulous. It's really fun.
Alex: Tell us about why you chose the topic of of the American Dream this year. I know that your last the last roundtable you did with Newsweek was on political violence. why the American dream as a topic now?
John Gable: Well, this is actually a collaboration with Living Room Sound Conversations and All Sites and Newsweek. And we're thinking about what might be interesting. And there was a Gallup did a report on the different kinds of ideas that people have around the American dream. And so it just kind of evolved organically towards that positive looking for America 250 as we're defining what we want the next future, hopefully 250 years America will look like. After the last 250. Rather than just kind of worrying about what's wrong, let's talk about, let's aspire to something new. So that was the driver behind it. Then we brought in some sponsors like Nationwide and other partners like Braver Angels and Convergence and NCDD. And if you go to our site, you'll see dozens of groups that are sponsoring this and supporting it. but it evolved to something really around a forward-looking place.
Alex: What a great way to mark the two fiftieth and and open up discussion about it. I'm curious about how about these roundtables. I think it's such an interesting growth moment for all sides and a partnership with so many people that are doing great work. and I'm curious about how you go about bringing the right people to the table. When I first hear about something like this opportunity, obviously I signed up. I'm excited, but clearly I'm inclined to have conversations like this outside of the roundtable. How do you go about finding people who may not feel as enticed to step into that room and get probably who needs to be there? at at the at these events.
John Gable: Yeah, but it's interesting. There are lots of different things we do. And all sides, when last time we did a survey and it's been true year after year, we have an almost exact s equal percentage of left and right Republican Democrats coming to our site. and
Alex: Interesting.
John Gable: it's often not that people need to be there. I I give I'll give you a good example.
Alex: Yeah.
John Gable: In Carmel, Indiana, there was a local community that wanted to the city government and some local Chamber of Commerce and other groups. were worried about the problem of affordability for homes, home affordability. And so we worked with them and they did a local round table and online because you do these things in person, which are fabulous. We've also tested, actually Joan tested doing it both online and in person. It saw that he had the same positive results if you do it online in a very specific
Alex: Mm.
John Gable: way, like when you see them, you hear them, you're set up correctly. And I mean, I think they only had like 65 or so participants, but it was from the breadth of the community. And 65 is pretty good to spend an hour and a half talking about. And they've actually had other things before and after that. But what's most interesting is that people didn't go because they should be there. They went because they were interested in making homes affordable. And they had public officials and they had local business and they had local homeowners or local people trying to rent and or renting and trying to own a home. So they had that diversity supported by the local press. And actually see a world, even though we're very excited about this national conversation about the American dream. I think the bigger action is going to happen at the community level, where we'll be able to have different communities discussing what they care about and actually bringing in a variety of people in each community. into that conversation. And we're working with the American Library Association, for example, and they see themselves as community hubs, and they are a part of what we're doing. As well as a lot of other, and schools are a huge part of what we're doing. We've been used for years in all 50 states in schools. There's a much a great deal of hunger for this. Not a lot of publicity around it because it's
Alex: Mm.
John Gable: not a lot of money to upset people. And most of the money goes to showing
Alex: Sure.
John Gable: you why you're right and those other evil people are wrong and evil. And this doesn't fit in that category. But in terms of actual activity, there is a huge amount going on in this space. And I remember Princeton did a study, I think it's like three years ago now. And back then, they listed over 5,000 different organizations in the US alone that were dedicated to bridging one way or the other. And it's a lot more now than it was back then. But it's not very newsworthy because it's positive
Alex: Mm-hmm.
John Gable: and helpful.
Alex: the power that can come from working with different local groups and saying, you are leading this conversation in so many ways already. G let's do let's give you a platform and a structure to really make this constructive. And I think The work that you're doing with election trust connects with this so well of tapping into the power of local communities to really start change there. And I think it connects so well with what Congressional Communities does. This is so much of why we wanted you on. Tell us about why now in 2026 you're working on trust in elections and really working at a local level.
Joan Blades: Trustworthy elections are something that everybody wants. And one of the beautiful things about this initiative is we've got a collaborator, collaboration between all sorts of good leaders in the bridging space, not just all sides, but Interfaith America and NCD and you know it's its civity. It's lovely. And the reason why is, you know, we All want trustworthy elections. Braver Angel spent two years working with almost 200 folks left and right, facilitated conversations, hundreds of consensus points, and came up with three principles out of that. And the first principle voting should be easy, cheating should be hard. And that's something that local communities have the ability to look into and to be sure it's in fact voting is easy and cheating is hard. And we want local communities to be proud of how they run their elections. We had our first report back on this. And you know we have an election coming up. Let's go for aspirational rather than fear
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: in this case. The opportunity at this time is to create what we want to be. And local communities can do that. So Jane Anderson of Mormon Women for Ethical Government did the work using the Interfaith America Guide, got her some of her group going and learning more about local actions, talking to the Secretary of State, and came back with a report back that, you know, in terms of scale from one to five, everybody moved up at least a point. on understanding how elections are working, on trusting how they work. So we can do this and it builds trust and connections locally. We need to do that nationwide. And that could be a drum beat of stories. That's what we're hoping it can be. So that we have tens of
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: thousands of communities saying, we do it right here. We're really proud of our local elections. And then with all sides, roundtables, we can allow a national conversation to happen because we need to trust our local elections and we need to trust our national elections too. And so it's the beginning, an opportunity to build trust in a place where we have consensus of that's something we all want. Let's do it and do it this year. It's not something to put off. Do it now, do it better all the time, and let it be the start of creating the American dream we are, we all want, because I bet there's going to be a lot of overlap in our American dream stories that we could dig into together. So how do we focus on what we want and make it happen?
John Gable: Joan and I are helpful not just because we come from the information first and then relationship and then Joan's relationship, but but Joan's on the left and I'm I'm lean right. and like I help her with words and she helps me with words. So like she went from trustworthy, which everybody agrees with, to trust. And some people on the right would say, Well, I shouldn't trust an election if it's not really trustworthy. And so we helped each other with that. And I when she was wearing this earlier, I think I helped you think about trustworthy, because there's concern that people have. You know, you've seen stuff in New Jersey, you see stuff in voter roles where there are lots of voter roles that are twenty years old
Alex: Yeah.
John Gable: and o or or haven't are aren't allowed to be viewed or whatever. And so there are people who are concerned about whether it's trustworthy. and it's not so much necessarily
Alex: Mm-hmm.
John Gable: the great poll workers which which do great job, but like all the other systems. And then you see gerrymandering and on both sides, and you see other ways to manipulate it. So it's it's you can get into the issue, but the key is saying, hey, we care about making them trustworthy so we can all have a reliable system, and that's where we come together. But it does help a great deal. So within all sites, we have our our three. leads are left, center, and right. And we have throughout our company, in fact on our team page, we even
Alex: Right.
John Gable: show people where each person is on the political spectrum. So we have a big mix and we we check on each other and argue with each other and debate with each other to make sure that we
Alex: Mm-hmm.
John Gable: we have all those different perspectives. And Joan started living conversations somebody on the right as well. So it's it's a core piece of not just having the aspiration of listening and understanding. But operationally bringing in the other side with what you're doing at the core, not being like w from one side say, well, we'll try to take care of them. But bring them inside to help you get to a better place.
Alex: Right. And it sounds like Joan, the example that you gave of I'm I wanna get the name correct. The Mormon women for
Joan Blades: For ethical government. Weg.
Alex: for ethical government. Love it. So Mormon women for ethical government, one of one of the leaders there worked with having a conversation in a sort of a different way of bringing people in the room and giving people access and information to what voting actually looks like and
Joan Blades: He got them
Alex: saw an increase interest immediately.
Joan Blades: Yeah, she got them into the place where they do
Alex: It's amazing.
Joan Blades: the election work so that her team of women really understood how elections are run and you know what the process was. Yeah. And once we understand the process,
Alex: Right. Right.
