The Importance of Balanced Information and Human Connections in a Pluralist Democracy

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This content is brought to you by Travelers. Text: Citizen Travelers (service mark) at the Travelers Institute, A Series on Civic Engagement. Thank you for joining. The webinar will begin shortly. 

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JANICE BRUNNER: Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. I'm Janice Brunner, Group General Counsel and Head of Civic Engagement for Travelers. And I'm happy to welcome you to our special Citizen Travelers at the Travelers Institute program this afternoon. 

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Title: The Importance of Balanced Information and Human Connections in a Pluralist Democracy. Logos: Citizen Travelers (service mark), LivingRoomConversations, AllSides (unregistered trademark) Technologies Inc, Travelers Institute (registered trademark), Travelers. 

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Citizen Travelers is our aggressively nonpartisan initiative to empower Travelers employees to take part in the civic life of their communities. 

Underpinning all the work that we do every day is representative democracy with resilient public institutions and an economic system that is governed by the rule of law. A strong, stable democracy that upholds the rule of law and guarantees predictable and fair outcomes is good for any business. Democracy depends on informed and engaged citizens. And when people better understand how our democracy works, they're better equipped to engage in constructive dialogue and action. We believe this kind of constructive engagement is essential if we are to overcome polarization and solve any challenges facing our nation.

It's with this in mind that we are pleased to host a series of programs examining civic engagement. We hope you'll continue to join us throughout the year and hear how we, as business leaders, can preserve and strengthen our democratic systems.

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Text: About Today's Webinar. This webinar is supported by Citizen Travelers, the civic engagement initiative of The Travelers Indemnity Co., for informational and educational purposes only. The non-partisan views expressed by the speakers and/or AllSides and LivingRoomConversations and its employees are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Travelers or any of its employees. Travelers disclaims responsibility for any publication or statement by any of the speakers and/or AllSides and LivingRoomConversations. Please note that this session is being recorded and may be used as Travelers deems appropriate. 

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Before we begin, I'd like to share a disclaimer about today's program. I'd also like to invite you to submit questions now and throughout the program. Drop your questions in the Q&A feature at the bottom of your screen. 

With that, I'm thrilled to be joined today by two amazing guests.

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Speakers: Janice Brunner, Group General Counsel and Head of Civic Engagement, Travelers. John Gable, CEO and Co-Founder, AllSides. Joan Blades, Co-Founder, LivingRoomConversations.org. 

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John Gable is the Co-Founder and CEO of AllSides Technologies, Inc., a nonpartisan organization offering balanced news, media bias ratings, diverse perspectives and real conversation. AllSides provides patented technologies, tools and services to media, companies, schools, nonprofits and more. 

John is a 30-year veteran of Microsoft and Netscape Navigator, the iconic web browser. He's also a successful entrepreneur. During his career, he helped ship the first version of Firefox. Before his technology career, John had a career in politics working for three senators, each of whom served as Senate majority leader, one president and a national political party.

I'm also very pleased to welcome Joan Blades. Joan's career has focused on empowering people in different capabilities, including as Co-Founder of LivingRoomConversations.org, an open-source effort to rebuild respectful civil discourse across ideological, cultural and party lines while embracing core shared values.

Joan is also a Co-Founder of allsidesforschools.org, a partnership between allsides.com and Living Room Conversations. She is also a Co-Founder of MomsRising.org and MoveOn.org, as well as a Co-Founder of the successful software company Berkeley Systems. A trained mediator, Joan believes in the power of citizens and our need to rebuild respectful civil discourse while embracing our core shared values.

I'd like to kick it off by turning the floor over to Joan and John to tell us a little bit more about how they came together to further their joint mission. It's an incredible story.

JOAN BLADES: Thank you so much for having us.

JOHN GABLE: All yours, Joan.

JOAN BLADES: I'm excited to share our story. Well, since it starts with me, I'll start. I live in Berkeley, California. It's where I was born. It's kind of a notably progressive neighborhood. And I'm also a mediator by origin, and way back last century, during the Clinton impeachment scandal, about six months in, we-- I started a petition with my husband asking Congress to censure the president and move on to pressing issues facing the country, which was the beginning of my political education, because that went viral.

