My guest this week is John Wood Jr., national ambassador for Braver Angels, an organization dedicated to alleviating partisan animosity in the US. Many Americans, no matter their partisan affiliations, believe that we’re at a crisis point. Political conflicts that should be worked out through public deliberation and the ballot box too often spill over into physical violence and disorder. Braver Angels is trying to turn the temperature down, persuade people to reach out to each other across political lines, and reverse the process of civic decay that’s gotten us to where we are today.
I begin by asking John to talk a bit about Braver Angels’ broader mission and membership. Presumably most of us can agree that a less charged, less dogmatically partisan political environment would be better than what we have, but don’t some issues require us to take a hardline stance? Immigration, for example, is an area where emotions run high, often for understandable reasons. I try to get John to articulate a partisan position of his own, but the man is good at his job. He believes our greatest problem is that we’ve come to mistrust each other, and part of Braver Angels’s work is rebuilding and strengthening that lost trust.
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1:08 John’s work with Braver Angels
8:16 How Braver Angels gets its business done
13:09 Trying to bridge the partisan divide
20:27 Do some issues require taking sides?
27:37 Braver Angels's approach to the immigration issue
31:37 John: “Trump is more symptom than cause”
38:47 Are some political conflicts unavoidable?
41:38 John: “What we need in America is a ... spiritual transformation in our attitudes toward one another”
50:30 Braver Angels's American Hope Campaign
Recorded on July 25, 2025
Links and Readings
Glenn’s 2020 conversation with John
Eliza Taylor Hawkins’s report, “Depolarizing During the Pandemic”
Braver Angels’s Trustworthy Elections Report
John’s speech before Braver Angels’s 2023 National Convention
Thomas Sowell’s book, Black Rednecks & White Liberals
Braver Angels’s American Hope Campaign
John Wood Jr. – The Long Bridge Across the Partisan Divide