Joan Blades: then we have the opportunity to improve it if we see the opportunity to improve it, or we feel like, huh, I trust these people. The other thing is election workers. have been under attack in some cases. We need to value our election workers and have them feel supported. this is our system altogether. We need to take care of it and, you know, do all the things that cause it to be robust and worthy. Yeah, it's a it's a different kind of garden, but we need to take care of it.
Dan: There's all these things. You have you have the gerrymandering that's now going on that rather than running an election every year, I'm sorry, changing district lines every 10 years, now we're changing them you know, Congress to Congress. And it's being done to essentially create districts that are non-competitive. So people say, Well go out and vote, but if you go to some things online and you say, how many of these districts are actually competitive because of the way they draw them? Not always because of the way they draw them, and not all gerrymandering, but it makes it hard. So I'm just sort of curious about what what you're all like, how do you connect what your work is doing to to to the legislative piece?
Joan Blades: We have a few conversations about structural reforms and clearly the dynamics are not pushing us in the right way right now. It's like independents. How do they get to vote in some states? It's and now that there's a majority of independents in a lot of cases, more than Democrats, more than Republicans, how can they be excluded from the primaries? They are in some places, right? the nature of the two-party system is not serving us well right now. I don't know what the fix is, but the ability to have real conversations about that, about you know, is ranked choice voting a good thing? The living room conversations are, I hope, one vehicle among many to start thinking about. what people want and how we can make things better.
John Gable: Yeah, the it's interesting the you talked about gerrymandering. I worked against gerrymandering in the eighties. And at that time there was the the worst state at the time was the l was was California. And there's actually one district that was only contiguous, only one body at low tide. It's split in two at high tide. So
Dan: Ha ha.
John Gable: this has been going on for a long, long time. It's going to a whole new level. But I think that there was Like I could not believe it was not a top issue back in the eighties. Like it upset me so fundamentally
Alex: Mm-hmm.
John Gable: about my idea of what American democratic system, a democratic republic should look like. and there are lots of other ways to manipulate the vote. and I I can give you lots of data about that. But there's a lot of that going on. I do like Joan's idea of you know, trying to help independence and there's actually A proposal that they're looking at in Ohio and may it maybe bring it to California as well for top three primaries. Cause if you have the top three out of a primary, there's more room for independent. And if you actually do the math on top two primaries, when you just have the top two results, you tend to have the same kind of extreme Republican or extreme extreme Democrat coming out of that system when you do the math. So top three works much better. It represents people a little bit better.
Joan Blades: And I have to mention money in politics because that's just such a call. There's there's so many things
Alex: You have to.
Joan Blades: we could do to make our system more representative, better. and it's it's really hard to do. The reason I'm so excited about the trustworthy elections effort is that is a very tangible step that people can see. You know, my move on background says to me, this is a moment where people could see this as actionable, their participation makes a difference, and that we could collectively make a big difference. And it's got a time element that's like, we got to do this now. and then my dream is that would lead to some of the reforms that really are needed. Gerrymandering definitely, you know, we need a universal gerrymand gerrymandering agreement that just ends it everywhere.
Alex: gonna be interesting to see what happens when holding.
John Gable: J Jones Jones, you know, a little bit left. So she likes a centralized solution. And I may not go for the same solution that she does, but I have very much the same concern
Dan: The average member of Congress spends for every hour they spend in a town hall, they
John Gable: Mm-hmm.
Dan: spend a hundred hours raising money for their election. And the amount of money that they're trying to raise is about a million dollars a year. I think each member has to raise something like I'm actually a little high on that. I think it's like 1.6 million, 1.7. That's the expectation that over your two years, I believe it's a two-year period, they're supposed to raise that much money. And you look at that and say, okay, a lot of other countries fund their elections, and they don't give access to, they don't create this dynamic. You know, you reward the incentives you create lead to the outcomes that the incentives imply. So if if the people are donating to elections in large amounts, and now the amount is unlimited, they expect something in return and they get something in return. in front of us. And yeah, I I don't know if there was a question there.
Joan Blades: You've got deep agreement on my part. It's like
John Gable: And and some agreement and some disagreement on my part. And so let's actually let's
Dan: Okay, great.
John Gable: workshop this a little bit. So, first of all, Joan and I actually got to present to Congress a few years ago to a joint committee that was a bipartisan committee on the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. you have very long names of different committees Congress. And we presented the idea of roundtables before we actually had built it. And both Republicans and Democrats in that room were very interested. So congressmen don't really know whether constituents really want, because of the current system, town halls don't work very well. there was one congressman who was having a weekly phone call when they invited people, but it was kind of like a town hall mess. And so we actually can bring Congress. elected officials and also people running for office, the ability to actually understand what their constituents really do care about. Because right now there's so much noise in the lobbyists and in the fundraisers and all that that they can't hear what their what their constituents actually want. And they would like to for the most part. so we can give them that ability. Now in terms of the money side, the you have I'm on your side you talk about how it typical Congressional district has seven hundred and fifty thousand people. Well, if you look at that and you talk about raising twice that a million and a half or so to run for Congress, that's two dollars per person. is that a lot? It does seem like a lot to me, but the question is not what whether's so one way is saying, is there too much money? The other way is saying, where is the money coming from? Who are they accountable to? And one I I remember having a discussion with Milton Friedman on a similar issue long time ago and issue I cared about a long in in in government. I said, well, you know, if you just did this, this would solve the problem. He said, well, John, I bet your idea would work. But by the time it gets passed by Congress, by the time it becomes law, it becomes some weird version. Your great idea isn't what comes through. Something else comes through. And what he come up with is a locked-in government solution that actually made matters worse. Now that we can make legislation that makes matters better. So I'm not completely lay hands off, but be very careful about what's actually passed. In my mind, people talk about Citizens United as being the milestone that broke things. I actually see the McCain Feingold bill, which led to Citizens United as the driver of the worst scenario we're in right now. And it was very well intentioned, but at the time people were saying, well if you Do McCain Feingold and take money out and control in such a way that parties can't control it, you're going to end up having money is going to get through somehow. And what's happened is that instead of having parties that are motivated to have a ruling majority, you now have a lot of special interests that could care less whether there's a ruling majority or not. They just have to keep their people angry and upset about their issues. They don't really want to solve it, they want to survive. And so the best thing to do is to make the problem bigger and look like you're solving it, but never solve it. And so there are I don't think we made it better with our last attempt. I think there are things we could do to make it better. Don't misunderstand me. But be very careful with the knee-jerk, aha, let's get government to pay for it. Because then you're just moving who controls the money, and they may not control it in the way that comes out with the goals you want. So I'm not really arguing against, I'm just saying be very careful.
Alex: so I just want to wind us down by asking a few rapid fire questions to both of you. they're rapid fire and intent, but take your time. so the first question for both of you is what is one thing that you wish more people knew?
Joan Blades: I started the conversation with the concept of power with as being long-term thinking and power over being winning battles but having ongoing the fight just continues. I wish people knew that we need to figure out power with. In other words, if we're going to solve healthcare, climate change, you name your issue that has complexity. We need to do it together. Because if you've got an everlasting fight, it just goes on and on.
Dan: Thank you.
John Gable: I I'm thinking along the lines of people should I I want people to understand that connecting with each other and understanding each other, particularly across divides, is a beautiful, wonderful, fat fabulous thing that connecting in shallow ways leaves us isolated and in pain, even though it might be an okay dopamine hit. But deeper connection, which we as human beings long for are strengthened by our differences, not by our similarities. And to embrace that.
Alex: Okay, we'll start with you, Joan. What is one way that people can support your cause?
Joan Blades: I'm hoping they will do local elections work and then move on to the national. And also join the conversation about the American dream this coming week because it's going to be a great conversation. And I'm going to be there. Who knows? Maybe we'll talk.
Dan: How how do they do that? How do they join that?
