Martín Carcasson about the Center for Public Deliberation and overcoming toxic polarization
Martín Carcasson is a professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. After focusing on theoretical academic communication work, such as analyzing the rhetoric of U.S. presidents, he transitioned into a more applied direction. As the founder and director of the Center for Public Deliberation, he has organized over 500 deliberation events in the United States.
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Transcript
Welcome on another episode of Democracy Innovator podcast, and our guest of today is Martin Carcassonne, that is the director of the Colorado State University Center for Public Deliberation.
So So thank you for your time, Martin. Oh, thank you for having me. Excited for the conversation.
And, as a first question, I would like to ask you, what is actually doing the Center for Public Deliberation?
Yeah. So I'm a professor in communication studies. My academic background was in argumentation, which is a subdiscipline that really focuses on the quality of the argument. How do we make distinctions between strong arguments and weak arguments and help us have better discussions so we have better decisions and better quality of life? And so I've always been focused on how do we talk about tough issues? How do we come together to address our shared problems? And I started the center now nineteen years ago at CSU. It serves as an impartial resource primarily for the Northern Colorado community, but we do some statewide stuff. I train students, in dedicated classes as facilitators, and then we design and run events in the community. We actually get hired by the city or the county or community organizations or get written a drink drafts, to just have better events to help people have conversations. A lot of my work used to be analyzing how politicians, particularly American presidents, talked about issues, but I grew more and more frustrated because they they often did badly. They they often did not kind of, you know, they ignored the research or, you know, they they, you know, tried to kind of sell simple stories to win elections. So I grew frustrated. I didn't wanna spend fifty years writing papers about how badly people talked about issues. So the CBD became, okay, how do we create processes that incentivize better arguments and help people come together and have these conversations? So that's all my work now is to to help other cities. Most of my focus is local. You know, how do we build capacity in our our cities for better conversations to help people come together, to have a tough conversation, to bring expertise and the public voice and the passions and the and the values of of multiple diverse pluralistic perspectives altogether to actually make better decisions.
And, which kind of conversation have you facilitated?
Oh, so, I mean, in in our nineteen years, we've run over 500 meetings. So we're we're process experts, not content experts. So we get hired. We've done stuff on climate change. We've done stuff on decarbonization. We've done a lot of stuff on housing. We've done I mean, runs the gamut. We've done we do work a lot with our schools. So so we do a lot of schools issues, whether that's, mental health issues or, you know, standardized testing. We do stuff on transportation. So it's all over the place. Every semester, it's something new. We'll we'll do, you know, four or five different kind of projects. And we have a pretty big toolkit, engagement toolkit, so we're designing specific processes based on the issue to to help people have these conversations.
Okay. And, can you make maybe an example of how, conversation discussion should be, held?
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's the Center for Public Deliberation. So the word we use is deliberation, which is a particular way of talking. I've I make a distinction between, say, a debate, a dialogue, and a deliberation. And for me, deliberation, is designed to kind of bring out the best of debate and and dialogue. So debate is design a good debate. Most debates are horrible, but a well designed debate helps elevate good arguments and expose bad arguments and helps us make sense of of information. And a dialogue is designed to bring people together in more productive ways and to depolarize and help us understand each other and build trust. So deliberation tries to take both of those together. But for most of our events, the the the downside of deliberation is it takes a lot more resources and a lot more time. So we spend often, you know, a couple months diving into the issue, trying to make sense of the noise, interviewing different sides, doing fact checking. And one critical aspect of deliberation, particularly how we do it, is most of our events, we create some sort of discussion guide, some sort of, document that people are reacting to, that we've developed, to to try to capture the issue, to frame it in a way that's much more productive. You You know, a lot of our work, we're trying to especially in United States where we're so polarized with a two party system, you know, bad arguments are constantly incentivized. So we're trying to reframe the issue, often getting away from, you know, progressive versus conservative or democrat versus republican. How do we frame this more as an issue we all we all care about? And then, typically, you know, it's a problem we're focusing on. We're looking at multiple potential ways of engaging that problem that all have, you know, upside, all have downside, and there's no magic bullets. So the what the event looks like, we'll often start at the front of the room maybe for fifteen, twenty minutes to kind of explain the topic and explain what we're doing. But then my students, you know, a 100 people show up. We can send them out. They're at 15 different tables. I have two students at every table, one facilitating and one note taking, and maybe six to eight people at each of those tables, and they're walking through this process that we've designed, Reacting to that document, having conversation, a student trained in conflict management and deliberative techniques, to help them have deeper conversations. Our processes in particular, instead of, like, a public hearing or a one at time in the microphone for a lot of government engagement process They're designed for people to talk to each other. So we're not just collecting individual opinions. We're having people react to each other and react to the document and and come up with kind of, better ideas of of what we can do to move forward.
And do you think that in relationship to this, process, technology can help in some way or maybe you also tested some tools? I don't know. Yeah. No. I mean, I'm certainly,
with the the last few years, I've been exploring that a lot more. And, obviously, with COVID, you know, in 02/2020, we we couldn't do face to face events like we did, and we switched to Zoom. And in some ways, it was a very similar event. Right? We started together in one big room, and then at some point, we would send people to breakout rooms, and my students would be each each of those breakout rooms. So, at least the Zoom technology allowed us to do very similar things, especially with the video and aspect. But now I've I'm I'm I just went to a conference, what, two or three weeks ago, Northwestern University, in in Chicago, is starting a new center for enlightened disagreement, that I'm helping them out. And they had a a conference, like, a pedagogy conference. How do we help build skills for students on how to disagree better, how to engage complex issues and talk to each other? And they brought in 10 people doing innovative stuff in this area. So I was there to talk about my program, But there was quite a few people that that were using AI, to you know, how can we use AI to help people think better? How can we use AI to help people disagree better and engage better? And I I saw some really interesting tools. I mean, overall, I'm a little nervous about AI. Right? I see a lot of downsides there, but it was the first time I left for a conference. I'm like, okay. I I I am excited about seeing some potential upside to this, and then certainly that, how do we work to make sure we get more of the upside and and less of the downside? So I think there's a lot of new technology tools that are coming out. A a lot in the deliberation world, of people just kinda realizing, okay, how how might we adapt these tools, to help us think better, to help us engage better? And and I think there's some promise there.
