Offline with Jon Favreau - Can Talking to Strangers Fix Our Politics?

Episode Date: December 8, 2024

How often do you talk to someone you disagree with—not in a Twitter pile on, but face to face?  With Donald Trump’s inauguration fast approaching (plus holidays full of opinionated relatives), Jon sits down with Dave Isay, the founder of StoryCorps, to talk about the healing power of conversation. StoryCorps is a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition, a podcast and the largest single archive of personal narratives in the world. Since 2016, it’s also facilitated conversations between Republicans and Democrats as part of its One Small Step Initiative, and the results are surprisingly heartwarming. Jon and Dave talk about strategies to overcome political polarization, what we learn when we talk to strangers, and how to have productive conversations with people who disagree with you. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

We're based in Brooklyn and, you know, our staff tends to be liberal or like super liberal. And seeing, but seeing people who are in these interviews as facilitators and like doubting it at first and then becoming like the biggest boosters of one small step and like, am I allowed to swear? Yeah. If you fuck with their conservative participants, they will kill you. You know? Like, they fall in love with their participants.

Welcome to Offline. I'm Jon Favreau. You just heard from Dave Isay. He's the founder of StoryCorps. If you're a fan of public radio, you've probably heard of StoryCorps. It's a segment on NPR's morning Edition, a podcast, and an audio archive. In fact, it's now the single largest collection of personal narratives in the world. The model is simple.

Two people sit down in a StoryCorps booth and interview each other, friends, relatives, strangers, anyone can sign up to do it. One copy of the recording is stored at the Library of Congress and the participants walk away with the other. Turns out when you put people face to face in a snug recording booth with microphones, they open up and connect in ways you don't usually get to connect as we've talked about quite a bit on the show. So back in 2016, StoryCorps started a new initiative called One Small Step, which facilitates conversations

between people on opposite sides of the political divide. But the catch is, the participants are encouraged not to debate politics. The goal is simply to get to know each other as people. So with the holidays and Trump's inauguration right around the corner, we wanted to have the founder of StoryCorps, Dave Isay, on the show to discuss the importance of talking to people you disagree with, what we lose when we take our conversations online, and the surprising results of one small step. Dave Isay, welcome to Offline. John, it's good to be here. So, I know about StoryCorps, I'm sure some of our listeners do, but for those who don't, can you talk a bit about how you got started originally

and what the initial goal was all the way back in 2003? Sure. So I was a radio documentary producer for decades before starting StoryCorps. And I, for better or worse, I was always interested in the public service value of audio more than entertainment value. And did lots of kind of social justice documentaries and saw that, you know, listening to people, like I did something with guys who were serving the longest sentences in American history

down in Louisiana. And just them being able to talk about their parents and their kids and their dreams for the future, it was important and sometimes transformative in their lives. And so had this kind of crazy idea 20 years ago to take documentary and sort of turn it on its head. Because when you do a radio show, you interview someone

and then it gets sent out to the world to be heard by many, many people, hopefully. And that's true of doing a film documentary or a radio, TV, print. And the idea with StoryCorps was to give as many people as possible the chance to be listened to. So we put a booth in Grand Central Terminal where you can bring anyone who you wanna honor

by listening to their story, your grandma, your mom, a friend. You come to the booth, you're met by a facilitator who works for StoryCorps, who brings you inside, door shuts, you're in this sacred space, complete silence, lights are low, and you sit across from your grandma for 40 minutes, and you ask questions and you listen. And from the beginning of StoryCorps,

people thought of this as if I had 40 minutes left to live, what would I say to my grandma? What would I ask of my grandma? And I knew, as you know, that the microphone gives you the license to ask things you've never asked before, to say things you've never said before. At the end of the 40 minutes, you get a copy

and another one stays with us and goes to the Library of Congress. So your great, great, great grandkids can get to know your grandmother through her voice and story. All everyday people, kind of a crazy idea. At first, nobody came. Like people had absolutely no idea what we were doing.