And all of a sudden, I started learning about politics in a very real way. And it started with a petition that was rather unifying because love Clinton or hate Clinton, many people could agree that the best thing for the country was to censure him and get back to work. Theory was still at that time that the Congress had work to do and would get it done. And then, by 2004, we had become a progressive organization. The everybody signing was-- that had changed.

And we-- actually, I was concerned about climate. And I was going, why aren't conservatives concerned? And I had wonderful conversations with people across the political divide at that time and learned a lot. And I loved it. And I made friends. And I was able to do some really good work that way. And by 2008, it was harder to do that, to have a good conversation about climate. And that was the inspiration for Living Room Conversations, which was founded with a conservative and independent partner.

And because we want everybody to be able to have good conversations across differences because we learn a lot, and we make friendships, and that shifts everything. And we started it in 2010. And I met John in, I think, it was 2014 or 2015 in D.C. area.

JOHN GABLE: We keep trying to figure out what year it is. And we're never sure, but it was some-- we knew at one point what the year was.

JOAN BLADES: But way back when, people were going, there's something going on here, and we need to be able to work together. And we need to be in good relationships with each other. So there was a beginning of what many of us call a bridging movement at that time. And that's how I met John.

JOHN GABLE: And I started in another part of the world, in Stearns, Kentucky, which is really coal mining, lumber, Daniel Boone National Forest, part of Kentucky. Although, I really grew up around the capital, Frankfort. That was a big city of, like, 20,000 people. But I came from there. And actually, when I went through college and all that stuff, I worked in politics for a little while, but only for like three or four years until I decided to get a real job.

And I went to business school and started in technology. So I joined the original team-- Microsoft Office team up in Seattle, when Microsoft Office was a new idea. And I worked in there in the early '90s. And eventually did my own little startup and eventually actually moved down to the area I'm in now in Silicon Valley-- I'm actually in San Francisco now-- to work for Netscape.

And for the young people out there, think of Firefox, because you won't remember the Netscape browser. But that was kind of like the ChatGPT of web browsers in the internet way back when. And it's interesting to talk about that because, it was back then, in 1997, where I gave a speech, which I now see was the beginning of AllSides.

Because back then, I gave a speech where we talked about all of us working there-- we're, like, the internet, we're going to be able to have better information and make better decisions. We're going to be able to talk to people all around the world or around the nation like we are now, and even see them and get to know them as individuals rather than some kind of stereotype. But I also thought, based on how information flows in the internet and how I thought it would flow when news got there, that it would also train us to discriminate against each other in new ways.

We now talk about that in terms of filter bubbles and the kinds of social divisions that we're having. But it was really back then that I started looking at that problem. Fast-forward to the Obama and Romney election. And I saw, in that election, something that I'd never really seen before. It used to be, in presidential campaigns, that you work on the undecided voter. And not till the end of the election did you really just focus with your own group, with the people who already supported you.

To me, that election felt like they weren't paying attention to anybody in the middle or anybody in the-- that might swing. I thought that they were just spending way too much time just on getting their sides riled up. And that's nothing compared to what we see now. But to me, that was so bad, I had to quit my day job and start trying to solve the problem.

And since I saw the problem as being really driven by the way information flows online and how technology has changed that, that's where I started. So I started looking at just how information showed and how we could get people out of their filter bubbles so they could see different points of view. And then I met Joan. And when people said, John, get out of the garage, get away from the computer, start meeting people.

And then I met Joan who introduced-- people introduced us. And she was solving the same problem but purely really from a relationship and conversation point of view. And we immediately realized that we were solving the same problem and totally aligned and just doing it in different ways that are completely complementary. When Joan and I got to do a TED Talk a few years ago, I always start off by saying that Joan invited me to go for a walk when we were there.