Yeah. And in relationship to the downside effects, like, all the negative effects, related to AI, do you have anything, like, you are thinking about something specifically or, like, I don't know, like,
deep fake, all the things that can, Yeah. I mean, a lot of like, one of the key problems that I what I frame kind of the the the biggest issues we're dealing with broadly in democracy in my work is is primarily US based, but I think a lot of these issues are are international now or for all democracies. I talk about three key problems. One is just this hyperpolarization, this toxic polarization. Right? We're we're so divided. And when we're divided, we can't talk to each other. Right? Facts don't work, you know, and it it just incentivizes all this bad behavior. So a lot of my work is to depolarize, which is often easier than we think because I think a lot of the polarization is exaggerated. Right? We're we're not nearly as divided as as we think we are. And when we come together, we often realize that. Right? So that's the first problem. The second problem I call is information disorder, and that's just, you know, our ability to create and share information has exponentially exploded in the world. Right? We have so much information out there, so much noise. Our ability to make sense of that information, to make distinctions, to to elevate good arguments and expose bad arguments, to to move from just noise to data, to hopefully, to insight to knowledge, eventually to wisdom, has not only not kept up with the technology, but has actually backtracked. Right? We've lost trust in journalism. We've lost trust in universities. We've lost trust in expertise. So in in some ways, AI contributes to that problem because AI is creating information and and just flooding, so much information and and, you know, struggles to make distinctions between misinformation and and good information. But, again, at that conference, what I saw is, hey. Can we redirect AI to help us make sense of that? Right? If we can train AI to help us, you know, make these distinctions to to separate the wheat from the chaff. Right? So so, yeah, I think, generally, AI is just adding more to the noise, but how do we switch and focus on, okay, how does AI help us? So, like, training my students how to search for good sources. Right? You know, I'm concerned of them using AI to say, hey. You know, give me evidence that I'm right. Right? Which is, you know, part of the problem. Our brains, you know, we're motivated reasoners and my side bias and confirmation bias and, you know, AI just makes it easier for them to just cherry pick information to fit their perspective. Right? But if we train our students to say to go on AI to say, hey. What am I missing here? Right? What are the best arguments against my position? Right? To to ask does you know, steal me in the supposing position or help me understand multiple perspectives on this issue. Right? Can we get them to use it? And then helping them to teach AI to to find solid sources for their those perspectives, not just find the first thing that kinda comes. Right? So so that's where we're we're starting to learn to adapt of, okay, how do we use this technology to help us? The other big thing is when I talk about debate, dialogue, and deliberation, and and all three are important if if they're high quality. Debate and dialogue, I think, are limited in certain ways, but debate and dialogue are much easier. Right? You know, I can design a debate and a dialogue pretty quickly. Deliberation takes a lot more time, both beforehand to understand the issue, and deliberation takes more resources because I need facilitators. Right? I need two students for every six people. That's that's a lot of people power. Right? What I did see at that conference was an AI facilitator that for the first time, I I've I've been asked about, you know, creating facilitation robots for twenty years. It was the first time I actually saw some promise there. Right? And if we're able to figure that out, if we're able to have an AI facilitator that really helps people come together and helps individuals think better, that takes away one of the kind of biggest costs of deliberation. We'll be able to deliberate more because we don't have to have this army of facilitators that are that are, you know, have to be trained to help us do that. So so that's one thing I'm I'm pretty excited about.
Yeah. Absolutely. And, I'm very interested by polarized the group. So as an example, the two party system in The US, what happen if two people, are very polarized? How to break this polarization? Because I I can imagine that could be very deep also, like, in
Yeah. I mean, I think I mean, a lot of our work, that's part of the the, like, the design of the discussion guides. Right? We're framing something from an impartial kind of perspective to reframe the issue because so many issues, the dominant frame of political issues in The United States is Democrats versus Republicans. Right? And that's a very bad frame. That's a very simplistic frame. You know, so often just reframing the issue and and not kind of framing it, in that way really helps starts changing. And that's where when people come together in a better process, instead of, you know, going with the easy story that the problem is caused by the other side, all of a sudden we're able to shift it and see them. A lot of my work is to try to shift people from seeing the other side as an opponent, that they have to beat, that they have to vanquish, to as a potential collaborators. Right? And a lot of this a a big part of my work, I should mention, I do a lot of work in social psychology and brain science, and how our brains are wired. And for me, deliberation is a particular tool that's really well designed to try to overcome, to to to avoid triggering the worst of human nature and actually tap in the best. But the reality is our brain the reason we're so polarized, the first the core root cause of it is our brains are wired for polarization. We want simple. Right? We want heroes and victims and villains. We we we don't wanna you know, we're cognitive misers to use Conahan's term from the thinking fast and thinking slow. Right? We don't wanna think so much. Right? And then a two party system, unfortunately, takes advantage of that. Right? Most of a two party system is I don't have to listen to the other side. I don't have to try to convince the other side. I mainly just have to fire up my side. Right? I have to kinda mobilize the people that already agree with me. Well, the kind of messages that work to do that are very simple messages, particularly, you know, attacking the other side and blaming them. Right? So most of our messages are designed to kinda fire up each side. All my work is how do we bring those sides together, and how do we tap into a lot of people that aren't on a side. And and the the best part of shifting from the simple stories and and, you know, loving our heroes and victims and villains, the best of human nature is humans are incredibly good creative problem solvers when put in a good situation to tap into that part of our brain. I mean, it's just sad so much, particularly United States, how little our political processes are designed to bring out us as problem solvers. Right? It's mainly designed to blame the other side for the problems. So that's the heart of deliberation is we're creating a different environment. So instead of these simple arguments that divide us and and, you know, and don't help us solve problems, we shift that to a very different kind of conversation.
So I'm thinking that, prioritization in some ways is helpful to the actual political system. I mean, how it works with the two parties, but, probably is the same, also. I mean, in Italy, maybe we don't have the two parties. But, yeah, also in Europe, is
maybe the same. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it starts with human nature, and then the political system often encourages that division. Our media systems, especially as media gets more and more partisan and we have more narrowcasting. Right? We have more media for individual groups versus a media that everyone trusts, which certainly in United States, we we have very little of that. And then, you know, most of our, technical platforms, our social media is also more designed to divide people and kinda categorize them. Right? So we start with human nature that's susceptible to these simplistic, divisive messages. And then our political system, our media system, and then our techno technology makes it all worse. Right? So that's what we're up against. But, again, the good news is we're seeing more and more even with technology. You know, we're seeing some really cool innovative ideas of creating, like, pro social social media. Right? Bridging social media. Social media, particularly in a local community, that's much more designed. The algorithms are designed to bring people together versus divide them and separate them. Right? So I think you're you're seeing more and more reaction, of of new ways to adjust these systems, the political system, the media system, and the and the technological the the social media platforms, to to stop doing so much of the divisive work and actually, repairing some of that.
Do you think that in the future, let's say, if there is more, if if people are more aware about the the deliberative practices, they can also overcome this this biological, polarization that, you said our brains are Yeah.