We had some super fans. We had like one lady who came, I think it was like 190 times. She would grab people off the subway and bring them to the booth. But eventually it got super popular and we launched Airstream Trailers that travel the country. We've had about 700,000 people participate now.

And essentially, we're kind of collecting the wisdom of humanity. And it's really about the beauty and the grace and the poetry in the stories of people hiding in plain sight all around us if we just take the time to listen. So that's what we call signature story core. And it's my passion, what I'll be doing until they

put me in that pine box. What makes it your passion? Why have you gravitated towards it? And why did you do this for so long? I'm like incredibly distractible. I can't keep interest in something for more than like five minutes. And it's been like 21 years of StoryCorps.

And I still wake up every day and I'm like pounding into my phone, like ideas about this thing. It's so simple, but there's so many layers to it because it's just about what it means to be alive. So like I've always been interested in the stories of just us, of just people, regular people.

And it's an onion you can't stop peeling. I mean, it's just absolutely fascinating. And the wisdom, it's like everything about how to live life. And I just started thinking about this like a couple of, like maybe a month ago. But when I was a kid, I was like, I was like terrified of people. I've always been kind of an introvert.

So my mom likes to tell the story that like, she would be pushing me in a carriage down the street. And every time I'd see another kid, I'd start screaming like, go home, go home. And you know, I think that I always like, I think when I was growing up, I thought that maybe every people were bad. You know, and this whole thing has just been like a journey

to figure out whether I was right or whether I was wrong. And I was wrong. I mean, that's the lesson of the 21 years. So I can't really explain it, but it's like the most interesting, beautiful thing to be involved in. It just keeps me going every day. I'm interested in how the conversations go.

Are there prompts that everyone gets? Are people preparing before they go into the booth? Because you mentioned that sometimes they just grab someone off the subway and go in. How does it unfold? Not anymore. Not anymore. Now it's hard to get an interview.

People can only come once. And they pick that person who they really wanna honor by listening to their story. So yeah, I mean, my background is in journalism and you know, you prepare before you do an interview. So we ask people to prepare, we have kind of the 10 best questions for people to talk about and then like hundreds of others that people can choose. So if there's usually an interviewer and an interviewee, so the person invites that other person to come to the booth and the interviewer prepares before they go in.

But the facilitator whose job it is to bear witness to these interviews, it's how they describe it, from what I understand, we'll always tell people like ask that question you've always wanted to ask. They're 40 minute sessions because the 40 minutes go by incredibly fast.

So like within the first 10 minutes, you just wanna, you wanna go there. It's weird. I mean, like 700,000 people, like pretty much everybody cries in these things when they're having these conversations. And, you know, I think, you know, StoryCorps in some ways, it's like my communications people hate when I say this, because it's like the worst way to sell it,

but everything about StoryCorps just reminds you you're gonna die. Like that's just like, that's just what it is. And it has a lot in common, you know, in hospice, you know, there's this thing where there are four things you're supposed to say, if you're dying, or if you have a loved one who's dying, thank you, I love you, forgive me, I forgive you.

And that's essentially what happens. Hopefully the people in the booth aren't actively dying when they're having their conversation, but that's what's happening. It's a chance to say like the really important things to the people who are most important in your life. So yeah, people prepare and it's usually a pretty, it's a pretty intense experience.

We talk a lot on this show about how the internet and social media make, have made sort of a lot of things harder and worse, but interpersonal communication, the way that we interact with each other, not only strangers online, but even people in our family, our friends. Text is different from like an in-person conversation. As technology has advanced from 2003 when you guys started until now, have you noticed that sort of change people at all, shape the way that conversations happen? Do you find that people are maybe

even more fulfilled after having one of these conversations because they are sort of starved for the kind of human connection and storytelling that doesn't always happen today? So first of all, I mean, I think social media, as you've talked about a lot on your show, I mean, it's, it's, it's been pretty corros corrosive and we've kind of built engines to maximize conflict and elevate the most extreme voices. I think that the kind of conversations that happened in the StoryCorps booth over the last 21 years,

they don't really change. It hasn't changed and it hasn't been changed by social media. I mean, I think people didn't have those conversations really before social media and they don't have them that much now. So I don't think it's changed the tenor of what happens in the booth, but I do think

that StoryCorps is kind of, I like to think of it as kind of a hope machine. And I think people feel less hope as time goes on. So I mean, there's definitely more interest in, much more interest in StoryCorps, it's grown over time. I don't know if that's related to social media, but social media hasn't changed the way that people who come into the booth interact with each other. And I don't think it's a selection bias.