Alex: How do people
Joan Blades: Go to all sides and I'm guessing it's right on the front page, right, John?
John Gable: Allsides.com is the easiest thing or allsides.com slash American Dream. And it should be on the Liver Room Conversations homepage too. If it's not, put it there, Joan, because it's really both of us doing this together.
Alex: what is one way that people can support your cause?
John Gable: Yeah, Joan and I are tough about giving people one thing. but to help all sites, if you
Alex: Take take the take the floor.
John Gable: just go to allsites.com there are and discover it. either use it or share it in your schools or participate in American Dream or just share read the news, get out of your bubble. There's so many different options. So just just go check it out and find out the way that
Alex: Love it.
John Gable: fits you.
Alex: Okay, what is one misconception that people have about your field?
Joan Blades: That everybody has to be in the room. Right now, the people in the room are the people that are concerned about how toxic our social situation is right now. The extremes on both sides
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: aren't there. And that's okay. We need to create a center of gravity that makes it so more and more people are comfortable saying, yes, we're going to be in relationship. And it's not we're not always gonna agree, but we'll do it with respect and we will find a path.
John Gable: I think the biggest
Alex: Love it.
John Gable: misconception is that this is hopeless wishful thinking, that these are just good-dooder, do-gooders doing their own thing. And you talk to academics, you do the research,
Alex: Mm.
John Gable: when you get about 3.5% of a populace engaged in something new and powerful, really engaged in it, that's when culture changes. That's when policy changes, that's when real things happen. And in a nation our size, you're talking about 11 million adults. That's a very achievable number. And we're making progress, but people don't sometimes don't think it's possible until it's already happened. And it's not like a binary happened or not happened, but this is a very, very real, tangible way to create a better future for ourselves, for our families, for our kids, for our individually, for our communities, for our nation. It's very doable. Don't believe all the mass manipulators who try to tell you that you're powerless and it won't work. All the data, all the science says it's very doable. It's a very realistic thing.
Alex: I I can't think of a better segue to our last question, which is what is one thing, large or small, that's given you hope recently.
Joan Blades: I will say that having Jane's story from Arizona just had me tickled pink to see someone that had done the local elections work and everybody clearly felt like it was powerful and they were now gonna be able to go back to their communities and share it further.
John Gable: thing that p chumps into my mind something I just saw last night, which is somebody on our team, Julie Mestrini, was on Tim Poole show, which is a podcast that leans right, although he's kind of old school liberal in lots of ways, but very kind of mainstream. And they were talking about bias and how to get past that and how to hear other people and and what that looks like. and so I've I mean that's just something I saw literally last night. But we're breaking through
Alex: Yeah.
John Gable: to a larger audience and often there's been a little bit more interest in the like in the mediators world and Jones world, it tends to be a little bit more of a left-leaning thing where like where people just a conversation by itself is valuable on its own. Well, the right's like, if I didn't get anything done, why did I bother having conversation? but I'm seeing both left and right. really embracing the need to get out of their bubbles and understand each other better.
Joan Blades: I will note that we have rotary
Dan: That's great.
Joan Blades: in the room too for
Alex: Hopefully.
John Gable: Yeah, which is awesome.
Joan Blades: yeah. Rotary is a big organization, it's not some bridging organization.
John Gable: Yeah.
Joan Blades: If rotary shows up in mass, it could be so powerful.
Dan: Tell people what rotary is.
Joan Blades: Rotary is a a civic organization that is a world ride. They have rotary clubs in most of the cities in this country, I believe, big and small. It's really kind of impressive. They've been around for over a hundred years. John, do you have any background on rotary beyond that?
John Gable: In every little town I go through in rural Kentucky, Michigan, you have a local Kwanis Club, you have a local rotary, and they're all people working their community to make their community stronger. And so that's where this is going to change. we want to help congressmen understand what their constituents want. I actually think the change is going to happen at the at the community level, and then politicians will figure it out and follow. But that's kind of group like groups like rotaries where th real things happen.
Alex: I wanted to do an a a an exchange abroad in high school and I pitched it to my local rotary club and they they gave me money. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah, teeny little town.
John Gable: cool. And they gave you money. That's a huge thing. And it's very community, it's very local. Wasn't in the papers or national.
Dan: Well, that's really cool.
John Gable: It didn't get people riled up against each other. Things like that are beautiful.
Joan Blades: Often local business people.
Alex: Yeah. Dan. All right.
Dan: And thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much for the work you're doing.
Alex: thank you. Thanks for coming on together. I think this is going to be powerful. I think you're modeling relationships that used to be at least somewhat more prevalent, but it what you can see, you can be. So I hope that people see this and are inspired to to pick up the phone and talk to people that they may not always think they would agree with. But
Dan: And you and your round Yeah, your round table
Alex: Thank you so much for talking about your work.
Dan: again next week. though it's the entire week, is that the idea on the American dream?
John Gable: We have it's just a one everybody participates participates in one conversation. They'll be mixed with, mismatched with people different than they are. But we have lots of opportunities for people to do that. So, we have four different days. You could choose any time within those four different days, and then you could be mismatched with some other people and have a transformative or exciting, very fun conversation.
Alex: Week of August tenth. We'll see you there.
Dan: And and it's and it's going to all sides dot are you
John Gable: Dot com.
Dan: dot com
John Gable: Yeah. Yeah.
Dan: dot com? Okay. And
Alex: Yeah.
Dan: and possibly also on Living Room Conversations homepage. But either either way, visit both sites. So thank you.
Joan Blades: And it's living room conversations dot org, just you know, classic
Dan: okay, thank you.
Joan Blades: progressive and conservative, what can I say?
Alex: There you go. Perfect. I love it.
Dan: Well well,
Alex: Thank you so much.
Joan Blades: Thank you.
Dan: Okay.
John Gable: Thank you. That
Joan Blades: Excited to be joining you.
Alex: Amazing. And we're also joined by John Gable. John is the co-founder and CEO of All Sides, an organization dedicated to helping people better understand each other across political differences and in life. In the 80s, John began his career as a Republican political aide for three US senators, a presidential campaign, and worked on the political team for the Republican National Committee. He then moved into technology, where he served on the original teams behind Microsoft Office, Netscape Navigator, and Mozilla. John now focuses on bridging political divides by helping Americans navigate today's increasingly polarized media landscape. John is originally from Stearns, Kentucky. John, thank you for joining us.
John Gable: Great to be here. This'll be fun.
Dan: Hey Joe and John, thanks again for for joining us today.
John Gable: Yeah, thank you, Dan.
Alex: Really excited. So I want to open up with a question about how you all begin your work. To an outside observer, it looks like you both have crystal balls hiding in your offices. You have anticipated key trends in technology, internet, political division. And I want to talk to you about the foresight you had when beginning your current endeavors. So, Joan, I'll start with you. You you founded Move On in 1998. It's since become one of the largest progressive advocacy groups in the country. It's amassed millions of members. Similar can be said about mom's rising. Then you start living room conversations in 2010, halfway into President Obama's first term. Long before President Trump begins campaigning. What did you see in 2010 that inspired you to co-found living room conversations and achieve something different from your previous successes?
Joan Blades: You noted that I live, I was actually born in Berkeley, California. And I became and I have to mention that move on started around a rather unifying message that Congress should censure the president and move on to pressing issues facing the nation. So people that really disliked Clinton and people that really liked him could both agree that the best thing for the nation was to censure. And move on. But finding the place where we can agree is the way we become a functional society and the way we actually solve problems because I am a mediator by training and inclination. Back in the early 2000s, I started working with a group called Reuniting America because I was really concerned about climate. Well, that was one of the top reasons. And I didn't understand what the why we weren't all focused on this together.
Alex: Right.
Joan Blades: And in that context, I had the opportunity to meet with a lot of people on the right and become friends and better understand what the obstacles were and the way we were seeing things differently, which was the inspiration for living room conversations in 2010. So,
Alex: Mm.