Yeah. No. I mean, that's certainly the long term hope of the work that I do. I I feel very comfortable. Like I said earlier, we run about 500 meetings in the last nineteen years. Almost every single one of those meetings have gone well. Right? And we've taken on some pretty complex, controversial, kinda tough issues. Right? We know, you know, regardless of how crazy things are with the polarization and division and and so forth that we're getting here in the world, deliberative scholars, deliberative practitioners, democratic innovation practitioners know, like, hey. When you bring people together using the tools that we know work to bring people together across perspective as well, humans can do this. Right? So there's still there's still a lot of optimism. We just need to build capacity. We know what to do. We just need to build capacity to do it. Right? But I feel every time someone comes to one of the CBD events or other events that my colleagues across the world are doing, they see an alternative that works. Right? And and the CBD, when I started it, I thought, you know, my students and I will pick a topic. Maybe once a semester, we'll do some event. But every event we did, we'd get 10 people to walk up and say, we need to do this again. We need to do this on this issue. When we gave someone an alternative, people saw the value of it. People want to engage generally. Right? So that's our goal is, and I work with a lot with I work with cities. I work with universities. I work with libraries, with community foundations, with with local newsrooms. How do we tap into these local civic organizations and say, hey. Y'all need to work together to build this capacity to give people a chance to have these different conversations. Right? And I do think the more people see it, while the negative aspects of human nature, are stronger, they're more natural. Right? They're not determinate. And people the more people there's a there's a virtuous cycle of doing this deliberative work. The more people talk differently, the easier the next conversation is. They start rewiring their brain. Right? And then we start developing different individual habits. We start developing different organizational kind of norms and hopefully community cultures of, you know, we talk differently here. One last thing I'll say is I I believe at a CPD event or most deliberative events that people kinda do these type of things, if someone shows up with a very simple solution to a complex problem, they look silly. Right? People like that. That's not what we're doing here. Right? Like, we're we're we're we're doing a hard work. We're we're serious people trying to kind of engage this this complex issue. But in the broader world, you know, the one at a time, the microphone or on online or certainly now, in in in, you know, government, unfortunately, you know, they're constantly giving us very simple solutions to complex problems. Right? And for most people, people we we like simple solutions because we don't wanna deal with the tensions and the paradoxes and the complexities. We wanna believe our side's right and the other side's evil. So those simple narratives work at the national level. Our our goal is to show people the local level that that that's not the way the world works. Right? And then the hopefully, the more they get exposed to that, the more they start the the simple solute the simple strategies of a national level stop working so much, because we realize our brain, like, yeah, I know my brain wants a simple solution. You're trying to feed me one. No. I'm not gonna fall for that. Right? Because I know the world's more complex.
And, do you have other examples of, polarization, like the ones of the two parties? Maybe something that is, common
in The US. Yeah. Well, like, one way for when we do local stuff, one of the things that we're we're we're dealing with is often, like, say, if city council or a school board or a county government, it it has a specific ordinance that they're they're they're engaging the public. Should we do this? Well, in in in most cases, that's gonna be about one specific solution. Right? Here's one way we can deal with this problem, and we're engaging the the community basically on this yes no question. Do you support this one solution? Right? There's a lot of problems with that. That can cause a lot of polarization because it's a two sided thing again. Right? It might not be the Democrat versus Republican or conservative versus progressive, but it's the yes versus the no. Right? And and that causes two big problems. One is we know from the research, the nos are gonna show up more. Right? If I re you know, if I see a a new idea that my city or my school district is doing and I think it's a good idea, I'm like, oh, that sounds great, and I go on with my day. Right? If I think it's a bad idea, I'm like, oh, hell no. Right? And I'm gonna show up and complain about it. So most public engagement on if we're looking at one solution, one ordinance, one bill at a time is gonna be dominated by the the the people pushing back the critics. Right? And then the second thing is if it's a yes, no question, most people that show up have already answered yes or no before they walk in the door. So from my perspective, their brains are off. Right? They're not there to think. They're not there to get creative. They're not there to listen. They're not there to come up with an innovative way to to deal with this issue or to reframe it. They're there to support their perspective. Right? So the the parts of their brain, the motivated reasoning, this my side bias, that that I wanna, you know, seek out information I'm right and ignore or dismissed, you know, that that gets magnified. So what deliberation does is instead of, hey. Here's one potential solution to a problem that we're gonna focus on, we back up and we say, we wanna focus on the issue. The the dominant question for me for deliberation is, hey. What should we do about x? Right? We being the community as a whole. Right? And that means, yes, the government, but it also means nonprofit organizations and nongovernmental organizations and private industries and individuals and groups. Right? And then the x is a problem, and we we work really hard to frame it as a problem. Like, we all agree it's a problem. We might disagree on why it's a problem. We'll certainly disagree on what we should do about it. Right? But we're starting from a point of common ground. How do we come together and say, hey. What should we do about this shared problem that we have? And then often the discussion guide, might have three or four different options. We use the National Issues Forum model in ifi.org in The United States that for fifty years have been creating this discussion guides that are framed to help people, have better conversations, right, and to get away from one solution at a time. So that's kind of our base model. We have lots of other kind of models we use, but we start there. Hey. What should we do about x? Here's three or four approaches or options that we can do. None of them are a magic bullet. Right? None of them. There's no simple technical solution to these complex problems. But then people are reacting to that. And what that does is it sparks collaboration. It sparks creativity. It taps into the best parts of our brain because we're working together to share to to try to address a shared problem versus showing up to defend a perspective that had already been decided before the meeting started.
If someone, wants to, to run, like, a a deliberation process, like, I don't know, in his town, Should it be, like, something, the topic, should it be real? So something that is very that can, polarize a lot, but that I think is also, can be difficult
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Sometimes. Because I I thought maybe doing a test with, a test topic. Yeah.
So Yeah. It's a you know, when I I give a lot of workshops, to city managers and librarians and schools and so forth that wanna start doing this work, and it's often, like, the first question after my presentation is, like, okay. How can I do this with this one topic that's completely polarizing and dividing my community and everyone hates each other? And I'm like, you're probably not gonna start there. Right? I mean, it's kinda hard to, like, we're we're gonna show people a different way of talking on the most difficult issue. Right? So, like, when I started the CBD for the first few years, you know, we picked difficult issues, but not the most difficult. Right? You know, let's start learning these new skills. Let's start learning how to talk to each other. Let let's start learning how to ask good questions, you know, on so I I picked real issues. We didn't wanna just be educational. Right? We we were working on real issues in the community. But, yeah, kinda picking something in the middle there. Right? Not not so simple, but but not the most difficult. But then the idea is, again, the the virtuous cycle, the more you do this, the easier it is to do. You start learning how to do the skills and the community starts learning the vocabulary and and they see the value of it. So then slowly and surely, you can take on more and more difficult issues. Right? Because people start realizing, you know, this stuff is is, yeah, this is more complex. We need to think differently and talk differently from this.