People are capable of doing this stuff. When I started, when StoryCorps started, I used to do these radio documentaries that were pretty good. And I thought that there was something like, I think in my head that I thought there was something kind of magic about the way I did interviews that created these fantastic radio documentaries.

And then StoryCorps started and everybody did these fantastic interviews. It had nothing to do with me, I was totally wrong. So we're all capable of like asking these questions and having these moments with people. And I think StoryCorps reminds people that they matter and won't be forgotten. And part of the problem we have in this country

at this point is that people, like they don't feel like they matter, they don't feel like they're being listened to. So, I mean, and that all goes back to your question about why after 21 years, I'm still obsessed with this thing. So it kind of, it all ties into, I guess, what's happening in the country as well. I mean, it's also just an incredible social experiment.

I wonder, you know, hundreds of thousands of interviews now, what are the most common themes you've detected from the stories that you've heard? So we've been everywhere, you know, thousands of cities, all 50 states, obviously, and you know, the accents change and the occupations change, but everybody talks about the same thing. Again, you're thinking about this at like 40 minutes,

my great-great-grand grandchildren are gonna hear this, what am I gonna say? And part of it, people, first of all, I think they bring their best angels into the booth because they're aware of that, that there's no question that their great grandchildren are gonna listen to this thing. But people talk about the great themes of human existence

in every interview, it's the people you love, birth. You know, again, it's a constant reminder of what's really important. Nobody talk, like reads their CV, you know, everybody, you know, and the questions, the best, the most frequently asked questions, you know, who is kindest to you in your life? How do you want to be remembered?

You know, who are your parents, that kind of stuff. So it's all very visceral kind of emotional questions that people just gravitate to in these interviews. So I'd love to talk about your One Small Step initiative, which is right in my wheelhouse and also stemmed from the StoryCorps project. You wanna hear a piece of tape? Yeah, I'd love it.

Okay, so this is not a One Small Step interview, but it's one of the stories that helped inspire One Small Step. So this is a StoryCorps interview between a guy named Joseph Wideneck, who was a laid off sheet metal worker. He showed up at an anti-Trump rally in Austin at UT, and he was wearing a Make America Great Again hat.

And Amina Omdine was a student at UT at the time, and she was one of the marchers that day. And they came to StoryCorps to remember the moment that brought them together. I noticed you with the hat, and I noticed that you were surrounded by some people, and I noticed that they were being kind of threatening, and then somebody snatched your hat off your head. And that's the point where something kind of snapped inside me because I wear a Muslim hijab

and I've been in situations where people have tried to snatch it off my head. Wow. And I rushed towards you and I just started screaming, leave him alone, give me that back. I don't think we could be any further apart as people. And yet it was just kind of like this common, that's not okay moment. You are genuinely the only Muslim person I know. It's not that I've actively avoided. It's just, I've just never been in the position where I can interact for an extended period of time.

So I guess my views on the Muslim community have been influenced by a lot of the news articles and things of that nature. I feel like a lot of times in the media, you don't see the normal Muslim, the one that listens to classic Iraq like I do. You don't meet that Muslim. Can you tell me about where you grew up? What was that part of your life like? So I was born in Baghdad in Iraq.

I moved to the US when I was 10 years old. Being a Muslim girl, I stood out in almost every single way that you can in middle school, the worst time to stand out. What about you? How was it like when you grew up? I was homeschooled. So it was a vastly different experience. Socially, I didn't have, I guess, as many friends as most people would.