Joan Blades: you know, it's got gotta be all history. The reality is that power with actually gets you to where you want to go to. Power over turns out to be you win battles, but you have more and more battles following that. So to be a functional, successful society, finding ways to work together. And that means working with people we really disagree with on some very key things is essential. But that's why John and I often do things together because we come from very different perspectives. But
Alex: Right.
Joan Blades: I trust him deeply. I know who he is. And even though I sometimes think he's really wrong about something.
John Gable: Yeah.
Alex: Okay.
Joan Blades: We find we're in agreement more than not. And certainly around
Alex: Yeah. Yeah.
Joan Blades: this there's a deep agreement that we have to be working seeing seeing everybody's humanity is at the core of this work and going from
Alex: Yeah, yeah.
Joan Blades: there.
Alex: That's so interesting. So you start you come at this finding a space where you can talk about something that's important to you, which is climate. and through that end up finding conversation with a completely new group of people and saying this is actually where the meat of it. Is we need to continue doing this. John, I want to ask you about your work beginning in all sides. So you begin your work in politics. You're working with the Republican Party. You then move into early stages of internet and technology. And then in 2012 you launch All Sides with the hope of tackling media bias. And media bias is not a new term, but it's it's a different time than the conversations that we're currently having about social media algorithms. And 2010 you couldn't even download Instagram on an Android phone. It's a it's a different world. so what were you seeing then? in politically divided information that others were not.
John Gable: Well actually go back to ninety-seven when I was
Alex: Yeah.
John Gable: where I think of the beginning thoughts about all sides. So Joan's mediator by training, she saw that people weren't listening to each other. I'm a philosophy major from Vanderbilt and and lots of math. And I that year when Joan sold and her co-founder sold Berkeley systems was the year I joined Netscape. And it was also the year I gave a speech and I had just written that that actually kicked off where we are now. So I had just read this book called Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, which described how news changed when it went from the written word to television, because the written word was in the medium where it had a past, present, and future, while television was emotional and immediacy. And so it said that the content of news would change to fit that medium. And it did. And and I was thinking back then, well what will happen When news moves to the internet, what are the major components of the medium, the internet, when news is really being read online? And I thought the internet was a little bit like a this is similar to this, kind of metaphor thinking. And that would train you to think in terms of stereotypes. And I saw some advantages of metaphor thinking over just kind of, you know, emotional reactions. But It also teaches you to think of terms of stereotypes. And I thought back then it would it would train us to discriminate against each other in new ways. We now call that filter bubbles. A lot of things happen differently than I thought, but that part kind of was the core. So I thought that just the way information travels, the communication travels online, would lead to this kind of a division. I didn't never imagine it'd be this bad, but I thought it would go in that direction. So I watched it for a while. And then in 2012, I kind of had enough. I saw the Obama Romney campaign when I worked in politics earlier. there was always at the end of an election just kind of rallying, getting your side excited to turn out. But there was always this period of time where it really was a debate over the concepts about where the country should go, what it should be like, philosophies and policy. That didn't really happen in that campaign. I mean, it's gotten worse since then, but I was like, this my worst fears have really come to roost. And I I remember a couple of years before that, I tried to help my I I lived in California at this point, and I tried to help my friends figure out how to vote on the initiatives. We have lots of initiatives in California. We had like twelve or more on that particular election, maybe fifteen. I can't remember how many. But I thought, well, maybe if I had to spend time. Writing a little bit about each initiative. I'll do a little research on the left and right. I'll make the best argument for both. I'll describe where the money's coming from, what's supporting, what's likely to happen, but I'll do the best job I can. I'm a product manager, team lead for Netscape Navigator. I know about the internet. I used to work in politics. I should be able to figure this out. That was really hard to do in a fair and balanced way. Really, really, really hard. And I concluded that the internet was broken. That I mean, when we were
Alex: Why would
John Gable: early on the internet, the whole idea was that it could be used to better understand the world, understand things better, understand each other, because you could meet people all around the world,
Alex: Right.
John Gable: and it seemed to be doing the opposite in politics. And that's yeah.
Alex: Why was it so difficult?
John Gable: Well, it was hard to get through it all. the internet, there's so much
Alex: Mm.
John Gable: information out there that we're overwhelmed with information. And the way that technology works is to deal with that. It comes up with its own algorithms to make you happy, not to make you wiser or smarter or more able to decide
Alex: Yeah.
John Gable: for yourself, but more happy. And so you get overwhelmed with just one side of a picture or the other. And so you become constantly ignorant. You know, you know much less, but you know it a thousand times.
Alex: Yeah.
John Gable: And so you're really convinced it's true. And then getting out of that bubble, seeing the whole picture. was just really, really difficult to do. It's so overwhelmed with people just pitching emotional stuff, you hardly get to the core. And
Alex: Right.
John Gable: it's actually gotten worse along those lines. And so for those of us working in the internet, where the whole idea was to be able to give you that ability to really decide for yourself, really understand, get to know each other, to extend and the internet's done amazing things, it's done that in lots of ways. When it comes to politics and when there's lots of money involved or lots of power involved or celebrity. It's sometimes doing the exact opposite of what was intended to do.
Alex: Wow, so you're you really it's like sitting in the front seat during the time of working and early internet, you are immediately seeing how quickly you call it filter bubbles are coming up. And you're like, this is just gonna explode and get worse.
John Gable: Well to be fair, I never thought it explode to that to the level that exploded. There's a lot of things about the
Alex: Interesting.
John Gable: business models and and really highly financed special interests really working it that I never imagined. But the groundwork was there.
Alex: Yeah. So I wanna talk about be the beginning of All Sides first. So one one of my favorite things that I found when looking into All Sides is that Jonathan Haidt, who's one of my favorite authors, social psychologist,
John Gable: Same here.
Alex: I found yeah, I thought I thought so. I first discovered him through the righteous mind. People may now know him through the anxious generation. I saw that he reads all sides every day. And one idea from his work that always stays with me is that well-intentioned, reasonable people look at the same events and same facts and sincerely arrive at different conclusions. and I want to ask how that idea, and possibly Jonathan Haidt, because I know that you're also a fan, sort of has shaped the way that you built All Sides.
John Gable: Fundamentally, frankly, and it changed from what we first were doing. We were always about understanding. We really weren't about media bias. That was a means to an end. Media bias was so we could quickly see multiple perspectives on the same news story. So if we understand the bias of different news organizations, we could immediately, as news breaks, show different points of view. But actually I met Jonathan Hyde just before I met Joan Blades, and that was I I Joan, I checked it. It's been eleven years ago now.
Alex: Wow.
John Gable: but and and when Joan and I went on a walk, we immediately understood. She was coming from the human side, I was coming from the information flow side. We immediately realized we we gotta do this together. And Jonathan Haid, who I I met like at this this conference at Esselin, and I met Mark Gerzon who introduced me to Jones. So it's only a couple of months where I kind of entered this world. Of really getting deep into the human relationship and with Jonathan Haidt, the psychology of it. And
Alex: Yeah. Yeah.
John Gable: that changed us to realizing that, I mean, there is a lot of data out there that if you only see one side and you only see people just like you, we all become much more extreme in whatever we believe. And we also become much less tolerant of any person or idea that's different than us. And that's what we're seeing worldwide, not just in the US, but worldwide. And so Our first thought was to get people out of that information filter bubble. But as you dig deeper, there's also this relationship filter bubble and this being able to really listen to understand and appreciate other people. And so they both got to come together if we're really going to get to a place that where we really listen to each other and really solve problems. And we that's very possible. It's been in it done in the past. It's a very human thing. And for all the technology and money involved with. dividing us, we know more about human psychology and how to open ourselves to each other to listen than we've ever had before. It's just a matter of doing it and making that available for everybody.
Alex: Hmm. So you talked about meeting Joan going on a walk and realizing that you needed to do this together. Joan, I would love to hear about this moment that you guys put into action a lot of what you work on. How did you come to the realization that you needed to do this together?
