You know, if you open your phone right now, look
at the news. Oh, boy. Or, God forbid, you scroll
through the comment section on some political
post. That's a good idea. You get this picture
of America that's just, it's loud. It's so angry.
It feels like two completely different species
of people are just screaming at each other. Exactly.
And the story we're told. constantly is that
this is just the new normal, that we're this
polarized, this tribal. And, you know, there's
no going back. It's the dominant narrative, isn't
it, that the United States is, well, a thing
of the past. But we have a stack of documents
on our desk today that suggests that whole narrative
might be. Well, factually wrong. Yeah. We are
doing a deep dive into an experiment called America
in One Room. And I mean experiment in the most
scientific sense. This was not a corporate retreat.
No, no feel good circles here. This was a rigorous
scientific stress test on American democracy
itself. So what happens when you take a statistically
perfect slice of the American electorate? People
who disagree on, I mean, everything. People who
would not be caught dead in the same room otherwise.
And you actually put them in the same room at
a resort in Texas for four days. The results
are, and this isn't an exaggeration, pretty shocking.
We're talking about a level of depolarization
that most political scientists would have told
you was impossible. Right. So the mission for
this deep dive is to try and answer this one
huge question. Is all this division we see, is
it a permanent feature of our software or is
it just a glitch in the interface? And if it
is a glitch, this experiment might have found
the patch. But to get there. We really have to
look at the setup. I mean, if the methodology
is flawed. Then the whole thing is just a nice
story. Exactly. If this was just like 500 people
who volunteered because they love talking politics,
it means nothing. Precisely. That's selection
bias. The enemy of good data. If you just ask
for volunteers, you get the loudest people. Yeah.
The ones who want to argue or are already super
engaged. So the organizers, this was Stanford
professors James Fishkin and Larry Diamond. From
the Center for Deliberative Democracy. Yeah.
And funded by an organization called Helena.
They had to avoid that bias at all costs. So
how do you do it? How do you build a mini America
without just getting the policy majors? They
used a process called deliberative polling. And
to find the people, they worked with NORC at
the University of Chicago. They didn't just,
you know, call random numbers. They used something
called stratified random sampling. Okay, break
that down for us. That sounds like a lot of jargon.
Think of it like baking a really, really complex
cake. You need the exact ratio of ingredients.
Right. So NORC basically built a mirror image
of the U .S. Census. They made sure their group
of 523 delegates matched the country perfectly
on age, race, gender. education where you live.
And crucially, your politics. Absolutely. So
if, say, 28 % of America is conservative, rural,
and over 60, then 28 % of the people in that
room had to be conservative, rural, and over
60. That sounds incredibly difficult to pull
off. It is. They had to recruit people who normally
never talk about politics, people who would never
go to a town hall. They paid them, covered their
travel to Grapevine, Texas, basically treated
them like VIPs. And this was back in September
2019. Now, just to be sure about the science
here, they didn't just survey the people in the
room. No, that's a great point. Because, I mean,
how would you know the world didn't just change
that week? Maybe some big news story broke and
changed everyone's mind at the same time. That's
where the control group comes in. They had another
group, 844 people, recruited the exact same way,
but they all stayed home. And they took the same
surveys at the same time. So if opinions shifted
in the room, but not for the people at home.
You know the event caused it. You've isolated
the variable. Precisely. Okay, so the stage is
set. You have 523 strangers in a resort. But
you can't just, you know, throw them in a room
and say, go. That would be a recipe for a fist
fight. Right. And I was reading about the rules
of engagement they used, and one just jumped
out at me. The no tribal words rule. This was
Larry Diamond's idea, and it's, I think, brilliant.
In all the briefing materials and the discussions,
they banned four specific words. Which were?
Democrat, Republican, Trump and Obama. Wow. OK,
that seems incredibly hard to do. You're talking
about American politics in 2019. You can't mention
the president. Or the former president. It sounds
a little artificial, but it's actually really
strategic. Those names, they're like semantic
triggers. The second you call something the Trump
plan. Half the room shuts down. Exactly. It just
triggers that identity. My team good, your team
bad. So by taking out the labels, you force people
to actually look at the mechanics of a policy.
Yes. You have to argue the idea on its merits,
not based on who's attached to it. It shifts
the conversation from who proposed this. to what
does this actually do? A problem -solving session
instead of a political debate. That's the goal.
Speaking of what does it do, let's talk about
the homework, because this wasn't just, you know,
casual chats. They gave these people a 55 -page
briefing book. A heavy load, for sure. I mean,
I can barely get my coworkers to read a two -page
memo. Right. But that document is what we mean
by good conditions. It covered five huge polarizing
topics, immigration, the economy, health care,
foreign policy, and the environment. And I can
only imagine what a nightmare it was to write
that book. How do you write 55 pages on immigration
that isn't biased? Well, you bring in experts
from both sides. Yeah. They had a bipartisan
advisory committee that vetted every single sentence.