I only went to public school one year of my life and I got in three fights and I lost all of them. I actually lost a lot of friends because of the selection, because of my political stance. So I hope that I can be the reason that someone decides to talk to someone as opposed to just cutting them out of their life or blocking them on Twitter. I'd like for this to encourage other people to engage in more conversations with people that you don't agree with. That's what it's all about. I'm so glad I wasn't the only one who felt like that.

Well, that makes you feel good. It really happened. What an exchange. I know it was like people are gonna not believe that that's even real. That's one of the problems we have with one small step actually, which is like people like hear stuff and they think it's actors and that's a problem.

We're trying to figure out a deal with. Yeah. How did one small step come about? It was about nine years ago, I guess, around 2016, 2015. And I started becoming concerned about toxic polarization in the country. Not the fact that we argue with each other,

which is healthy and great, but what happens when we can't see each other as human beings across political divides anymore? And the toxic polarization obviously has like blossomed. If you can, I don't know if that's the right word to use in like not seeing each other as human beings. But four and five voters now describe the other side as hateful and brainwashed.

Only one in 10 voters regard people with different politics as theirs as reasonable. And as everybody knows, half the country says there's gonna be a civil war in our lifetime. And what we do is human connections. So the question was, is there anything with what we've learned that we could do to try and take a run at this problem?

So everybody, all the 700,000 people who participated in StoryCorps up until that time knew and loved each other. So we started experimenting with putting strangers together across the political divide. It took a while for us to figure out how to make this work, but in the end, it's not to talk about politics, just talk about who they are as human beings

under the Brene Brown quote that it's hard to hate up close. And our Hippocratic oath is to do no harm to people who come to StoryCorps. Like you're gonna walk out of the booth better off than when you came in. So we spent years testing, years and years testing one small step, putting these strangers together to make sure we weren't doing any damage to people.

And we launched about two years ago in a few cities and then nationally a couple of months ago. And the dream is to convince the country that it's our patriotic duty to see the humanity and people with whom we disagree. I'm sure that like a lot of people's heads will pop off. Your listeners in the next like however many minutes we talk about this, but the not the offline listeners offline listeners are just very very good about this.

Okay. All right. It seems Pollyanna-ish, but you know, we've had like a thousand, more than a thousand facilitators who serve a year or two with StoryCorps traveling the country, as I said, bearing witness to these interviews. And you know, if you ask them what they've learned to a person, like the first answer that they give after they come off their tour of duty

is like a version, some version of the Anne Frank quote that people are basically good. And like, you know, when you're in the hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands, there could be a selection bias, but in the kind of numbers that we're dealing with, there just isn't. And that's been our experience with One Small Step as well.

You know, people come into these conversations scared and they leave as friends, almost to a person. We've had about six, 7,000 people participate so far. And again, it kind of belies belief, but it happens every time. So we feel like we have this, I don't know, I mean, how much, like whatever has been going on so far, obviously isn't working terribly well.

Right. So like maybe the answer is proximity. Like maybe the answer is to come towards each other and we're gonna fight with everything we've got to see. Like it's a crazy uphill battle, but we are gonna do everything we can to see if we can make this thing stick and make it cool to talk to people across the divides.

Like almost impossible, but there's that Nelson Mandela quote, it always seems impossible until it's done. And we're just gonna see if we can get it done, yeah. I have so many questions about this. I have so many questions about this. First, like how do you recruit the people? Do the people know that they are going to sit down with someone who does not agree with them politically, but that they're not going to talk about politics? Is that sort of the frame?

Yeah. So first we were in the cities and we would do tons of advertising in the cities and earn media and then we launched nationally and we have like thousands of billboards up across the country and PSAs running and partnerships with the NFL. So everybody knows what they're getting into and basically you kind of raise your hand and we need an equal number of liberals and conservatives to make this work. You raise your hand. The interviews for many years were face to face and since we went national, because we're matching people across the country, we have this like bespoke safe

digital portal now. All these go to the Library of Congress as well. And like back to the like better angels thing. I mean, part of the reason this works is because people know that they're gonna be listened to. So you sign up and you fill out, it takes about five minutes, you fill out a form and you like, it's like, what are your politics? And then there are some questions about like things

that have happened in your life. So, you know, did you recently have a grandkid or get divorced or get married? And we kind of match you with someone who's got stuff in common with you without you knowing what that is. And then you're put with someone across the divides and either in person or over a Zoom.