Joan Blades: the walker on it it you know it's it's so clear for both of us that we need both to have relationships and to have good information. But yeah, when I go to academic institutions and talk, one of the early things they say is research shows We don't even listen to each other until we have
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: a relationship with each other. People keep on trying to persuade in very ineffective ways because they think that giving the facts is going to cause people to change their minds. And I often talk about the story about how my friend Jacob and I had very different top priorities, and climate wasn't even on his priority list when I met him. But it got on his priority list, not because I'm such a great advocate. But because he cares about me. And he has another
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: friend. We care about what the people we love care about. Not the same way. But it, you know, we all soften when we have relationships where we're caring. And that, you know, tapping into our shared humanity is the starting point for being a functional and you know thriving society.
Dan: when you're seeing this situation where you have a friend who, you know, climate change isn't on the radar, or they perhaps believe that it's overblown, and then you have somebody who passionately believes it. Especially like within families, and I come from a pretty big family, the t the tendency is To just not talk about those things. I so I'm just wondering, my understanding of what you're doing with living room conversations is I think it's the opposite of that.
Joan Blades: I've learned a lot in the last many years. And one of the things when I was first doing living room conversations was to say, you know, family is the toughest place to go with this because you have this whole history of you know that the ground rules for a living room conversation about respect and listening and curiosity, sometimes you have a lot of baggage with you you gotta let go of to do that part. Nonetheless, we're finding more and more. That's the place where people want this the most because their family relationships have been diminished by the differences and one the great organizers in a part of California that's very mixed, El Dorado County, working in a faith community started with asking people to just talk to each other about where relationships fit in their priority scheme. And almost everybody relationships are their number one value priority. Yet somehow the politics of taking dominance. So having established that with this group, he then talked about how he included had stopped talking about certain things with people and went through a whole exercise, including a abbreviated living room conversation, to give people some practice at building those curiosity and listening skills to be. just hearing each other and then r modeling how you might speak to someone that you hadn't been talking about certain things or that you might even have caught cut off relationships with. So it's really a very conscious choice. And you know building rebuilding trust when it's lost takes a lot longer than losing trust. That's you know what we're experiencing. nationally in personal relationships, often it's you've just stopped talking about things because you're worried about it hurting your relationship, but that also hurts your relationship. And this building the capacity to truly be curious about where someone's coming from, to ask them, you know, how did you how did you come to that understanding? And really wanting to know is powerful. Yeah, that tell me more question is a wonderful opening. And you know, as with every conversation, not everybody's going to be open to it. But for a lot of people, that starts an exchange that deepens the connection and the understanding on both sides.
John Gable: Yeah, I I feel
Alex: Yeah.
John Gable: like I can add a little bit more. It's interesting. I become more like Joan and it's funny, Joan and I talk a lot a lot, and she often promotes all sites. I promote dialogue and living room conversations.
Alex: Yeah.
John Gable: We went to a group that was having these conversations in in Berkeley, actually. And I I want to first of all remind people that yes, we're be we're wired to become tribal and divide and all that. We're also wired to connect. And I think that a great deal of the division is basically where you're very, very human beings are very, very responsive to the environment they're in. If you're in an environment where anger and division is normal, you tend to go that way. If you're an environment where listening to understand is the norm, you tend to go that way. And so there's a great opportunity for us to kind of change the the environment that people find themselves in, and the best will come out. But the Interesting thing is that for all the concerns about family, I actually see the most ex extensive or amazing stories from within families. I'm thinking, I can't remember exactly where we were in Berkeley Joan, but one person is coming up how describing she was progressive and her father is very conservative, and they were angry about with each other about what they thought about Obamacare. She was a very, very, very big proponent of it. He was very, very, very anti-it. And she was describing how they just couldn't talk anymore because it made her so mad. And at one point, she said she finally got to the point where she was actually curious about why he felt that way, not trying to prove him wrong, but actually trying to understand. And she asked him to explain to him her a little bit more why it was important to him. And he said that his entire life has been to provide for his family and to train his kids. To stand for themselves, and a huge part of that was healthcare. To so it was his job as a father to provide and teach his kids how to take care of themselves who are along the lines of healthcare, and the government was taking that away from him. And so emotionally it was horrendous theft from his point of view. And she didn't agree with that, but she understood that. And they and she said they can now have a good relationship just because she understood where he was coming from. And so the arguments about how it'd get more expensive or whatever that he had if he went to more nationalized care or how the, you know, veterans medicine, whatever, wasn't working very well. And that was kind of a smaller guess. And all the all the great data she had, they didn't really convince each other. But when they kind of understood where they were coming from, each other, that changed relationship.
Alex: Yeah, I think that's such a that is a key, I mean, principle of living room conversations and something that stood out to me is participants are encouraged to speak on experience and not opinion. And that is the guiding light to get to those moments of we're not actually talking about a disagreement over Obamacare. I wanna know why. This is so important to you because I don't understand that right now. don't I
John Gable: Those conversation
Dan: Joan,
Alex: under
Dan: I'm
John Gable: guides are magical.
Dan: sorry to interrupt.
John Gable: They're magic they really are magical. And I want to emphasize
Alex: Yes.
John Gable: that because Joan won't go that far, but they really are. they they really I I describe it to people,
Dan: Th the the actual the actual conversations.
Joan Blades: Yeah.
John Gable: the the conversation guides that they have. I describe
Alex: Mm.
John Gable: it to people who want to get to the point as you kind of accidentally discover the humanity of the other person and then you make progress from there. And it they really are pretty po very powerful in the way that they're structured.
Dan: Can you give an example that differentiates between the two so that people can understand it?
Joan Blades: One of the most powerful stories I got told was by a pastor in Idaho and he talked about a it was a guns and responsibility conversation. And the particular table he was at had two men that were ready to die for their Second Amendment rights and a woman that had been traumatized by guns, not once but many times. And the kind of questions asked in that is, you know, how did you learn about guns? Have you know have guns had impact on your life? And so they heard, you know, she heard about how these guns were a part of these men's growing up, their connection with their fathers, their connections, you know, with the next generation.
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: And the men heard just how traumatized she had been in the different situations. And there were a couple other people at the table too, but everybody talked about their experiences. And they went away with appreciation for the other point of view. And you know, we can, and it's really valuable on polarized issues like guns and immigration. But it's also really beautiful with conversations like forgiveness and the search for purpose. And just more often a very good place to start in a conversation with someone that you are not fully comfortable with is a place where you talk about your values, technology and relationships. Left and right doesn't matter, age makes all the difference in the world as you talk about how technology has impacted relationships in both good and bad ways. It's it's a
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: wonderful starting place. The other thing I'll note is I had the the climate conversation in Utah a number of years ago with people that were going to do a panel the following day. And the conversation ended at nine. And they had to be kicked out at level. Because what it does is it opens people up to all of a sudden being able to talk much more deeply. So the conversation is very defined container that
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: has you answering questions and everyone taking turns and listening. It's a listening practice.
Alex: Mm.
Joan Blades: But once you've completed that, then you are you have these increased skills, these new relationships, and you have built some trust so you can go way further. The living room conversation is a launching pad for so much more.
Dan: How how did the pastor get those people in that room and how many people typically are in a room for for a living room conversation?
Joan Blades: Okay, so it started in living rooms, but there are faith communities and libraries and schools that do them regularly. And in that case, people break up into small groups. So this faith community had been having monthly living room conversations and they, you know, they were politically diverse and they had chosen to talk about the challenging things that people weren't talking about. And because In a family and in a faith community, if you cut off certain conversations, it makes that community feel less connected and they wanted to be truly connected. And so this was one of the monthly gatherings, and generally I think they had 30 to 50 people come for
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: a conversations and break into groups.
John Gable: And then we should talk
Dan: Okay.
John Gable: about what Joan and I have been doing together to go greater scale. So
Alex: Yes.