Really? Yeah. So if they made an argument for
a minimum wage hike, they had to make sure the
argument against it was just as strong, just
as well sourced. So everyone walks in the door,
not just with their own opinions, but with a
baseline of shared facts. Which is something
we almost never have in real life. We're usually
arguing from completely different sets of facts.
Yeah. Here, everyone was working from the same
textbook. And the event itself, it wasn't a free
-for -all. It was structured. Right. Small groups
and then these bigger sessions. The structure
is key. The small groups had neutral moderators,
people trained just to ensure civility and that
everyone got to speak. And then the big plenary
sessions. Hosted by Ray Suarez. And that's where
the delegates could actually grill the experts
and politicians directly. And these weren't B
-list guests. We're talking Dennis McDonough,
Obama's former chief of staff. Corey Shaikh from
the American Enterprise Institute. They even
had five presidential candidates show up. People
like Julian Castro and Mark Sanford. So you've
got a citizen from rural Idaho asking a direct
policy question to a presidential candidate after
having done all this homework. It's a level of
civic engagement most of us just never experienced.
OK, let's get to the results. The data. Because
I think the assumption going in would be that
people just double down on their beliefs. Right.
The backfire effect we see on social media. You
show someone a fact that contradicts their view
and they just get angrier. Did that happen? No.
The data shows the complete opposite. Across
all five of those policy areas, they saw statistically
significant depolarization. Okay, define that.
Does that mean everyone just became a centrist
mush? Not exactly. It's not that they all met
in the middle, just to be polite. What happened
was that the extremes collapsed. The extremes.
Support for the most radical proposals on both
the left and the right just, just, it plummeted.
The whole room moved toward the center because
they started to understand the real world complexities.
OK, let's get into some specific numbers because
these shifts are wild. Let's start with immigration,
usually the third rail of politics. This was
one of the most dramatic. Take the Republican
participants. Before the event, 79 percent of
them supported forcibly deporting undocumented
immigrants. Almost 80 percent. I mean, that's
a core belief for that demographic. After four
days in that room, that number dropped to 40
percent. It was cut in half. Essentially. That's
a staggering change on such a fundamental issue.
What about DACA, the Dreamers? Same thing, but
in the other direction. Republican support for
protecting Dreamers jumped from 36 % to 61%.
So it went from a minority view to a clear majority.
Why? What do you think changed their minds? Well,
it's likely a mix of the human element, actually
meeting people affected by these policies, and
the fact element. When you sit down and actually
discuss the logistics and the cost of deporting
11 million people. The simple slogan starts to
fall apart. Exactly. The simplistic idea gets
a lot softer. But it wasn't just a one -way street.
Democrats moved too, right? Oh, significantly.
Take the $15 federal minimum wage. Okay. Before
the event, 82 .5 % of Democrats in the group
supported it. After, that dropped to 59%. Still
a majority, but a much smaller one. That's a
huge drop in confidence. It is. And look at baby
bonds, this idea of government bonds for newborns.
Support just collapsed from 61 percent down to
21 percent. Wow. That's basically the room deciding,
OK, no, we can't afford this. Or that they prefer
other solutions. And we saw it with Medicare
for all. The number of Democrats who believed
it would raise the national debt to impossible
levels nearly doubled. From 20 % to almost 39%.
That's fascinating. It suggests that when people
are actually presented with the trade -offs,
not just the benefits. But the costs. They become
more fiscally, I don't know, realistic. Regardless
of their party. Fiscally realistic is a good
way to put it. They become more pragmatic. When
you get past the bumper sticker slogans and look
at the actual spreadsheet, the extreme positions.
Whether it's deport everyone or free money for
everyone. They become much harder to defend.
The one that really surprised me was foreign
policy. I mean, usually people's eyes glaze over
when you talk about trade deals like the Trans
-Pacific Partnership. But look at the data. Support
for the TPP went from 23 percent to 62 percent.
It basically tripled. Because trade deals are
complex. They're very easy to attack in a 30
second ad. They're stealing our jobs. Right.
But when you actually sit down and explain the
strategy behind it, you know, countering China,
building alliances, people get it. They're not
incapable of understanding. They're just usually
not given the full picture. So all in all, out
of 26 really polarizing proposals they discussed,
the parties move closer together on 22 of them.
22 out of 26. Yeah. The center didn't just hold.
It actually expanded. But I think there's something
else here that might be even more important than
the policy shifts. The source material talks
about effective polarization. Yeah, which is
the fancy term for it. Or how much we hate each
other's guts, right? Yeah. Polarization is, I
disagree with your tax plan. Effective polarization
is, I think you're a bad person because of your
tax plan. It's emotional. And this is where the
one room part is so key. You can read a briefing
book by yourself, but you can't fix that kind
of polarization without looking someone in the
eye. And that is exactly what happened. They
saw this symmetrical thawing of relations. Democrats'
positive feelings toward Republicans rose 13
points. And for Republicans toward Democrats.