And my big moral of the story is when Joan Blades asks you to go on a walk, go on that walk. Because it really changed everything for us. It changed everything for the way we do things. We've done a lot together since then, also, how AllSides sees a problem as not just information but also relationships and people.

JOAN BLADES: Yeah. We know that people don't even listen to each other when they don't have a connection. And we've gotten so we live in separate narratives online. And that's what's so beautiful about AllSides is you sign up for AllSides, and all of a sudden, you see left, right and center side by side on the same topic, and you go, oh, that's what's happening.

And the combination of having this more full picture of what people are understanding, coupled with having friendships, relationships with people that see things differently, is golden. When we do that together, then we start finding-- we have so much more in common than we realize. But the media amplifies our differences, and we don't want to be doing that.

JANICE BRUNNER: Well, that's a great point, Joan. Maybe we just take a quick step back and just explain, John and then Joan, like what is AllSides? And what does it offer? And what is Living Room Conversations, and what does it offer for those on our call who aren't quite as familiar?

JOHN GABLE: OK, flip a coin, Joan. Who goes first?

JOAN BLADES: You go first.

JOHN GABLE: OK. We were actually going to be in the same place. I now live in San Francisco, but we couldn't get across the Bay Bridge in time to be there with Joan. So AllSides really started with the idea that our mission is really to free people from filter bubbles, so they better understand the world and each other. And it's that "and each other” that Joan really educated me about. But what we wanted to do was, first of all, come up with technology, and then business models that would automatically show you different perspectives.

So we would no longer be in the situation where we're being just force-fed what we're supposed to believe by either our peers and social media or news with an agenda or whatever place is trying to tell us what to think, that we, at AllSides can show you the different perspectives. As it happens, not only on issues, so you can see all the different major stances that people have and the big arguments for them, but also for news that broke this morning, how people on the left, center, right or different perspectives covered it.

So that we enable everybody to really think and decide for themselves. Interesting thing about that is that there is a lot of studies. The most recent one was from University of Colorado that I know of. But it essentially shows that, when we only see opinions we agree with-- and we only deal and work with people we-- are just like us, two things always happen. Each of us becomes much more extreme in whatever we believe. And each of us becomes much less tolerant of any different idea or any person who's different than we are.

And so AllSides’ approach is, first of all, is just to stop that thing that's killing us, to get us out of those filter bubbles that are exasperating and dividing us. And then we learn, and I learned through Joan, how it's not just the information flow, but the relationship flow. So now we are integrating and have much more opportunities for people to actually know each other. So not only can you decide for yourself, but you can also talk with people who aren't like you and then become more open to the other ideas.

And frankly, together, we come up with better ideas than we do on our own. But that's kind of how AllSides started and then evolved to being more than just information but also information and relationship and conversation. OK, Joan.

JOAN BLADES: And I think-- you know there is studies that show that we make our decisions by gut first and reason follows. John kept on thinking people are rational. And we like to think we are.

JOHN GABLE: I concur.

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JOAN BLADES: I have a dear friend in Utah who-- climate wasn't on his list of concerns. But it got onto his list of concerns, not because I'm so articulate, but because he cares about me, and he cares about another friend for whom this-- when someone we love cares about something deeply, we begin to care some too.

I care about him worrying about being marginalized. And so it's that human connection that is really what makes this work sing for me. It's why I love doing it. People connect, and they're surprised, and they love it because often, it's their neighbors. But the wild thing is we can do it by video too.

JOHN GABLE: We're always worried about how we're being divided and get against each other. And people talk about the psychology of humans and mobs and all that. But we're also wired to connect. People forget that. And there's a huge longing out there to connect. And real connection comes from actually being able to disagree. Real connection does not come from having to be exactly a certain way and believe a certain way to interact with other people so I don't get in trouble.

That's not real, human connection. And so having these differences, being able to talk with them in a healthy way and understanding each other-- I always describe Living Room Conversations-- because we do it for a lot of people at AllSides. And actually, it's interesting, a lot of people that tend to lean a little bit more left or more progressive love the idea of having a conversation. And sometimes they just love that experience.