John Gable: even though we always want to have conversations in small groups, you can have hundreds of thousands of small groups.
Alex: Mm.
John Gable: we started that in schools, not only within a school, but even between schools in something we call mismatch. We have schools in the north or south, or one of my favorite hearings is a very conservative Utah school and a very progressive New York school. talking with students in small groups of four to six online. And in fact, this I think Right after this podcast airs, August eleventh, that week we're having a national round table on the American dream. And we're expecting over a thousand people to participate online. And they're automatically mismatched, like the world's worst dating app. We mismatch people into different groups that are different than they are. And then they follow a Living Room Conversation guide and talk with each other about what the American dream means to them and how to achieve that. And then All Sides use some of our own technology to to analyze all these conversations anonymously and then share with all the participants. And Nesweek's gonna be doing a new big news story and we're an Sharing it nationally, on what we learned, on what we learned about the different kinds of perceptions on what the American dream means to people and how to get there. And so you have both people the opportunity to have a real, healthy, authentic, real conversation with people who are different than I am and than you are, as well as being able to share that with the people who aren't quite ready for that conversation to see that's a normal thing and to learn about each other.
Joan Blades: And when you think of mismatching,
Alex: go ahead, Jim.
Joan Blades: it's not just politics, it's age, it's gender,
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: it's geography, it's you know circumstances. And it's really fun. That's the thing. We're
John Gable: Urban, rural, ethnicity, everything. Yeah.
Alex: Right, right.
Joan Blades: we're really serious about this. But the reality of having these conversations
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: is it's fun. You know, we go on vacations to have adventures. Here's an adventure in your own living room. Right. It's kind of amazing.
John Gable: If you don't if you don't believe
Alex: Right.
John Gable: her, our stats show when we go back and we've done this before, in the different events we've done, somewhere between eighty eight and ninety-three percent of the people want to do it again. so it's
Alex: Wow.
John Gable: it's fun. It really is.
Dan: That's really great.
John Gable: People are told to be afraid to talk with each other and we want to do it so much across
Alex: So unique Yeah.
John Gable: differences that we when we finally have a chance to do it in a healthy way, it's glorious. It's fabulous. It's really fun.
Alex: Tell us about why you chose the topic of of the American Dream this year. I know that your last the last roundtable you did with Newsweek was on political violence. why the American dream as a topic now?
John Gable: Well, this is actually a collaboration with Living Room Sound Conversations and All Sites and Newsweek. And we're thinking about what might be interesting. And there was a Gallup did a report on the different kinds of ideas that people have around the American dream. And so it just kind of evolved organically towards that positive looking for America 250 as we're defining what we want the next future, hopefully 250 years America will look like. After the last 250. Rather than just kind of worrying about what's wrong, let's talk about, let's aspire to something new. So that was the driver behind it. Then we brought in some sponsors like Nationwide and other partners like Braver Angels and Convergence and NCDD. And if you go to our site, you'll see dozens of groups that are sponsoring this and supporting it. but it evolved to something really around a forward-looking place.
Alex: What a great way to mark the two fiftieth and and open up discussion about it. I'm curious about how about these roundtables. I think it's such an interesting growth moment for all sides and a partnership with so many people that are doing great work. and I'm curious about how you go about bringing the right people to the table. When I first hear about something like this opportunity, obviously I signed up. I'm excited, but clearly I'm inclined to have conversations like this outside of the roundtable. How do you go about finding people who may not feel as enticed to step into that room and get probably who needs to be there? at at the at these events.
John Gable: Yeah, but it's interesting. There are lots of different things we do. And all sides, when last time we did a survey and it's been true year after year, we have an almost exact s equal percentage of left and right Republican Democrats coming to our site. and
Alex: Interesting.
John Gable: it's often not that people need to be there. I I give I'll give you a good example.
Alex: Yeah.
John Gable: In Carmel, Indiana, there was a local community that wanted to the city government and some local Chamber of Commerce and other groups. were worried about the problem of affordability for homes, home affordability. And so we worked with them and they did a local round table and online because you do these things in person, which are fabulous. We've also tested, actually Joan tested doing it both online and in person. It saw that he had the same positive results if you do it online in a very specific
Alex: Mm.
John Gable: way, like when you see them, you hear them, you're set up correctly. And I mean, I think they only had like 65 or so participants, but it was from the breadth of the community. And 65 is pretty good to spend an hour and a half talking about. And they've actually had other things before and after that. But what's most interesting is that people didn't go because they should be there. They went because they were interested in making homes affordable. And they had public officials and they had local business and they had local homeowners or local people trying to rent and or renting and trying to own a home. So they had that diversity supported by the local press. And actually see a world, even though we're very excited about this national conversation about the American dream. I think the bigger action is going to happen at the community level, where we'll be able to have different communities discussing what they care about and actually bringing in a variety of people in each community. into that conversation. And we're working with the American Library Association, for example, and they see themselves as community hubs, and they are a part of what we're doing. As well as a lot of other, and schools are a huge part of what we're doing. We've been used for years in all 50 states in schools. There's a much a great deal of hunger for this. Not a lot of publicity around it because it's
Alex: Mm.
John Gable: not a lot of money to upset people. And most of the money goes to showing
Alex: Sure.
John Gable: you why you're right and those other evil people are wrong and evil. And this doesn't fit in that category. But in terms of actual activity, there is a huge amount going on in this space. And I remember Princeton did a study, I think it's like three years ago now. And back then, they listed over 5,000 different organizations in the US alone that were dedicated to bridging one way or the other. And it's a lot more now than it was back then. But it's not very newsworthy because it's positive
Alex: Mm-hmm.
John Gable: and helpful.
Alex: the power that can come from working with different local groups and saying, you are leading this conversation in so many ways already. G let's do let's give you a platform and a structure to really make this constructive. And I think The work that you're doing with election trust connects with this so well of tapping into the power of local communities to really start change there. And I think it connects so well with what Congressional Communities does. This is so much of why we wanted you on. Tell us about why now in 2026 you're working on trust in elections and really working at a local level.
Joan Blades: Trustworthy elections are something that everybody wants. And one of the beautiful things about this initiative is we've got a collaborator, collaboration between all sorts of good leaders in the bridging space, not just all sides, but Interfaith America and NCD and you know it's its civity. It's lovely. And the reason why is, you know, we All want trustworthy elections. Braver Angel spent two years working with almost 200 folks left and right, facilitated conversations, hundreds of consensus points, and came up with three principles out of that. And the first principle voting should be easy, cheating should be hard. And that's something that local communities have the ability to look into and to be sure it's in fact voting is easy and cheating is hard. And we want local communities to be proud of how they run their elections. We had our first report back on this. And you know we have an election coming up. Let's go for aspirational rather than fear
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: in this case. The opportunity at this time is to create what we want to be. And local communities can do that. So Jane Anderson of Mormon Women for Ethical Government did the work using the Interfaith America Guide, got her some of her group going and learning more about local actions, talking to the Secretary of State, and came back with a report back that, you know, in terms of scale from one to five, everybody moved up at least a point. on understanding how elections are working, on trusting how they work. So we can do this and it builds trust and connections locally. We need to do that nationwide. And that could be a drum beat of stories. That's what we're hoping it can be. So that we have tens of
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: thousands of communities saying, we do it right here. We're really proud of our local elections. And then with all sides, roundtables, we can allow a national conversation to happen because we need to trust our local elections and we need to trust our national elections too. And so it's the beginning, an opportunity to build trust in a place where we have consensus of that's something we all want. Let's do it and do it this year. It's not something to put off. Do it now, do it better all the time, and let it be the start of creating the American dream we are, we all want, because I bet there's going to be a lot of overlap in our American dream stories that we could dig into together. So how do we focus on what we want and make it happen?