And actually reading these bios, again, it's all everyday people. And this is not like, like these are real people. It's not like Lincoln Project Republicans and like Quakers coming together to like find their common ground. It's like Trump voters and Harris voters and you fill out a bio and like you read these bios

and it's like, I find it incredibly moving to read the bios because it's just America, you know, it's like, and when you get on the call, it starts with you reading your partner's bio to them, and then they read your bio to you. And then you just start talking about your life. Now we suggest people don't talk about politics, and we have all kinds of ground rules

about what happens if you do. Most people just start talking about their lives, and at the end they may talk about politics and the kind of questions we suggest or kind of come at it from an angle, like what is it that you don't like about people on your own side, that kind of stuff. So it's not as inflammatory

because something you know well, like nobody has ever been sworn at, called a name, yelled at and it's caused them to change their mind, you know? In the history of humanity. So this is just a way that people can connect. And again, listening to the interviews, for the most part, they're very similar. So it's not like StoryCorps, where you've got these

beautiful technicolor stories that come out, but it always ends with people being like, like let's have dinner if they're in the same place or I want you to meet my husband or we need to do this again. So like, I think that the actual interaction in the one small step interviews is in some ways more powerful than the StoryCorps interviews,

but the content itself is repetitive. It's not as deep, but what happens in those sessions is like unbelievably profound, especially given the moment, because it just seems like this would be impossible. I'm fascinated by the decision to not make the conversations about politics and- But we tried it.

Yeah, so how did that go? It failed, it didn't go so high. No, that's what I'm interested in. Yeah, so how did that go? It failed. It didn't go so high. No, that's what I'm interested in. Tell me what happened. Well, I mean, you know, that's why we call it one small step because it's, you know,

and we're figuring out what the second steps and third steps are. So we found with strangers that, you know, you need to have some kind of social capital before you can start talking about politics. And that's what the one small step thing is about, that you begin to build trust, and then at some point you can go there. But yeah, no, it kind of went like it's going in the country.

Not great. So we stopped that almost immediately. One of the most powerful things about One Small Step for me has been seeing like the team, the facilitators who like may come in doubting things. And you know, we're based in Brooklyn and you know, our staff tends to be liberal or like super liberal and seeing, but seeing people who are in these interviews as facilitators and doubting

it at first and then becoming the biggest boosters of one small step. And am I allowed to swear? If you fuck with their conservative participants, they will kill you. They fall in love with their participants. And seeing how this affects the facilitators, just to me as like kind of being on the inside has been one of the most powerful pieces of one small step. I mean, I'm convinced that we're onto something

and I don't know if we're gonna get to the mountaintop, but I hope we do. No, I mean, it sounds very, very promising. The reason I asked about the political conversations is because I do think that ultimately we need to be able to sit down with people who don't share our politics and have those conversations because then we can talk about our lives

but then we're just sort of ignoring the elephant in the room as it may be. Absolutely, absolutely. But I also like, it's funny for me personally, like I obviously people know what I do for a living and have done for a living for a while. And so people are very aware that I'm a partisan Democrat and a liberal. But when I meet people who don't share my politics, like I almost never get in fights

with them. Like, you know, I mean, I was, I remember I was at a, one of my best friend's wedding and his, the woman he married, one of her, one of the bridesmaids, she's like, she's like in Republican politics and has been for a while and like had worked for Ben Shapiro, you know, and someone told me about that. I'm like, oh boy, boy, this is going to be, you know.

And then we ended up having this like hour long conversation at the wedding where we like gossiped about politics, talked about politics, talked from our perspectives, but we didn't yell at each other. But I'm also like, I don't know, I'm not gonna start screaming at someone at a wedding. That sounds nuts. And like, what am I gonna do?

