Featured Essays

In the younger days of the Internet, when Facebook was first hitting its stride, the world felt a boundless sense of optimism about the potential of this technology to bring […]

The ever-present debate about “identity politics” continues to rage. It’s a conversation that gained strength during the civil rights activism of the latter 20th century, but it truly became a

President Trump and I have one thing in common: We both detest fake news. But the term “fake news” has different meanings for each of us, and for many Americans. 

Better Angels has advanced its mission of depolarizing politics by focusing largely on psychological techniques encouraging cooperation, empathy, mutual respect, and productive communication. We can justify this approach because politics,

A few weeks ago, I was trying—feebly—to learn Vietnamese. My girlfriend is from Vietnam, and my first encounter with her parents was around then. It seemed like the very least

By Randy Lioz and Paul Norris Involvement in Braver Angels can be a highly rewarding endeavor, and each of us feels an increasing pull towards the organization, taking on more

Our political divide between red and blue, left and right, is often characterized in the media as an ideological conflict between liberalism and conservatism. Yet the meanings of these ideological

I’m writing this to avoid the last of my holiday shopping. I still have more to get my niece and nephew, Maddie and Mason. They live in Philadelphia. I only

The University of California, Berkeley, holds a distinct place in the history of political discussion in America. In fact, it’s practically synonymous with left-wing campus protests. In the midst of

I recently had the pleasure of participating in a Braver Angels Debate event in Santa Monica, California, and wanted to offer my insights into the process and how that may

When I started researching the different types of cognitive errors to which we fallible humans are susceptible, I had a hypothesis: Blues don’t make cognitive errors. Reds do. Oh, the

“My country is tearing itself apart. I must do something…but what, exactly?” These were the thoughts running through my head during the 2016 election. It seemed our country– and my

You’d be excused for forgetting, but up until a few years ago Kanye West was quite popular in mainstream American culture, as both a person and an artist. His albums regularly

Perhaps more than any other Western democratic people, Americans revere work. This is not surprising, given our history. Unlike the aristocratic European societies that colonized the Western Hemisphere, where unaccountable

People make jokes about family drama at the Thanksgiving table, and let us be clear: it is a situation ripe for humor. But it’s also very serious. We talk about

If you are an American with any reason to follow local news, chances are you’ve heard of us—Better Angels has been covered by scores of local and regional newspapers, not

There is an anti-authoritarian streak in American culture that many of us love, at least in some of its forms. This is hardly surprising in a country whose creation began

When it comes to policies and politics, Braver Angels members generally can’t agree on anything. As a result, Braver Angels doesn’t take positions on particular issues. It doesn’t rate or

There is an inherent contradiction at the heart of Braver Angels that we need to resolve. Braver Angels is sometimes a mediator: through our workshops, we provide space for two

In The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff argue that we’ve been fostering a sense of fragility within an entire generation of Americans. I think they

There has been much controversy incited by the role of the Electoral College in our presidential elections, especially in recent years as results have diverged from national popular vote totals.