And some people, a little bit more often on the right, but not always. They're, like, well, I don't need a good experience. I need to solve a problem. Why am I going to waste my time having a feel-good kumbaya moment? And so what I describe to them is often kind of what Living Room Conversations does is we get to the thing you want to talk about. But because of the way it's so carefully designed, and there's a lot of science into how they do them, you kind of accidentally discover the humanity of the other person.

And when that happens, we listen to other ideas and other people. So some folks who just want to have a nice, little, fluffy conversation begin to get into the topic a little bit more than they may have been planning. And people just want to get to the topic actually begin to get into the other person a little bit more. And then, really magical things happen.

JOAN BLADES: I remember one conversation I had in Utah about climate that the Living Room Conversation is-- you know, it's a container. And it went very nicely. And you can do 60 minutes or 90 minutes. I prefer 90 minutes because you go deeper. But then people had to be kicked out of 11:00 because they had become comfortable enough with people with very different viewpoints that they finally got to talk about all the things they hadn't talked about.

So a Living Room Conversation is a start, an opening. And then, it's a container that's got conversation agreements and conversation rounds that take you through. But it opens up so much more.

JANICE BRUNNER: So how do you get the people to join the conversations? How do you get this group together, or how do you create the group?

JOHN GABLE: We use different ways.

JOAN BLADES: Good question.

JOHN GABLE: Yeah. Why don't you start with how you did it first, Joan. And then we'll talk about how it grew online.

JOAN BLADES: So the first iteration of it was focused on politics. Two friends with different viewpoints, each invite two friends for a Living Room Conversation. And a personal invitation is golden. It's the best way to go. And someone said, oh, co-founder of Tea Party, you should meet, co-founder of MoveOn, co-founder. And so I had a wonderful conversation with the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots years ago in my living room with two of his friends and two of mine.

And it was incredibly productive because we discovered that we were on the same page when it came to criminal justice issues around too many people in prison, War on Drugs not a success, got to use evidence-based practices, and to have us show up together at a later date speaking to that, it was, like, what are they doing together? It's powerful when you do discover that's not a requirement at all.

 But that’s-- you can cultivate-- it's cultivating the curiosity. That's one of the conversation [INAUDIBLE]. Be curious. Be respectful. It's what we learned in kindergarten, right?

And then, think about who would be fun to talk to. If we have the conversation on technology and relationships, it's not political differences, but age differences that make a huge difference. We have cultural differences. It depends on the topic. We have over 150 conversation guides because it started around politics, but a lot's happened in the last 10 and more years to inspire conversations around culture conversations.

COVID-- whole conversations about values that are just beautiful. It allows you to go deep. Go ahead, John.

JOHN GABLE: That is a beautiful experience. And what she describes as these experiences, that's actually common. When we do this in schools, I think it's something like 97% of teachers want to do it again. But let's talk about how we invite more people. Because you have people who want that conversation. So first Joan kind of really started from the person to person. And these conversation guides are free and open source.

So lots of people do it in churches, in rotary clubs, in schools, across the board, actually--

JOAN BLADES: --and libraries.

JOHN GABLE: --and libraries. Libraries are a big part that we look at. What were you saying?

JOAN BLADES: Monthly, a lot of places like to do it monthly. It's a practice.

JOHN GABLE: Yeah. And then so you have that kind of grassroots-up approach. And we also started a schools program. And we're being used in schools in all 50 states. We'll have as much as 40% of our traffic at AllSides to our site being from students and teachers. And from our site and our other networks, we've had as many as 79 million views in one month. So it's a large number of people.

But then, you wonder, like, how do you have that conversation? How do you invite people to the conversation other than one on one? Because that kind of takes a while. And so we did something with USA Today called America Talks. And we experimented and piloted different ways of doing that. And we basically invited people to come online together. And so what would happen is you come together like this group did.

We have 2,400 or so people here today. They show up. But after like a little intro, they're all broken into small groups of six people. And using our technology to automatically identify differences, so we make each group diverse and different in perspective or politics or age or socioeconomic or something. And then they have their own private, small conversation, like a Living Room Conversation.