I'm gonna yell her views out of her? Like, how is that gonna work? That goes back to the social media piece, right? Because that's where it frees you up to do this horrible stuff. Everybody is like, the sense of nuance is gone. People are not two-dimensional cutouts. We're doing a bunch of things with one small step.

One is trying to change social norms and say it is OK for us to talk to people across the political divides. But also we're dealing with perceptual polarization. We think that the other side is way crazier and more extreme than they actually are. And I think the only way that we can deal with that, the operative word is proximity.

And why are we alive if not to be surprised by people and get out and see who human beings are? Yeah. You know? I mean, is there empirical evidence that shows that conversations like these succeed in, aside from anecdotally, like shifting people's perceptions of other political groups? Yeah. So we have, I mean, we have a ton of research

behind One Small Step. And the undergirding like theory is something called contact theory, which is I think the most studied theory in the history of psychology. It comes out of social psychology, a guy named Gordon Alport in the 1950s created this idea. And the entire field of social psychology. A guy named Gordon Alport in the 1950s created this idea. And the entire field of social psychology

was created after World War II to like what the fuck happened here? That was social psychology. 10 years later, contact theory. So contact theory says that under very specific circumstances, if you put people who are enemies together, us's and them's, and they have a visceral experience,

and there's like a whole bunch of things that have to be in place in order for it to work, then they have this experience with each other that they can come out the other side, like not seeing the other person as evil anymore. And one of the like really encouraging things about One Small Step is that in almost all of the studies of contact theory, you have a conversation with someone across the divide from you or

whatever experience it is, or you do something together, and you say, okay, well, that person, I like them, but everybody else is a Nazi who's on that side. So what the research is seeing with One Small Step, for the first time, as far as I'm aware of, it's actually generalizing. So not only do you see your partner as like, okay, but you see the entire out group as okay. And so that's like really exciting to us.

Like this makes people more hopeful and the temperature of their feelings about the other side like just plunges when they have these conversations. You mentioned selection bias. It made me think the access of politics has changed what we debate about in the Trump era, right? And it used to be like size and role of government, taxes and issues like that.

And one thing that's changed in the Trump era is that Trump voters are now very low trust voters and faith in institutions is obviously down across all parties and across populations everywhere. But you've got these really low trust voters who tend to gravitate now towards Donald Trump. And I wonder if because it's a problem with polling, right, you can never get the low trust voters in the polls. And so they were dealing with dealing with how to fix that problem.

But I wonder in one small step, have you noticed that some voters, especially some of the Trump voters, just feel more distrustful or cynical towards institutions beyond politics when they're having these conversations? Are you worried that maybe you're not capturing those kinds of voters or just because they think that the lack of trust in institutions seems like it is at the, or at least one of the uh core challenges of and causes of polarization today. Right and I think that that you know again building hope and trust in any way we can like again clawing up that mountain as part of what we're trying to do and a big piece of this

has to do with the um cratering of trust in institutions and each other and obviously like we're starting with each other with one small step. So, you know, we work really closely with this organization called More In Common. And they're kind of the global leaders in studying polarization around the world. And they came up with the term the exhausted majority

that, you know, something like depending on how you cut it, like 87% of the country are sick of the division, scared of where it's leading us and looking for a way out. But they have this taxonomy of America called hidden tribes, which divides voters up into all these groups from the left to the right. And you know, there's political, you're talking about politically disengaged voters. That's people on the left and the right and more so on the right now. But all of the testing and all the polling we do is to try and reach politically disengaged

voters because if we can reach them, we can reach anybody. So we're very focused on that. Again, look, nothing good is easy. We're picking the hardest route we possibly can. But yes, we're focused on that and like very aware that of the danger of this utter dissolution in trust, you know, a democracy just can't survive in a swamp of contempt and distrust. So this is like, it's like we've got to figure this out. It does feel like it is extraordinarily difficult to sort of push against this larger tide of

the information environment that we all find ourselves in. And I remember back when Barack Obama was president and he would talk about polarization, he would always say, there is this gap between how people interact with each other in their communities and how politics is viewed and practiced in Washington and in state capitals. And when you go into these communities, people have different political persuasions

and they're still on the same little league teams and they're hanging out and they're doing all this kind of stuff. And then Washington's a complete mess and there's this gap and that gap is, it was why he always said that he still had such faith in the American people and the line he would always use is, we're not as divided as our politics suggest.