John Gable: Joan and I are helpful not just because we come from the information first and then relationship and then Joan's relationship, but but Joan's on the left and I'm I'm lean right. and like I help her with words and she helps me with words. So like she went from trustworthy, which everybody agrees with, to trust. And some people on the right would say, Well, I shouldn't trust an election if it's not really trustworthy. And so we helped each other with that. And I when she was wearing this earlier, I think I helped you think about trustworthy, because there's concern that people have. You know, you've seen stuff in New Jersey, you see stuff in voter roles where there are lots of voter roles that are twenty years old
Alex: Yeah.
John Gable: and o or or haven't are aren't allowed to be viewed or whatever. And so there are people who are concerned about whether it's trustworthy. and it's not so much necessarily
Alex: Mm-hmm.
John Gable: the great poll workers which which do great job, but like all the other systems. And then you see gerrymandering and on both sides, and you see other ways to manipulate it. So it's it's you can get into the issue, but the key is saying, hey, we care about making them trustworthy so we can all have a reliable system, and that's where we come together. But it does help a great deal. So within all sites, we have our our three. leads are left, center, and right. And we have throughout our company, in fact on our team page, we even
Alex: Right.
John Gable: show people where each person is on the political spectrum. So we have a big mix and we we check on each other and argue with each other and debate with each other to make sure that we
Alex: Mm-hmm.
John Gable: we have all those different perspectives. And Joan started living conversations somebody on the right as well. So it's it's a core piece of not just having the aspiration of listening and understanding. But operationally bringing in the other side with what you're doing at the core, not being like w from one side say, well, we'll try to take care of them. But bring them inside to help you get to a better place.
Alex: Right. And it sounds like Joan, the example that you gave of I'm I wanna get the name correct. The Mormon women for
Joan Blades: For ethical government. Weg.
Alex: for ethical government. Love it. So Mormon women for ethical government, one of one of the leaders there worked with having a conversation in a sort of a different way of bringing people in the room and giving people access and information to what voting actually looks like and
Joan Blades: He got them
Alex: saw an increase interest immediately.
Joan Blades: Yeah, she got them into the place where they do
Alex: It's amazing.
Joan Blades: the election work so that her team of women really understood how elections are run and you know what the process was. Yeah. And once we understand the process,
Alex: Right. Right.
Joan Blades: then we have the opportunity to improve it if we see the opportunity to improve it, or we feel like, huh, I trust these people. The other thing is election workers. have been under attack in some cases. We need to value our election workers and have them feel supported. this is our system altogether. We need to take care of it and, you know, do all the things that cause it to be robust and worthy. Yeah, it's a it's a different kind of garden, but we need to take care of it.
Dan: There's all these things. You have you have the gerrymandering that's now going on that rather than running an election every year, I'm sorry, changing district lines every 10 years, now we're changing them you know, Congress to Congress. And it's being done to essentially create districts that are non-competitive. So people say, Well go out and vote, but if you go to some things online and you say, how many of these districts are actually competitive because of the way they draw them? Not always because of the way they draw them, and not all gerrymandering, but it makes it hard. So I'm just sort of curious about what what you're all like, how do you connect what your work is doing to to to the legislative piece?
Joan Blades: We have a few conversations about structural reforms and clearly the dynamics are not pushing us in the right way right now. It's like independents. How do they get to vote in some states? It's and now that there's a majority of independents in a lot of cases, more than Democrats, more than Republicans, how can they be excluded from the primaries? They are in some places, right? the nature of the two-party system is not serving us well right now. I don't know what the fix is, but the ability to have real conversations about that, about you know, is ranked choice voting a good thing? The living room conversations are, I hope, one vehicle among many to start thinking about. what people want and how we can make things better.
John Gable: Yeah, the it's interesting the you talked about gerrymandering. I worked against gerrymandering in the eighties. And at that time there was the the worst state at the time was the l was was California. And there's actually one district that was only contiguous, only one body at low tide. It's split in two at high tide. So
Dan: Ha ha.
John Gable: this has been going on for a long, long time. It's going to a whole new level. But I think that there was Like I could not believe it was not a top issue back in the eighties. Like it upset me so fundamentally
Alex: Mm-hmm.
John Gable: about my idea of what American democratic system, a democratic republic should look like. and there are lots of other ways to manipulate the vote. and I I can give you lots of data about that. But there's a lot of that going on. I do like Joan's idea of you know, trying to help independence and there's actually A proposal that they're looking at in Ohio and may it maybe bring it to California as well for top three primaries. Cause if you have the top three out of a primary, there's more room for independent. And if you actually do the math on top two primaries, when you just have the top two results, you tend to have the same kind of extreme Republican or extreme extreme Democrat coming out of that system when you do the math. So top three works much better. It represents people a little bit better.
Joan Blades: And I have to mention money in politics because that's just such a call. There's there's so many things
Alex: You have to.
Joan Blades: we could do to make our system more representative, better. and it's it's really hard to do. The reason I'm so excited about the trustworthy elections effort is that is a very tangible step that people can see. You know, my move on background says to me, this is a moment where people could see this as actionable, their participation makes a difference, and that we could collectively make a big difference. And it's got a time element that's like, we got to do this now. and then my dream is that would lead to some of the reforms that really are needed. Gerrymandering definitely, you know, we need a universal gerrymand gerrymandering agreement that just ends it everywhere.
Alex: gonna be interesting to see what happens when holding.
John Gable: J Jones Jones, you know, a little bit left. So she likes a centralized solution. And I may not go for the same solution that she does, but I have very much the same concern
Dan: The average member of Congress spends for every hour they spend in a town hall, they
John Gable: Mm-hmm.
Dan: spend a hundred hours raising money for their election. And the amount of money that they're trying to raise is about a million dollars a year. I think each member has to raise something like I'm actually a little high on that. I think it's like 1.6 million, 1.7. That's the expectation that over your two years, I believe it's a two-year period, they're supposed to raise that much money. And you look at that and say, okay, a lot of other countries fund their elections, and they don't give access to, they don't create this dynamic. You know, you reward the incentives you create lead to the outcomes that the incentives imply. So if if the people are donating to elections in large amounts, and now the amount is unlimited, they expect something in return and they get something in return. in front of us. And yeah, I I don't know if there was a question there.
Joan Blades: You've got deep agreement on my part. It's like
John Gable: And and some agreement and some disagreement on my part. And so let's actually let's
Dan: Okay, great.
John Gable: workshop this a little bit. So, first of all, Joan and I actually got to present to Congress a few years ago to a joint committee that was a bipartisan committee on the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. you have very long names of different committees Congress. And we presented the idea of roundtables before we actually had built it. And both Republicans and Democrats in that room were very interested. So congressmen don't really know whether constituents really want, because of the current system, town halls don't work very well. there was one congressman who was having a weekly phone call when they invited people, but it was kind of like a town hall mess. And so we actually can bring Congress. elected officials and also people running for office, the ability to actually understand what their constituents really do care about. Because right now there's so much noise in the lobbyists and in the fundraisers and all that that they can't hear what their what their constituents actually want. And they would like to for the most part. so we can give them that ability. Now in terms of the money side, the you have I'm on your side you talk about how it typical Congressional district has seven hundred and fifty thousand people. Well, if you look at that and you talk about raising twice that a million and a half or so to run for Congress, that's two dollars per person. is that a lot? It does seem like a lot to me, but the question is not what whether's so one way is saying, is there too much money? The other way is saying, where is the money coming from? Who are they accountable to? And one I I remember having a discussion with Milton Friedman on a similar issue long time ago and issue I cared about a long in in in government. I said, well, you know, if you just did this, this would solve the problem. He said, well, John, I bet your idea would work. But by the time it gets passed by Congress, by the time it becomes law, it becomes some weird version. Your great idea isn't what comes through. Something else comes through. And what he come up with is a locked-in government solution that actually made matters worse. Now that we can make legislation that makes matters better. So I'm not completely lay hands off, but be very careful about what's actually passed. In my mind, people talk about Citizens United as being the milestone that broke things. I actually see the McCain Feingold bill, which led to Citizens United as the driver of the worst scenario we're in right now. And it was very well intentioned, but at the time people were saying, well if you Do McCain Feingold and take money out and control in such a way that parties can't control it, you're going to end up having money is going to get through somehow. And what's happened is that instead of having parties that are motivated to have a ruling majority, you now have a lot of special interests that could care less whether there's a ruling majority or not. They just have to keep their people angry and upset about their issues. They don't really want to solve it, they want to survive. And so the best thing to do is to make the problem bigger and look like you're solving it, but never solve it. And so there are I don't think we made it better with our last attempt. I think there are things we could do to make it better. Don't misunderstand me. But be very careful with the knee-jerk, aha, let's get government to pay for it. Because then you're just moving who controls the money, and they may not control it in the way that comes out with the goals you want. So I'm not really arguing against, I'm just saying be very careful.