Because these conversations really work-- the magic number is like six people. And so they had these experiences. And we're looking at doing this over and over and over and over and over and over and over again at massive scale. We're doing that in schools right now with a new program called Mismatch, where-- I'll give you an example. Why does Utah keep coming up? Maybe I shouldn't give you the Utah-New York example. But we piloted it with a couple thousand students-- a couple thousand people.                                                                                                                                           

And what we do is we connect a classroom in one part of the country with a classroom from another. But the classrooms are very different. They're politically very different, socioeconomically very different, geographically, culturally, blah, blah, blah, racially, very different. And then they get together, and the students talk one on one. Not with a teacher in the room, although, they're in classrooms. But they have small little groups.

And those conversations are stunning and transformative. And in fact, Fetzer Institute worked with Living Room Conversations to test those kinds of conversations and Living Room Conversations in person as well as online. And they found that, whether it's in person or online, it's still transformative. And in fact, they even went back two months later after-- so what they did was they could measure how open people were to different ideas and different people before the conversation. And then they measure after.

And they see a huge shift in people's attitudes towards others and other ideas. Then they went back two months later to the same people and saw that shift in attitude had remained. And that happened, whether it was in person or online in this very specific way, video and people interacting. And kids are actually easy.

The New York and Utah example I love using. There's also great Boston and Alabama, across the Mason-Dixon line, North-South one. But the Utah-New York one I love because the kids at Utah, they went to their teacher because those New York kids, they were using very colorful language. Because in this school in Utah, you do not swear. And in New York, if you don't swear every sentence, they don't even listen to you. So it was like really different.

But then, the kids in New York were like, show me what's behind you. And the kids in Utah brought their computers out and show this amazing landscape, something like nobody in New York had ever seen before. Kids get it. It's we adults that need extra help. But it's a wonderful experience for kids to be brought out of their own bubbles, which are less political, often, but more just cultural. And you learn how to appreciate people in different worlds.

So what these experiences do, whether it's getting outside your news bubble or your relationship bubble, they really bring us out. And then we address each other and politics and who we vote for and how we interact very differently.

JOAN BLADES: We have a teacher in Casper, Wyoming, that I learned about just earlier this year who's in a community college. And she found out about Living Room Conversations during times of racial unrest. And she brought it into her classroom. And it became part of-- because she teaches English, and she wanted people to write about current events. And the conversation agreements have just become part and parcel of all her classes.

And then, not only has she been doing it with her students for years, she's taught the other teachers. She's taught the administrators. It's just, it's about kind of changing your listening skills and improving them. So you have a better conversation with your dad or whoever it is that you've been having a less-perfect conversation with. And that's not to say things become perfect. But you've got more skills to work with when talking to people that aren't part of your we-all-agree group. Because we've created more and more we-all-agree groups.

JANICE BRUNNER: I love that. And I love the intersection. One of the things I thought was so interesting when we met was this just the intersection of the connection and relationships, the human connections and relationships, and using technology to bridge that gap that we are finding within the filter bubbles. And your examples about the different schools across the country-- I mean, technology is really the enabler there in connecting those two groups that, if they didn't get on a plane or get in a car, they would otherwise not meet.

And so that's why I find it's so effective. I think one of the things that's been interesting to me is to learn how many bridging groups there are out there and this bridging movement. But using technology to scale that, which you all have done so effectively, is really, I think, a very positive thing and very intriguing.

One thing I want to talk about, too, is so who are the users? You mentioned schools. Who else is using AllSides and Living Room Conversations? Who else is interested in this technology to break out of our filter bubbles and our biases and otherwise bridge this divide in perspectives?

JOHN GABLE: We do surveys of our audience fairly often. Actually, our last survey had an equal percentage, exactly 20% Democrats and 20% Republicans to one decimal point were coming to our site. And then the other 60% were independents and mixtures and everything else. And that's actually one of the things we're really proud of. And it's very unusual in the news space to have a mixture of political backgrounds.