Well, fast forward, 15 years later. And I've often wondered in the last several years, I don't know about that, his analysis of small town communities anymore, people getting along because polarization now has gone beyond professional politics to people's communities. I guess, where do you think that the disconnect happens, right? Like people are, I guess on the most micro level, they are one on one, doing one small

step, having these conversations, getting along, being surprised that a stranger with different political views is someone that they can get along with. And then somewhere along the line, it gets lost and we have the larger political environment that we have today. Where do you think sort of the disconnect begins? Well, look, how much was spent all in all on the election?

$10 billion, I think, something like that. And a lot of the money was spent trying to get us to fear each other. So there's a multi, multi billion dollar hate industrial complex. And, you know, people talk about conflict entrepreneurs. And I mean, it goes back to the social media stuff. I mean, you know, this stuff, you can recite it backwards. What was the line of the guy who created the retweet button? Do you remember what that was?

He's like, I just gave four-year-olds like machine guns or something like this like something like that. Yeah So I think President Obama was right And you know people also talk about in Washington that I know you've heard this a million times That people used to carpool together and play baseball together and have dinner together and things were very different. So you know, look, either you give up or you try and like get to a better place. So I don't know, I don't know anything else to do, but like try. I think about the marriage equality like playbook a lot. And that was, you know, the one of the great civil rights victories of the last 50 years.

And their basic, Evan Wolfson and all the people who made this happen, they assumed the best in others. And they were like, if you're not with us, you're not with us yet. And it was just like this, again, it goes back. Oh man. Yeah. It sounds so quaint and forward.

I'm like, gosh, we could use some of that today. But it worked. Yeah, it did work. So I think those basic tenets of like, gosh, we could use some of that today. But it worked. Yeah, it did work. So, you know, I think those like basic tenets of like, none of us are the worst things we've ever done. And just like, I think you just have to fiercely and relentlessly like assume the best in others. And I'm not in the booth, but I'm in the fight.

And this is based on like real experience. So it sounds so corny, but there's so much good out there. And if we could figure out like how to see each other, then like I think there's a way forward for our country. Like we can't become a country where we don't care about each other. You just have to keep getting up off the mat and like you beat on people's hearts until finally you win.

And I hope you hope it becomes a virtuous cycle, right? You have a good conversation. It makes you feel better the next time you have a political interaction. Maybe you're not as big of an asshole as you thought you would be. You're just a little, um, what are the plans for scaling this up? You said you just a couple of months ago, you guys went national. Like what's the, uh, what's the big vision? Uh, it sounds a little crazy, but we, months ago, you guys went national, like what's the big vision? Sounds a little crazy, but we want, you know, thousands, hundreds of thousands, and then millions of people to do this. I have no idea if we're gonna pull it off, but we want it to become, you know,

like I think we have to figure out how to make this cool and see if we can like embed it into the culture. And we're just gonna use every tool we possibly can at our disposal to see if we can like embed it into the culture and we're just going to use every tool we possibly can at our disposal to see if we can make it happen. It's just one small step, but if we don't take a step back from this abyss, I don't think it's too late. And if we don't take a step back from this abyss that we're at, it's just not going to end well for the country.

We are just going to do everything we can through, you know, partnerships and advertising and celebrities. Again, all very difficult, but like just like keep pounding until, until it catches on. I heard you're even, you're, you're going on Glenn Beck to recruit people. How'd that come? I have been for, for years. Yeah. For years.

Yeah. For years. Yeah. So, Glenn Beck listeners are unbelievably thoughtful. They are our best conservative participants, like almost to a person. Yeah, a lot of Glenn Beck stories. But yeah, I've been doing that. I've been going on Glenn's show for years. You guys talk politics or do you just talk sort of, you just talk about one small step?