And do you have, some example about some good issues to discuss that can be real so people can, actually talk and
Yeah. Yeah. We've done and and I'll you know, there's obviously, I'm here in The United States, so there's there's, you know, tons of resource growing kind of resources. You know, even, like, the last ten years, the number of organizations that are, doing this stuff, but then also a lot of international sources. Democracy Next is one of the biggest, international ones. I'll give you some links if you wanna kinda post with it if people wanna hear more about these kind of things. But, yeah, I mean, some of the issues again, you're trying to find that issue, like I said earlier, that most people agree it's a problem. Right? So you're starting with that common ground. Right? So you can fit that what should do, what x. You know, so we do a lot of stuff on, like, housing availability. Right? You know, how do we kinda deal with that issue? We we deal with with, you know, social media type of things. We, you know, dealing with resources. We we've we've done some really interesting stuff on kind of energy and decarbonization. Right? Because we all want, you know, we don't want energy to be too expensive. Most of us are realizing, you know, we we need to decarbonize and get away from, natural gas and coal and and and and lean more on on wind and and solar and other kind of alternatives. But we know that technology is not quite there yet in some ways. And obviously in Europe, particularly in France, I know nuclear is is a huge issue, which is now part of the conversation. You know? So these you know, that's a good issue to think about. Okay. How do we work together to kind of do this? Right? And, you know, if a big part of our our the path we're taking is to completely decarbonize, well, we recognize there's whole industries and people that that are working in those areas, you know, so how do we incorporate that of how do we help have a just transition? How do we think about, the jobs that might be lost with that? Right? So we we lean into those complexities instead of just picking a side and kind of talking past each other.
And I'm thinking about, is deliberation a practice that is, always the same, like, around the world or also around The US? Are there different kind of deliberation schools or practices?
Yeah. No. I mean, I think there's a there's a quite a big toolkit. Right? So I I mentioned NIF. That's that was my initial training, and we still kinda do that a little bit. You know, certainly citizens assembly, we actually did just did a citizens assembly or a civic assembly here in Fort Collins. That's a particular tool, of you're doing a random sample and bringing people together, a panel of, you know, thirty years or so, sometimes much larger, that that are often paid, and then, you know, have a significant amount of time. The one we did here was over four days. Some of them are longer than that, that you're bringing these people together. Deliberative polling, which is coming out of the the, Jim Fishkin's shop, at at Stanford University Center for Democratic Deliberation is a whole another kind of different way. You know, so, yeah, there there's a broad kind of range of tools. I think that the common ground across all of them are, you know, it's it's someone, it's a process design perspective. There's a facilitator. There's someone who's designing it particularly. For me, you know, often from an impartial perspective, their goal, their expertise is process, not content. And you, you know, you have facilitation. You have these discussion guides. You know, there's some basic, elements to it, borrowed from several fields. Right? Some of this is from conflict resolution. Some of this from deliberations. Some of it is from I bring a lot of concepts from the business world, from collaborative problem solving of how do we work together to address these issues in terms of, like, polarity management and and both end thinking that are kind of incorporated that. So it's a very interdisciplinary academically, but then also very kinda cutting across many practices that is all coming together with that focus on how do we help people have better conversations.
And, I mean, having conversation or deliberating, it seems something that, require times. And, I wonder, like, how much time, should the people dedicate to this activity, to be able to actually do it, and, also to have a unhealthy society. So people that are able to communicate.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in some ways, it's it's the more time, the better, but then the more time is is a bigger ask for people. Right? And that that's one of the challenges certainly. Most of our meetings that we do now for the city are gonna be they used to always be two hours. Now they're normally, like, two and a half, three hours because we we know people will come, and that allows us to, you know, do do a deeper dive into some things and have some some pretty tough conversations. Sometimes having an all day event, or a longer thing. A lot of our projects now also, you know, we might meet, you know, a few different times. Right? So we have an initial meeting to kind of get us, you know, initial reaction to the document and and help us refine the document. Maybe a few weeks later, there you know? So there's lots of different ways of doing it. But, yeah, it is something I mean, the main thing, deliberation is synchronous. Deliberation is people together at the same time, whether that's face to face, in person, or that's online. Right? And there I mean, there's some ways to to have asynchronous, you know, like a message board and people are kinda going back and forth that people are kind of experimenting with. But for me, so much of the heart of deliberation is real people talking to each other and reacting to each other, and kinda bringing that back, that that I think that that's typically one key aspect of deliberation. So having to have people at the same place at the same time, with some time to dedicate is certainly, you know, one of the drawbacks, one of the burdens, one of the costs, of deliberative processes. But I think long term, the more people do this, they realize the value and the ports of it. And I'll say, people enjoy it. Right? One of the favorite things in my events, I always kinda stand by the door as people are leaving to thank them for their time. And it's, you know, you could tell they're exhausted. You could tell we made their brains work in ways they're not used to working, but most of them realize they just did something important. Right? They realized, yeah, we need to do this is how we should do things. We should have these conversation. Right? And they're willing to come back. You know, so so, yes, it's hard work, and it's not I I wouldn't say it's fun necessarily, but sometimes it can be. And and another way, another tool in the toolkit, is to to to gamify public engagement. Right? To turn it into a game, turn it into different kind of, things and, you know, so we've we've done stuff with Legos and done stuff with poker chips and, you know, so there's ways we can kinda make it, you know, more fun for people in different ways. But but the most important thing is I think people see the value out of it at the end of it and then ask to do more. And I think that's pretty typical for, my colleagues that do this kind of work locally. The more you do it, the more people want to do it, and it starts kinda building capacity and and and hopefully providing a a a realistic alternative to what we're getting in these polarized politics.
I'm very interested by this gamification aspect. Like you mentioned, LEGO sessions also using LEGO. Yeah. So how does it work?
So so that was for something that we're doing on housing. So Northern Colorado you know, Fort Collins is in Northern Colorado, about an hour north of Denver. And and we're a great place to live. Right? So more and more people are moving here. All the towns around us, we're getting a significant population increase. But we also have some limitations. There's not that much water here in the West. Right? So there's growing concerns about how do we deal with this growth and and those type of things. So that was a process that we designed working with some partners. It's almost I forget the numbers now. It's been a few years, but it was kind of a design of process of, hey. We we've got 200,000 people moving into our region, here in the next five, ten years. Where do we put them? Right? So, basically, the LEGO pieces, we had smaller LEGO pieces that were, like, single family homes, and then we had larger that were duplexes and then even bigger ones that were apartments. Right? And we had a map, so then each table kinda had to decide and they can, you know, get 10 of the smaller pieces and change it for a bigger piece. Right? But that means more density and kinda building up. Right? And so people want single family homes, but if everyone has a single family home, you know, then we we we're not fitting these, you know, we have a lot more traffic and and, environmental impacts. Right? You know, so that was trying to negotiate all these different things together. So the Legos were were a mechanism for them to kinda each table have a, you know, tangible way to kinda try to do this process.