We also look at it in terms of ages. And actually, everything from young to the oldest age groups are pretty much equal. We have a spike around millennials. But besides that, it's, like, people ask, who's your target market? And it's really this longing for understanding and connecting and seeing what's really going on rather than an age-specific thing. And we see that all in all.

And you were asking about how we get this scale. That's actually, when I think about all the different bridging organizations out there-- and Princeton did a survey-- a study about-- I guess, it's maybe two years ago now, Joan, where they found over 5,000 different organizations and clubs working to bridge divides one way or the other.

But we've always thought-- as a technology guy, I always thought that the thing we can really provide is the technology to make this scale. And Joan was talking about these conversations online. We bring into schools across the nation. But imagine if we have a new topic every week. And we were talking some very major news organizations. We've done some tests with USA Today where we invited-- where over 1,000 people showed up and signed up for these breakouts in the two different tests we did with them.

But imagine doing it every week with some major news organizations. A lot of our work is not at allsides.com, though it'll be there too, but with other news sites. And we haven't signed a deal yet. So I'm not going to say who the top two people are interested in doing it. But every week, we have a topic.

And the nation can actually get together and not just rant at each other on Twitter but actually get to meet with people who may have different points of view on it, have a deliberative conversation about it to actually understand each other and try to solve the problem. That's a very different animal than we're seeing nationwide in social media today. And that's something we are working to provide.

JOAN BLADES: So now I have a bookend for John who's talking about a different conversation every week. My hair is on fire about trust in elections because across the political spectrum, people believe in fairness, and they believe that our elections should be trustworthy. And there's been a campaign for the last many years that's undermined people's trust in elections. Elections are something that are local and that we have power over. And we have responsibility for it.

So this is kind of the perfect place for us to focus our energies collectively. And when I say collectively, Living Room Conversations has a local trust elections conversation that then can be for people that have had that and feel good, talk to people across the-- but we're also pointing to Braver Angels, which put out a trust in elections report where they worked for over a year to get agreements from across the political spectrum, consensus on points, over 200 of them, around trustworthy elections.

Convergence has a piece out. Interfaith America has a playbook. There's a bridging movement, and we believe there's a call to action for this year because we want to have a high-functioning democracy. And people are starting to look at our country and say this is-- they don't even trust their elections. That's not who we are. That's not who we want to be. And people can own it.

And there's an opportunity this year. And this is classic peacebuilding because it's something where everyone's agreeing on the fundamentals. And we can do this if we choose to. So that's why--

JOHN GABLE: Yeah. And a lot of people assume you can't do that. But actually, the Republicans are concerned about Democrats. Democrats are concerned about Republicans. And if you look at elections, you'll see that there are both extremes of parties try to denounce whatever election they lost. They said it wasn't a popular election, or there was fraudulent behavior or that people were oppressed or prevented from voting that would have that would change it.

So it's not just the presidential elections. But this has been going on for many years getting worse and worse and worse, way back before the Gore/Bush election that was so close in Florida. But back then, people were like saying, it's an illegitimate election. So it's been kind of a long-time thing. And people are fed up with that.

And what was interesting to me was the length and clarity of the report that came out of Braver Angels because I know a lot about that particular topic. And I've worked a lot in redistricting and preventing gerrymandering over my years, ever since back in the '80s. And so I'm familiar with it. And there was such agreement on different things from both sides that would solve the problems that both sides have.

And it's probably not going to hear much about that during election season, but it's a thing that people want. And we can solve and have solved in the past, and we can do that together. It's one of those things where the people need to take the lead, not the politicians or the media that just report on the extreme anger people and ignore the exhausted or silent or hopeful majority that actually have a very different idea.

JOAN BLADES: We can focus on our aspirations rather than our fears and our anxieties. The news has a tendency to focus on our fears, anxieties, anger. And we've got to take over. Locally, it makes our communities better. And then, nationally, we need to build trust too. High-functioning societies have trust.

JOHN GABLE: And trustworthiness.