Alex: so I just want to wind us down by asking a few rapid fire questions to both of you. they're rapid fire and intent, but take your time. so the first question for both of you is what is one thing that you wish more people knew?
Joan Blades: I started the conversation with the concept of power with as being long-term thinking and power over being winning battles but having ongoing the fight just continues. I wish people knew that we need to figure out power with. In other words, if we're going to solve healthcare, climate change, you name your issue that has complexity. We need to do it together. Because if you've got an everlasting fight, it just goes on and on.
Dan: Thank you.
John Gable: I I'm thinking along the lines of people should I I want people to understand that connecting with each other and understanding each other, particularly across divides, is a beautiful, wonderful, fat fabulous thing that connecting in shallow ways leaves us isolated and in pain, even though it might be an okay dopamine hit. But deeper connection, which we as human beings long for are strengthened by our differences, not by our similarities. And to embrace that.
Alex: Okay, we'll start with you, Joan. What is one way that people can support your cause?
Joan Blades: I'm hoping they will do local elections work and then move on to the national. And also join the conversation about the American dream this coming week because it's going to be a great conversation. And I'm going to be there. Who knows? Maybe we'll talk.
Dan: How how do they do that? How do they join that?
Alex: How do people
Joan Blades: Go to all sides and I'm guessing it's right on the front page, right, John?
John Gable: Allsides.com is the easiest thing or allsides.com slash American Dream. And it should be on the Liver Room Conversations homepage too. If it's not, put it there, Joan, because it's really both of us doing this together.
Alex: what is one way that people can support your cause?
John Gable: Yeah, Joan and I are tough about giving people one thing. but to help all sites, if you
Alex: Take take the take the floor.
John Gable: just go to allsites.com there are and discover it. either use it or share it in your schools or participate in American Dream or just share read the news, get out of your bubble. There's so many different options. So just just go check it out and find out the way that
Alex: Love it.
John Gable: fits you.
Alex: Okay, what is one misconception that people have about your field?
Joan Blades: That everybody has to be in the room. Right now, the people in the room are the people that are concerned about how toxic our social situation is right now. The extremes on both sides
Alex: Yeah.
Joan Blades: aren't there. And that's okay. We need to create a center of gravity that makes it so more and more people are comfortable saying, yes, we're going to be in relationship. And it's not we're not always gonna agree, but we'll do it with respect and we will find a path.
John Gable: I think the biggest
Alex: Love it.
John Gable: misconception is that this is hopeless wishful thinking, that these are just good-dooder, do-gooders doing their own thing. And you talk to academics, you do the research,
Alex: Mm.
John Gable: when you get about 3.5% of a populace engaged in something new and powerful, really engaged in it, that's when culture changes. That's when policy changes, that's when real things happen. And in a nation our size, you're talking about 11 million adults. That's a very achievable number. And we're making progress, but people don't sometimes don't think it's possible until it's already happened. And it's not like a binary happened or not happened, but this is a very, very real, tangible way to create a better future for ourselves, for our families, for our kids, for our individually, for our communities, for our nation. It's very doable. Don't believe all the mass manipulators who try to tell you that you're powerless and it won't work. All the data, all the science says it's very doable. It's a very realistic thing.
Alex: I I can't think of a better segue to our last question, which is what is one thing, large or small, that's given you hope recently.
Joan Blades: I will say that having Jane's story from Arizona just had me tickled pink to see someone that had done the local elections work and everybody clearly felt like it was powerful and they were now gonna be able to go back to their communities and share it further.
John Gable: thing that p chumps into my mind something I just saw last night, which is somebody on our team, Julie Mestrini, was on Tim Poole show, which is a podcast that leans right, although he's kind of old school liberal in lots of ways, but very kind of mainstream. And they were talking about bias and how to get past that and how to hear other people and and what that looks like. and so I've I mean that's just something I saw literally last night. But we're breaking through
Alex: Yeah.
John Gable: to a larger audience and often there's been a little bit more interest in the like in the mediators world and Jones world, it tends to be a little bit more of a left-leaning thing where like where people just a conversation by itself is valuable on its own. Well, the right's like, if I didn't get anything done, why did I bother having conversation? but I'm seeing both left and right. really embracing the need to get out of their bubbles and understand each other better.
Joan Blades: I will note that we have rotary
Dan: That's great.
Joan Blades: in the room too for
Alex: Hopefully.
John Gable: Yeah, which is awesome.
Joan Blades: yeah. Rotary is a big organization, it's not some bridging organization.
John Gable: Yeah.
Joan Blades: If rotary shows up in mass, it could be so powerful.
Dan: Tell people what rotary is.
Joan Blades: Rotary is a a civic organization that is a world ride. They have rotary clubs in most of the cities in this country, I believe, big and small. It's really kind of impressive. They've been around for over a hundred years. John, do you have any background on rotary beyond that?
John Gable: In every little town I go through in rural Kentucky, Michigan, you have a local Kwanis Club, you have a local rotary, and they're all people working their community to make their community stronger. And so that's where this is going to change. we want to help congressmen understand what their constituents want. I actually think the change is going to happen at the at the community level, and then politicians will figure it out and follow. But that's kind of group like groups like rotaries where th real things happen.
Alex: I wanted to do an a a an exchange abroad in high school and I pitched it to my local rotary club and they they gave me money. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah, teeny little town.
John Gable: cool. And they gave you money. That's a huge thing. And it's very community, it's very local. Wasn't in the papers or national.
Dan: Well, that's really cool.
John Gable: It didn't get people riled up against each other. Things like that are beautiful.
Joan Blades: Often local business people.
Alex: Yeah. Dan. All right.
Dan: And thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much for the work you're doing.
Alex: thank you. Thanks for coming on together. I think this is going to be powerful. I think you're modeling relationships that used to be at least somewhat more prevalent, but it what you can see, you can be. So I hope that people see this and are inspired to to pick up the phone and talk to people that they may not always think they would agree with. But
Dan: And you and your round Yeah, your round table
Alex: Thank you so much for talking about your work.
Dan: again next week. though it's the entire week, is that the idea on the American dream?
John Gable: We have it's just a one everybody participates participates in one conversation. They'll be mixed with, mismatched with people different than they are. But we have lots of opportunities for people to do that. So, we have four different days. You could choose any time within those four different days, and then you could be mismatched with some other people and have a transformative or exciting, very fun conversation.
Alex: Week of August tenth. We'll see you there.
Dan: And and it's and it's going to all sides dot are you
John Gable: Dot com.
Dan: dot com
John Gable: Yeah. Yeah.
Dan: dot com? Okay. And
Alex: Yeah.
Dan: and possibly also on Living Room Conversations homepage. But either either way, visit both sites. So thank you.
Joan Blades: And it's living room conversations dot org, just you know, classic
Dan: okay, thank you.
Joan Blades: progressive and conservative, what can I say?
Alex: There you go. Perfect. I love it.
Dan: Well well,
Alex: Thank you so much.
Joan Blades: Thank you.
Dan: Okay.
John Gable: Thank you. That