And I I was curious. So, do you know if people were able to repeat the process by themselves after, being facilitated after, participating
to a session? Yeah. I do believe I mean, part of our basic kind of concept, and we see this, so often in our meetings. You know, so say there's a two hour meeting, we we always see and hear from our students that, you know, the first third of that, the facilitator is doing a lot. Right? They're asking a lot of questions and they're they're inter we call it intervening. They're intervening in the conversation to try to improve the conversation going back and forth. The second third, they're doing it less, and then the last third, they're doing it even less because people start doing it themselves. Right? You know, so part of the the role of the facilitator as we're training them is to model how we have tough conversations. Right? To ask interesting questions, to really listen, to paraphrase, to re okay. So what I'm hearing it you know? So all these skills that we're training the students, the facilitators to do, part of our goal is to for the participants to pick up those skills. Right? And and we see that again in just a two hour meeting. Right? The question, you know, earlier on, a facilitator might ask, you know so that's that's really interesting. You seem passionate about that. I'm curious. What are the counter arguments? People that disagree with you, what what might be important to them? One of my favorite questions, right, to to try to understand the values of the people that disagree with. And, you know, that question that facilitated might ask in the first third, well, participants might ask each other that in the in the last third. And we're hoping they're walking away from the event with new skills. Right? We we have so much focus, again, as maybe a a US context. You know, so much of our education is about, you know, public speaking and presenting and writing a paper and communicating out. We don't tend to teach people how to ask good questions of each other. We don't teach them how to listen nearly as much as we need to. You know, listening and asking good questions are hugely important, not only to democracy, but just to any kind of collaborative problem solving process. Right? You know, so that becomes this thing. I think that's one of the the reasons for the virtuous cycle. The more people do this, the easier it's to do because they start learning how to do it. And and, hopefully, they go home, and they have a different conversation. We do a lot of training. I I do something with school districts of, you know, training a cohort of of parents and community members in this work. And part of the goal is, hopefully, when an issue comes up and it starts to polarize and a very simple kind of narrative starts dominating, they know how to push back. And that might be in the coffee shop with another parent that's saying, can you believe the school district's doing x y z? And they're, well, it's not that simple. You know? So, certainly, one of the goals of these deliberative processes is to to build people's skills, and hopefully to make it less likely that the simple stories and the and the and the worst of human nature dominates our conversation, and and we start having better and better conversations on our own.
Yeah. I was thinking about the role of, education, also the role of schools will be maybe important to have, this kind of practices. Yeah.
I wrote I'll send you a link to a paper I wrote called the wise collaborator, and I'm basically making the argument, to rethink how we do civic education. I think civic education often focuses a little too much on, you know, being informed and then being engaged. Those two adjectives appear all the time, at least in The US. Right? Well, I know from the social psychology and brain science that often we think we're informed, but we're quite misinformed. Right? Because our brains are wired to, let me go find all the evidence I'm right. Right? So sometimes the more informed you are, the research shows with my side bias, you know, often the the smarter you are, the more educated you are, the more likely you're you're to to be to suffer from my side bias because you just become really good at finding evidence that you're right, and better at refuting or ignoring or avoiding evidence that you're wrong. So then when we're informed badly, we get engaged badly. And a lot of times, civic education is more activist education, which makes us feel good. We pick a side and we fight for it, but it doesn't give us the skills to engage across difference. You know, so so my work, you know, I I mainly run these meetings that temporarily we help people think better, but certainly long term, you know, through through, you know, k 12 education and higher ed, if we're training students with these skills of, hey, how do you talk to people that disagree with you? How do you understand issues from multiple perspectives? Right? Then all of a sudden, I think our our brains are wired for outrage. We can rewire our brains through education. So they're much more suited for deliberation. They're more deliberation ready than polarization ready. And I think that's certainly kind of, you know, part of our goal moving forward.
And I I was thinking, have you run any workshop with kids? And, was it different compared to adults?
No. No. I mean, I think, you know, so, obviously, our program is is primarily undergraduate students are our facilitator. So we work a lot with college students, but then we also work a lot with our local high schools. And we have you know, we used to have a a facilitation core, with the high school. We train some of these high school students, and then they would go run events in the in the, you know, the lower schools, right, to help us come with school issues. They would sometimes help with our events as well. What lately, I'm not directly involved in this with my colleagues with the center, have a youth civic action program with their going into the high schools and and teaching them collaborative problem solving skills. It's kind of a negotiation between deliberation and activism. Right? It might be sometimes, hey. We we wanna do this issue, but but how do we do that activism in a way that isn't, you know, so divisive and polarizing, but it's activism that that brings people together. So there there's interesting kind of different ways of thinking about, you know, how do we move the needle on the on the the issues we care about. But those are working directly with high school students quite a bit. K. They're they're able to do this stuff. Right? They they normally see it as very hopeful. You know. At least in The United States, we we have a lot of young people are just so frustrated with the system. Right? The political system just seems to be, you know, people just kinda yelling at each other and simplistic. So a lot of them have checked out. So so we give them this alternative, like, you know, hey. Here's a different way to engage these issues, particularly local, that that's gonna be much more hopeful and and also, I think, in the long term, much more successful.
And, I haven't asked you anything about your professional background. So if you want to to say something about, academic professional background Yeah. How you are arrived.
Yeah. So my initial academic training again was was, I was trained to be a rhetorical critic, and and argumentation scholar. My my early work focused on American presidents, how they talked about issues, and I I grew more and more frustrated because they they they didn't talk well. I think I mentioned that a little bit earlier. So then as I finished PhD, I kind of shifted from that being the focus to, you know, getting engaged in this dialogue and deliberation world, understanding. I was, taught more about debate, and then I saw these tools of dialogue and deliberation as as much more important, much more useful. Now I kinda use all three. But I but I kinda it shifted from being I'm probably not as much of I I'm more of a practitioner now or a pracademic. Right? My work nicely, you know, I do a lot of the theory, but then we run a lot of these events, and that that's always constantly kind of bouncing back and forth. Right? We get to practice and, test out these theories. Most most of our work is, you know, actually out in the community every day, running these types of things. Right? So, yeah, it's exciting to see, a lot of this stuff growing, and and, you know, encouraging people. I think every university, every college university in the country, in the world, should have a program like mine. Right? That's not only providing capacity to their local community that local communities, you know, severely need it, but it's also teaching, students these skills and and giving people these examples of different ways of engaging.