It rose 14 points. Almost identical. But was
it real respect or was it just, you know, being
polite because you're stuck in a room with them?
They have a metric for that. Before the event,
they asked people if their political opponents
had good reasons for their views. Only 34 % said
yes. So two -thirds of the room thought the other
side was basically irrational or just plain stupid.
And after. That number jumped to 54%. A clear
majority left the room thinking, OK, you're not
crazy. I see how you got there, even if I don't
agree with you. That feels like the real miracle
here, the restoration of empathy. It also restored
faith in the system itself. The number of people
who felt American democracy was working well
literally doubled. There's a stat here I love.
98 .2 % of the participants said the experience
was valuable. I know. You couldn't get 98 % of
Americans to agree that puppies are cute. Right.
It shows this real hunger people have for this
kind of conversation. We assume people want to
fight because that's what gets clicks online.
But this suggests people are actually desperate
for civil, meaningful dialogue. They just don't
know where to find it. Barack Obama had a quote
about this that I think sums it up perfectly.
He said it was a reminder that behind every opinion
lies a human being with real experiences. And
that's the secret sauce, right? Yeah. It's really
hard to demonize a caricature when you're sharing
a bagel with the actual person during a coffee
break. The caricature just falls apart. But OK,
let me play devil's advocate for a second. This
was a bubble, a resort in Texas. It's a vacation
from reality. What happens when they go home?
Back to their cable news, their Facebook feeds.
Does the miracle just evaporate? That is the
multimillion -dollar question. Yeah. And the
researchers wanted to know the answer, too. They
didn't want to just measure a vacation high.
So they did a follow -up. They did. One year
later, right before the 2020 election, they managed
to get 463 of the original delegates back for
another survey. And what did they find? Did the
changes stick? They found the changes were shockingly
durable. People didn't just snap back to their
old positions. In fact, these delegates were
more politically engaged than the control group.
They were paying closer attention to the campaign.
And it actually changed how they voted, didn't
it? It did. And this is a sensitive point, but
the data is very clear. The delegates from the
event were 15 percentage points more likely to
support Joe Biden than the people in the control
group. Now, we have to be really careful here.
This doesn't mean the experiment turns people
into Democrats. No, absolutely not. Remember,
this group included staunch conservatives. The
researchers suggest that the process of deliberation,
of looking at facts, of valuing consensus, it
pushed people toward the candidate who was, at
that time, positioning himself as the centrist
unifying option. And for the independents and
moderates in the group, the effect was even bigger,
a 25 -point advantage. Right. It suggests that
informed, deliberative thinking tends to favor
moderation. It favors the candidate trying to
bridge the divide, not the one trying to amplify
it. They also had a different view on the government's
COVID response. They were more critical, much
more critical than the control group, which implies
they weren't just, you know, happier with everything.
They were more discerning. They were evaluating
performance based on facts, not just cheering
for their team. The New York Times looked at
this follow -up data and said something that
just floored me. They said... Few events, including
the president's impeachment and the pandemic,
have moved public opinion anywhere near that
much. It's a wild statement. We think of impeachment,
a global pandemic. These are earth shattering
events. But this suggests that quiet, structured,
respectful conversation can actually change minds
more than all that loud breaking news. So we
get to the so what question. We can't scale this,
right? We can't fly 330 million Americans to
a resort in Texas. No, we can't scale the resort,
but we can scale the principle. And I think the
main takeaway for you, for anyone listening,
is what Professor Fishkin argues. It's that our
polarization isn't inevitable. But it feels inevitable.
It feels like gravity. It feels that way because
our current environment is designed to create
it. The algorithms, the gerrymandered districts,
the media incentives, they all reward conflict.
But this experiment proves it's a product of
the environment, not the people. Exactly. When
you change the conditions, when you create good
conditions, the people change. The will of the
people isn't this fixed, static thing. It depends
entirely on how you ask the question. It kind
of challenges the whole idea of polling, doesn't
it? A normal poll is, what do you think right
now, off the top of your head? With no information,
yeah. This experiment asks... What would you
think if you actually had the time and the resources
to really understand the issue? And the answer
to that second question is a lot more unified,
a lot more hopeful. A lot more reasonable. So
here's the thought I want to leave you with.
It's a bit of a frustration, maybe, but also
a challenge. We now have scientific proof that
Americans can agree on the hard stuff. We know
the mechanism works. So if democracy is supposed
to reflect the will of the people. Why are we
all still using an operating system that's designed
to keep us apart? That's the question. We have
the technology to fix the glitch. We just have
to decide if we want to use it. Thanks for joining
us on this deep dive into America in one room.
Hopefully it gives you a little bit of optimism
the next time you look at the news. Thanks for
listening. We'll catch you on the next one.