I mean, he, we- Or StoryCorps. We sort of no just talk about one small step? I mean he we or story core we talk about we talk about story core in one small step and we play stories I was in a bubble before I starting one small step. I remember when we started One small step at the very like very beginning. So this would have been 2016 and I went on on NPR on all things considered, looking to get volunteers to participate, to test this thing. And we got like thousands of people,

and I was on a plane, and one of the responses that came in, it was to me, and it was like, you're a f***ed and a snowflake, and you're the scum of the, I don't know, I don't remember what he was saying. And then, and someone sent it to me on that gogo wireless on the Delta plane and I read it and I, and they were like,

can you believe this asshole? And I just like, I wrote him back and I was like, I got your email. I'd like to do a story, one small step interview with you. And he wrote me back immediately. And he was just like, I'd love that. And I'd like to take you out to dinner too. And I had no idea who this guy was.

And like two weeks later, he was a guy, he was like, he worked at CVS, lived in Rhode Island, conservative kid. And like, I knew the minute I shook his hand and he looked me in the eye, like he was never gonna do anything like this again. And I did an interview with him. And basically, I said, so what was that?

And he was like, I was in my car and I was flipping through the radio and I heard you and I just picked up my phone and just called in and left the, I didn't even know what I said. And it was actually kind of interesting. He called me like every name in the book and in our interview, like my dad was gay and I said my dad was gay in the interview.

And at the end he was like, he was like, I am so sorry I called you a f*****. I'd like you call me every, like I don't care. Like, like you called me every name you possibly could. And like, he was like weepy over this. And, and you know, I know that he, he would never do something like that again. So like that, Glenn Beck, all this stuff, they're just like, it's like, I was reading

that on this perceptual polarization thing, this group, More in Common did a study. And, you know, Democrats and Republicans imagine that, like people on the other side are twice as extreme as they actually are. And there's this famous ridiculous statistic that both Democrats and Republicans think that 15% of people on the other side approve of child molestation. And of course, the answer is zero. But this more in common study found that Democrats with post-graduate degrees are three times more inaccurate in their perceptions of the other side than Democrats who didn't graduate

high school. So it's like we just got to... That I believe. That I believe. But it's crazy, right? Yeah, no, I know. I know. All right, last question.

Any tips for our listeners who are heading to holiday gatherings with family and friends who may have some very different political views? Is there a story core or one small step recipe for productive and meaningful conversations? So one small step is not, we don't do family members, although we're thinking about starting again, like we, we, cause the whole, the, the, the whole, the theory behind One Small Step and the original idea is about not being able to see each other as human beings. And again, going back to social psychology,

like the worst thing is that you like wish the people are wiped off the face of the earth who you don't agree with. And you know, family members, hopefully, like you don't, you don't feel that way about. So we never focused on that. It's always been strangers, but actually we've started to think about like,

it's strangers and maybe now people who have become strangers to us, which is kind of a framing that makes sense. So I'm not an expert on the family dynamic stuff. There are a lot of psychologists out there who can talk about that, but I guess I would just say, don't give up. Don't give up.

Dave, I say thank you so much for joining offline. I love this idea. I wanna try it now. You can sign me up for a once-in-a-lifetime conversation. We'll do that. Yeah. You can get an episode out of it. Yeah.

Great. Thank you so much for joining. Thanks for what you're doing and take care. Thanks, John. Have a great holiday. done more vetting than Senate Republicans ever did. Catch the episode on the Pod Save America YouTube page and while you're there, subscribe for the video versions of the podcast plus tons of great content from the hosts you know and love. Search Liberal Tears T-I-E-R-S on your nearest YouTube search bar.

That's our show for this week. As always, if you have comments, questions, or guest ideas, please email us at offline at crooked.com. And don't forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers, and other community events. To watch full episodes of Offline, subscribe to the Offline with Jon Favreau YouTube channel, and please take the time to rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. Offline is a Crooked Media production.

It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau, along with Max Fisher. It's produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Illich-Frank. Jordan Cantor is our sound editor. Charlotte Landis is our engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seglen. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, Reed Sherlin, and Adrian Hill for production support.

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