Would you like to share something about your personal background, like, also starting from when you were a child?
Yeah. Well, it's yes. It's it's Martin. I was born in Argentina. I was born in Buenos Aires. We moved to The States when I was pretty young. So so I grew up, in Texas. I grew up in Houston and then did all my schooling at Texas A and M, and then I've been now in in Colorado for the for the last twenty years. Probably the other relevant thing is I've I've politically, I've been kind of all over the map. I my my parents were small business owners, in Houston. We owned a Baskin Robbins ice cream store and then then some daycare centers. So then, you know, I grew up much more of a conservative household, at least conservative in the term of, you know, not being too happy about taxes and regulations and so forth and just wanting, but then went to grad school, and started getting interested in kinda bigger issues. In some ways, I kinda became an angry progressive, somewhat Marxist maybe for a semester or two, but then I realized, okay, they make me feel good, but I'm just kinda screaming at people, and I didn't see that as a way to move forward. So then I kind of shifted, with some of my work of, you know, I made the decision, I guess, twenty years ago of, you know, if I dedicate my work to helping people have better conversations, I realize I think I'm gonna make more of an impact on the issues I care about by doing that. Right? I could become an activist. Right? And, and and it'd be part of kind of the screaming back and forth, and I'm like, the system's just not working. Right? So I decided I I wanna work on the system. And the long term hope is if I believe one side or a particular perspective is the best perspective, my goal is to make the process work so well that the best arguments get elevated, and and, you know, and the weak arguments kinda get exposed. And so I I still believe, idealistically, we're striving for a mutual ideal, I know, but I still believe we can create processes, that reward quality thinking, that reward good arguments. Right? Our system often does the opposite, particularly a two party system with winner take all elections, but we're we're seeing alternatives now. And I think there's a lot of hope. We again, I think we know what to do. We just have to convince, you know, build capacity and more communities to do it.
I really like your optimism. I also share it. And, I mean, in my life, I saw, a very strong polarization when there were, like, like, I would say, big event. Like, there could be it could be, like, with the war, Ukraine, Russia, because maybe there are different, point of views. Could be the same with, Israel Palestine. Could be the same also during COVID. And, sometimes, I also saw that people stop talking to each other, because they start to see seeing that person as a sort of enemy, while the difference was, just that that person had a different idea about, a specific situation. And and, also, that made me think a lot about how, how can be important to talk, and not to, and I I don't know if, if something like, this happen also to you, if you have seen, this kind of, conflicts.
Yeah. You know, earlier, I I talked about kind of the the the three big challenges, and I think I only talked about two of them. So this opens up for the third one. So I talked about toxic polarization being a key issue, this information overload. And then the third one, the way I'm framing it now, is conflict profiteers. Right? The the the easiest way to explain what I do is I try to design processes that avoid triggering the worshiping nature and actually tap into the best. There's lots of people that are doing the opposite. Right? They they understand the human nature and they're taking advantage of that, to to whether that's to win elections or to, to get rich, they get paid a lot more than me. Unfortunately, they're working with the flow. Right? Again, our brains are more wired for what they're doing, and we have to recognize that. You know? So so sometimes when you focus so much on toxic polarization being the issue, and I do think it's a big issue, and you're you're focused so much on bringing people together, you might be blind to some important distinctions. Right? And and and you and you're susceptible to to to getting kind of manipulated, by these bad faith actors in a way. So that becomes part of the work is, yes, we wanna one of the lines that's used now is, like, you don't wanna build a bridge between the arsonist and the firefighter. Right? You don't want to fall into a both sides ism or a false equivalency and assuming kind of all perspectives are the same. It's another argument I make about debate, dialogue, and deliberation. You know, dialogue for me is primarily designed to bring people together from perspectives and understand each other and, you know, don't make, negative assumptions about people and assume best intentions. All of that is really important, particularly to kind of shift from this exaggerated polarization to the actual. Right? But if we just do dialogue, dialogue for me tends to be nonjudgmental. Dialogue is, you know, we're just listening to each other's stories. Well, in a democracy, at some point, we have to make a decision. Right? We can't always just agree to disagree. Right? Democracy is not an educational exercise. It's a mode of living, you know, to borrow from John Dewey. It's a way of us kind of making decisions to get ultimately, you know, so if we're overemphasizing dialogue or if we're overemphasizing bridging, if we're overemphasizing understanding each other, those are important prerequisites. Those those are necessary, certainly, to to help us have better conversations. But, ultimately, facts need to matter, better arguments need to matter, People that are that are purposely dividing us, using manipulative tools, you know, we need to kind of push back on that. Right? So that's where when I talk about toxic polarization information disorder and conflict profiteers, as these three inter kind of twine challenges that we're facing in democracy, there's a lot of efforts focused on each of those. But if you just focus on one of those without recognizing the danger of the other two, I think, ultimately, we we fall short. Right? So that's where I'm I'm trying to fashion deliberation, and these kind of building tools as able to deal with all three of those in a way. Right? When we build a better environment, a better way of talking, and build capacity for this, It helps us depolarize. It helps us make distinctions between good information and bad information, and it takes away a lot of the power from the conflict profiteers. Right? That their tactics are no longer as successful as they are. So so that, I think, long term is is the heart of the argument for these deliberative practices, these democratic innovations, that it helps us take on those three challenges that we're facing right now.
And can we say that when there is, some toxic polarization that is maybe produced by, newspapers or the I don't know. Some other content that is seen by a lot of people that, there could be an intention to do that, like, because, you also said that, I mean, the system where we live in, actually is very polarizing, because of the two party system or other kind of reasons. And so I wonder if, this polarization is produced in a consciously way or not?
No. I I think there again, the the idea of conflict profiteers, there's people that, you know, purposely, create polarization. That polarization helps. They're they're profiting from the polarization. Right? And and certainly that at at a political level, I mean, that that's one of my biggest concerns about a two party system. Right? Is it incentivizes polarization. That that's what works to win elections. That's what works to get people fired up. Right? Right? But when people ask me about Trump all the time, and the the safest way for me to respond to Trump is Trump's really good at a really bad game. Right? And and certainly, Trump is is a polarizer. Right? His rhetoric is kinda designed to divide us and kind of an us versus them, and and for me, bring out the worst in human nature. Right? And the problem is pushing back on Trump with those same tools. I don't think long term really works. Right? So that's where we're trying to change the game, versus kind of, you know, play the game better in a sense. And so a lot of that polarization. And I'll also say, not all polarization is bad. Right? We don't want everyone to think the same. So that's why I use the term toxic polarization. It's when polarization gets to a level that it undermines us and it, you know, brings out the worst in us and it leads to just simple assumptions. If I assume the other side's evil, there's no reason for me to talk to them. Right? If I assume the other side has these hidden problematic motives, right, it cuts off all communication. And in a democracy, if half the population doesn't trust and dismisses the other side, there's no way a democracy can kinda function. Right? So clearly, depolarization has to be a part of it, and we're learning more and more about it. But we we can't just focus on, hey. Let's just come together and assume the best because, you know, sometimes there are bad faith actors. I don't think half the country is a bad faith actor. Right? But there are certainly some people that are that are, you know, purposely trying to divide us for their own profit or, you know, ideological benefit.