JOAN BLADES: So I want people to talk about it. I want people talking. But this year, I'm nudging them towards the trust in elections, if I have a choice.

JOHN GABLE: We'll let Janice go back to the next topic, but I do want to point out one aspect of it. It's not just trust, but trustworthiness. So a lot of news organizations are complaining they're not trusted, but it's because sometimes they are not trustworthy.

So the point is to make real changes in showing different perspectives of the news or actually listening to the other side's concerns in elections and really doing things that actually make them trustworthy. And after transparent, open trustworthiness and leaders, then you can have trusted elections. You can't just pretend that it's OK. You got to really make some changes.

JANICE BRUNNER: And I think that's a great point, John, about trust, and Joan about trust, because that's something we talked about in our-- when we were talking before the webinar is, a lot of this work is essentially building trust-- building trust in your neighbor, building trust in people that have different perspectives, that their perspectives aren't out of malice, but rather out of a different way of seeing things, getting to know people on the human level.

And I thought the other thing that was interesting was the trust in the media, to your point. And one of the things that actually I was interested in was how many media companies are actually using AllSides. And I think just even knowing that builds a little bit of trust. So could you tell us a little bit about that?

JOHN GABLE: Yeah, we help media in a couple of different ways. So one, we do do ratings. And they are actually ratings using a patented system that gets people all across the nation, left, center and right to rate the bias of a news organization. So even if a news organization doesn't want to be known one way or the other. We can give anybody background information. So they kind of have an idea of whether this organization is leaning left or right or otherwise.

And that's not necessarily evil. We need different perspectives. But there are organizations that really are dedicated for doing kind of the old-school objective news. And a lot of them hired us. We actually make more money through news organizations and other organizations paying us to help them make changes. We have tools internally that can automatically identify-- we call it the bias checker.

But we can look at an individual article and basically kind of replicate what used to take us a month of blind-bias surveys where people all across the country look at content. They don't know who wrote it, and they themselves, being left, center, right, say, well, I think that piece a little bit left or a little right, a little center, and this is why. We've done that thousands and thousands of times. And now we've come up with a way using some technology to be able to replicate that.

So a news organization, when they write an article, they can literally push a button. Our technology runs. We say, oh, people on the left or right will think of this as this way or that way. And here's what's getting their attention. Here is more information about the topic because we provide that as well as, here's the things that you may want to look at. So we can give them information, in real time, to help them report on something a little bit more objectively, a little bit more fairly.

And we've actually had some progress where we can actually see the results. So the two largest new media markets in the nation, New York and LA, there is a TV news station in each one of those that hired us and we worked with. And for both of them, they're part of a large organization which is actually pretty middle of the road, overall. But both of them rated as not center, as biased, one particularly so. And then we gave them these programs.

We worked with them, and two years later, we did this other test again to see where they were. And both of them, not only were more center, but they were really balanced. They were like some of the best in the country. So two major news markets, two of the leading TV stations, news stations, changed over two years and became more objective.

Others are doing a little bit on their own. We work with Newsweek. But they made some big shifts in the past. We actually-- that was on the left, now they're center or actually talking and working with some people on the right as well. Sometimes they just want to be a little bit less extreme. They want to be a little bit lean right, or lean left, but they want to be a little bit more in that bigger picture. But we provide a lot of tools and work with them.

And there's a pushback today. There's a call for old-fashioned journalism that's more objective and less agenda-pushing. And you see organizations like CNN and Politico, at least, speaking to trying to make changes. And sometimes it's hard culturally, internally. And you see, you see Fox trying make some changes as well. But we can help them. We know how to do it. And a lot of them are asking for our help, and we're working with them.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's great. I think that, in itself, the fact that people are even thinking that way is it builds trust. And then I think you follow that up with looking at the AllSides site. And you can see the different articles-- left, right and center. And then, even just the fact that people are interested in using that service to make their own decisions or to be able to see a topic across varying perspectives, I think is, is very hopeful.

