Village SquareCast

“Trenchant and groundbreaking work.” —Molly Ball, National Political Correspondent, TIME Magazine

“The go-to source for understanding how demographic change is impacting American politics.” —Jonathan…

Dr. Kurt Gray of UNC Chapel Hill joins us for this timely and intriguing discussion about intellectual humility. Simply put, we'll be exploring the importance of knowing you might be wrong (gasp! yes…

100 Coffees.  Coffee and people are two of the joys of Alex Workman’s life. He has a long-standing goal of trying to have coffee with someone he’s never met (or doesn’t know very well) once a week. I…

A conversation about how to really fix extremism.

Given the dangerous rise of political extremism in America, it's well past time we stopped wagging our fingers and do a bit of soul searching of our …

Overcoming Racism and Renewing the Promise of America

“We can be different and united—the value of the American experiment is contingent on the truth of this proposition.” —Theodore Roosevelt Johnson…

It’s easy to lose touch with just how extraordinary it is that America’s charting Declaration named “the pursuit of happiness” right up there with life and liberty as our opening argument to stick it…

Prepared to explore “Empathy in the Age of Schadenfreude,” the God Squad showed up to a room full of people disturbed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  It turns out our planned topic was just the ope…

It's hard to reconcile that the author of the most central and sacred words in the American experiment—that all men are created equal—enslaved people.  Always game for a challenge (or possibly lackin…

Think it's impossible to bridge today's divisions? We beg to differ. Join politically diverse Village Square moderators looking back on the "best of" fifteen years—and now 50 podcast episodes— of bri…

A year-long project by More in Common came up with a description of most of America that a lot of us relate to: “the exhausted majority.” Everything has become political, high conflict, and seemingly…

Online trolls and political disinformation. Cancel culture and Twitter pile-ons. We're living in a time when truth itself is under perpetual assault by growing numbers of our fellow citizens (and mor…

We’re past due for a neighborly heart-to-heart about the tectonic shifts across the political landscape as powerful forces drive globalization inevitably onward and a certain number of citizens – nea…

There are few areas of the culture war with deeper and more consequential divisions than the ongoing clash between faith and science. And just like with our other divisions, we’re having difficulty n…

One enduring reality makes every challenge of democratic self-governance more difficult: human beings. The founders integrated their deep understanding of our flawed nature into the form of governmen…

Founder of Braver Angels and the Institute for American Values, David Blankenhorn has spent his career thinking creatively and provoking constructive discourse about some of the most important and co…

Join us for a conversation with very special guest Dr. Danielle Allen — Harvard Professor, classicist, and political scientist, and the author of “Our Declaration,” a book about this critical moment …

At a time when too often bad manners and ill-tempers replace conversations of substance, sometimes free speech seems to have simply gone to seed – and we find ourselves wishing someone would control …

BYU is the nation’s most consistently “stone-cold sober” school with a focus on upholding traditional values. UC Berkeley has become the country’s quintessential progressive bastion with a reputation…

New York Times bestselling author an…