Yeah. I'm thinking about how power works. I mean, it's quite complex, but I'm thinking about the internal enemy strategy and outside enemy strategy that makes the group more compact. And so I think that this is also used a lot, I would say, in every place, of the world. And that, of course, create, I would say, some most of the time, some toxic polarization. And, the people that are doing that, of course, they're doing it because the, yeah, they see advantage. At the same time, also related to the question that I did before, if they are conscious or unconscious, if they are conscious that that that this way of doing could actually lead to something very, very dangerous. I'm thinking about nowadays, we are not used to have, luckily, civil wars in Europe or in the Western world. But I'm thinking that in the past, this, I mean, Europe, saw a lot of violence. I think it was about religions war.
So Yeah. Like, when I when I talk about, you know, avoid triggering the worst of your nation to happen in the best, one of the key aspects is this notion, that, you know, humans are designed, you know, our brains are wired to be social. Right? We are social beings. Jonathan Haidt, talks about this in terms of groupishness. Right? We're groupish. The the academic literature is is, you know, uses the word tribal. Right? We're we're political tribes and so forth. I I think I have 10 books on my shelf that has the word tribe in it. I tend to avoid to use I think tribe's a more complex term. But that notion of of humans, another book is called Making Monsters. Like, humans are one of the only species that, like, demonizes our own kind. Right? So it's this clear aspect of human nature that that we tend to think naturally in terms of us and them. And there's two sides of this coin. Some of the worst things humans have ever done is because of this. Right? That we have an us and we define them and we dehumanize them and we justify atrocities and we're still seeing this all over the world today. Right? But on the flip side, some of the best aspects of humans are that we're groupish. Right? We're not individualistic as a species. We're in a group. There's a power of us. There's a way of connecting. In some ways, we're one of the most cooperative species. Right? There there's research I've been digging into that that makes the argument that that humans welcome the stranger more than any other species that exists. So this becomes this question of what are we tapping into? Are we tapping into the the powerful negative side of that, The Us versus them and and the dehumanization, or are we tapping into the positive side of that of bringing people together? And my shift from focusing on national politics the first few years of my care career just shifting to local was really tied into that. Right? At the national politics level, we have a red team and a blue team, and it's bringing out the worst in us. Right? And it incentivizes. And, you know, for some people, that's a conscious decision to do that. And for a lot of other people, it's it's unconscious. Right? That they they know the the the media world that they're in, tells them this narrative, and they've fallen for that narrative. Right? So I don't think they're evil. I think they've been manipulated. Right? And so we're trying to get them out of that. But if we switch to local, if someone's primary identity is, hey. I'm in I'm in Northern Colorado. Right? And, yes, there'll still be a lot of distinctions, but at least the broad identity brings us together. But we often get divided by politics. We get divided by race. We get divided by religion. We get divided by all these different things, and all of those things have led to horrible things. How do we reframe that and and tap into that other part of our brain, which we're bringing people together as humans? Humans, there's a natural empathy, which is a fascinating kind of upside and downside to that. But so that's that's my long term work is how do we understand the negative aspects of our brain that are constantly being triggered? How do we design process to avoid doing that? But then the second half of my work, which is much more hopeful and that those works are much more interesting to read for me is instead of, like, how do we avoid all this bad stuff? How do we tap into the good stuff? And there's a lot of good stuff with humans. And and again, that's where my optimism comes in. It's harder to tap into the good stuff. Right? It's not as natural, but we know how to do it. And the more you do it, the easier it is to do. Right? So how do we engage people not as opponents, not as warriors in this good versus evil, us versus them battle? How do we engage them as creative, collaborative problem solvers? How do we switch? Right. I haven't talked I I use wicked problems a lot in my work. It's actually amazing. I've been talking for an hour, and I haven't brought it up yet. Right? But the heart of my work, I use wicked problems as a way of looking at issues that particularly assumes any complex issue has multiple underlying values that don't fit together. And then in a pluralistic society, different people would prioritize those values differently. Right? But the heart of the wicked problems frame is instead of assuming problems are caused by wicked people, bad people that have bad values and bad motives, we put the wickedness in the problem. And that's a huge part of a shifting from activating people as adversaries trying to vanquish evil, right, to how do we work together shoulder to shoulder to work these problems differently. So so that I've had a lot of success, I think, of using that lens to help. And I'm not saying that there's never wicked people. Yes. There are some conflict profiteers. There are some people that that are, you know but I think a vast majority of people are not wicked. Right? And then pragmatically, I think very few people self identify as Wiccan. Yeah. So we know from the research of you telling people that you think that they're evil or they're, you know, racist or or whatever kinda term that you're using, that doesn't tend to work because people don't self identify like that, and that just divides us more. So the pragmatic, effectiveness of framing an issue is a wicked problem, can be very successful to help bring people together to see the issue differently, to open up space for us, have very different conversations, that I think ultimately help us move the needle on these issues.
So I think if if the person, doesn't identify himself as a, let's say, racist or something else, using that terms, that person feels attacked.
So that is the thing that should be avoided. Yeah. Yeah. And we know I mean, thinking about the battle between facts and and values and and beliefs and so forth. Right? Arguments that challenge someone's own identity and challenge kind of their self perception are are always gonna fail. Right? The the the you know, it's and we see that with, like, the backfire effect. Right? If you're trying to convince someone that they're wrong and that they're a bad person, that's a very hard thing to do. And what it often does is it just increases the polarization. It's a backfire effect. Right? So that's where okay. How do we talk about these issues better? And, you know, and I'm not saying everyone's opinions, as good as everyone else's. Part of the heart of deliberation is once we have that better conversation, you know, if someone truly believes that they're right, the these processes help us recognize that. Right? And that's where it's gonna, people are gonna change their minds when they have genuine conversations with people that they trust. And that's where they're gonna have the moments, and you see that with examples. You know, work on extreme listening, with with Diah Khan, I think is her name is, or, I forget the name of the the the musician. There's tons of, TED Talks and and YouTube about it that that get people to leave white supremacist organizations. Right? You don't get someone to leave a white supremacist organization by attacking them for being racist. You do it by asking them questions and and talking to them. Right? And also, they realize, like, wait a second. I'm wrong. Right? You know? So it's not always just listening to us, you know, it's it's there's a pragmatic aspect of this of if you wanna change someone's mind, you have to give them the respect and really listen to them. Now I'm not saying, you know, people vulnerable audiences should try to have conversations with white supremum. You know? It's a very complex issue. Right? But it's the ultimate if we wanna change. The the other thing I'll say too is, you know, if people truly believe the world is dominated by powerful people, that are purposely oppressing us and holding people down, I believe that they love the fact that we're all screaming each other and facts don't matter. It makes it easy for them to do that. But as we transform our processes and start having better, better conversations, I think it makes it harder for for those, to kinda stay in power. Right? So that's the goal. You know, ultimately, my work is pragmatic of how do we have these better conversations. Some of the issues I take on are clearly wicked problems, reasonable people in all different sides, and I think these processes help. Sometimes our issues are no. It's it's actually pretty clear that one side or or particular perspective is a much stronger perspective, both, you know, has better evidence, but also better kind of set of values. Maybe it's clear one side is being manipulative and and and spreading misinformation or disinformation. I still think sometimes these type of processes are the best to kind of reveal that. Right? But, I mean, there is there is a tension. We engage a lot with my students between kind of more of an activism perspective or a kind of deliberative civility, bring people together. And and it's not an either or choice. It's a spectrum. And depending on our project, there there's different ways we kinda negotiate that.
I have a couple of questions, if you have time. In relation to how to have better conversation, you mentioned some book before. If you have any other book, to advise and also some maybe an a an eight docs.
Yeah. I mean, one of the the one of my favorite books, for facilitation is Sam Kaner, and he's got a few co authors. It's the Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision Making. We use that a lot with our training, and actually, specifically talking about, like, AI and technology and so forth. I think that's an interesting, you know, the I'll try to kinda paint this picture pretty quickly, but the main model of the the how do we make good participatory decisions, decisions that involve the people that it impacts. You know, so for me, democracy. He talked about these three stages of diversion thinking. Like, first, we have to make sure we hear from everybody and we get past the kind of status quo and the assumptions, and we hear lots of voices. And then we have to go through what he calls the groan zone. This is this tough conversation that we're actually really listening to each other and developing mutual understanding. But then at some point, we have to do convergent thinking. We have to kinda come back together and make some tough distinctions and prioritize and decide how to move to action. So we use that quite a bit both in our facilitation training and our process design because each of those stages, the divergent thinking, the working through the groan zone, and convergent thinking require a different way of talking, a different way of engaging. And and there's kind of pitfalls along the way. So, like, if you if you over emphasize dialogue, like I said, you have a lot of divergent thinking, but you never actually kind of work through things. Right? And you can kinda get stuck places. So that book, we use that in lots of different kind of context to kinda think about, okay, where where are we in this conversation and what kind of techniques do we need to kinda move forward in a sense? I'll I'll also, plug my my colleague's book, Katie Knobloch, and John Gastel. Katie is is the the associate director of the CPD on faculty. They have a book called Hope for Democracy. Right? We've talked a little bit about hope and optimism. Focused primarily on some citizens assembly, the the Oregon initiative review, a project of really digging into and seeing, and it really kinda brings out, hey. What are some of the things that we know work? Again, that that notion of, we know what works to bring people together on these tough issues. How do we build capacity to kinda do that? And, hopefully, I'll have my book in about a year. So I'll I'll send you an article that summarizes kinda what I do about you know, imagining this robust deliberative city. I'm in the process right now of turning that essay into a to a book that hopefully will be out in the world soon.
Wonderful. And, last question, if you have a message for the people that are maybe doing something similar to you in other parts of the world or maybe they are working on technology to create system that will help, facilitating. So people that are exploring, new way for
Yeah. You know, so I I work a lot with an organization called the National Coalition for Dialogue and Liberation, ncdd.org. That is kinda more US based, but but certainly kind of the concepts. Democracy Next is the the kind of one international one I know that does a lot of work, a lot of interesting, producing a lot of things. The Listen First Coalition, if you do listenfirst.org, has a a bunch of organizations. Again, most of these will be kind of national. But, yeah, there's a growing movement kind of across the world. A lot of this, you know, I think in some ways, Canada and in Australia and and some things in the European Union are are ahead of us on some of these things. Right? My work is US centric, but, I think there's, you know, they often call it public consultation in different places, but I think we're seeing more and more innovation here of how do we how do we do things differently. We we know screaming at each other doesn't work very well. Right? So so stop trying to play that game, and let's create some different games that we know are gonna work a lot better for for us.
Thank you, Martin.
Thank you a lot. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. You can tell it's not hard getting me talk about this stuff. So
If you have anything else to add, though.
I I I one thing we didn't mention that I'll just kinda put out too, I I work a lot with, again, like I said, cities and libraries and community foundations and school districts and for local capacity. For the last four years, I've worked quite a bit with local newsrooms. So I I wrote a paper, on the National Civic Review about this dual crisis of local journalism and democracy and how they can bring them together. So we've we've been working quite a bit with newsrooms to think about how can we equip local newsrooms with these deliberative processes, these deliberative skills, to help us kinda change conversations. One of my favorite articles is by Amanda Ripley, a journalist, wrote a article called complicating the narrative. And it was a journalist that got some conflict resolution training and realized, like, journalists have been doing conflict, badly. Right? They've been leaning into the conflict. They've been kind of highlighting the melodrama. They've been saying, hey. You know, these are because that's what's interesting. That's what people want. Right? They want the the the the the attacks and the bad guys and so forth. But when she got the conflict resolution training, it's like, what if journalists actually help us understand the conflict and dig deeper and help us reframe the conflict in more useful ways. Right? And that led to something in the they're called solutions journalism, which I think is probably nationwide now. So there's a lot of like I said earlier, our brains are wired for polarization and our political system, our media system, and our tech platforms all tend to make that worse and take advantage of that. Well, in all three of those now, you know, so we're working a lot on democratic innovations and political innovations to make better political systems. The, you know, deliberative journalism that I'm working on and solutions journalism, we're trying to figure out better ways of doing journalism. I do that. And then some of these new tech platforms, Flipside Forum is one I played with a little bit. I know in Northeastern United States, there's a Front Porch Forum. You know, so there's there's new and then a lot of these AI, Sway is is one of the AI tools that I learned at the Northwestern, Simon Cullens' work, on kinda creating these tech platforms or AI, that are helping us come together. So that's where leaning on those new technologies, those news ways of thinking that I think are informed by our brains, but are designed to, as I've said several times, not trigger the bad stuff and actually get into good stuff so so we can function better.
Yeah. Let's hope that, all those platforms works so we have more facilitator and, better conversation. So thank you a lot, again.