And then, I think also on the school side-- and I think we have a couple questions in the chat about schools. And obviously, that's very much in the news today. But the fact that there’s so many schools that are signing up to be part of Living Room Conversations and/or AllSides and that kind of recognizing that this is something of value I think is also very helpful.

JOHN GABLE: So let me add a couple of things here just because I want to make sure I don't mislead folks. First, go to allsides.com or LivingRoomConversations.org. And you'll see links to the schools programs. There's a lot there for everybody. Teachers began with just showing the news left, center, right because then they were allowed to. Because if they didn't make it that transparent, they would get in trouble with parents, with faculty, with administration.

But since we make it that transparent, school librarians, which turned out to be the most incestuous group on the planet, as far as I can tell, discovered us early on and started sharing with schools across the nation. That's how that got started. And then they begin to discover these conversations that Living Room Conversations brings in, and that happens.

The thing I wanted to point out is that sometimes people might think, well, what you need is center news. And actually, I don't think center is necessarily correct. If you think about history, some very radical right ideas and left ideas are now mainstream. The radical right idea of not playing detente with the Soviet Union but winning the Cold War in a peaceful way-- radical, extreme, warmongering idea that turned out to work.

And then, on the left, gay marriage and acceptance of these very different lifestyles and really embracing that was a completely radical idea. And center organizations did not cover either of those news items or those perspectives for a long, long time. We need diversity.

And in fact, most time in history, we've had left, center, right, yellow journalism all across the board. Well, we need, as human beings, is the ability to navigate through that and so we can decide for ourselves and not get too caught up in anybody's noise.

JOAN BLADES: And the ability to care about people that see things very differently from us. That's part of this is human beings are very diverse. And if we only stick to people that are like us, our lives are more boring. And we're also finding out that our communities are less functional. And we're unable to do what we need to do. So we need to be in relationship with each other in a caring and respectful way and knowing that it's OK to have different views on some things.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's a great point, Joan. And that actually leads into another question I had for you was-- some of the notes we've gotten in the chat and elsewhere say people are scared. How do I, first, how do I get to know-- sometimes we do talk about filter bubbles. We're so in these different silos that we don't even realize how to step out.

And then, also, people are scared because they're afraid that that they're going to be rejected, or they're going to be criticized. So how do we get past that and actually start these relationships that are so productive?

JOAN BLADES: It is more work getting someone with a very different view to join you in a conversation. We've seen so much bad behavior in the media and sometimes in our lives that it has scared people. And that's why this conversation format that has these agreements about respect and curiosity and taking turns, what we all know how to do, honestly-- once you agree to that. And we all know someone that can't follow those agreements, and you don't invite them to join you in a Living Room Conversation. Not everybody, but most people can show up.

And then, the conversation questions are about your personal experience with something. So in our guns and responsibility conversation, notice it's not gun safety. It's not gun control. We have people from across the political spectrum reviewing guides, and we're trying to make them as welcoming across differences as possible. And nothing's perfect. And we're always-- it is open source, and we learn from our users.

But that guide-- what are the questions? Well, it's how were you taught about guns in your life? Have guns had any-- so you're telling your personal story. And from one faith community, I got the story of this group that sat at a table with two men ready to die for their Second Amendment rights and a woman that had been traumatized, not once, but multiple times by guns. And what happened in that setting is they really heard each other. They came to understand why they were important and in both contexts.

So it's not that they changed their minds entirely, but they expanded their understanding of the topic. And it allowed them to go away and make progress in different parts of their lives and be in better relationship with each other and this community that they were part of. So yes, it's more work, but it's also really valuable.

JOHN GABLE: And it's actually easier than I think people realize. There is a big lie that news organizations on both sides say. And basically, what they tell us is that the other side is more evil, more extreme and more plentiful, more of them. And the most extreme versions of them than is actually reality. The vast majority of people can actually be in these conversations, even though the media day-in and day-out tells us that’s not true, that the other people are the evil people.

It's also something that we discovered is, when we started moving these conversations online, it's actually even easier because you're not in person. And you're actually not even talking to people you know. But you are there. Your face is there. Your voice is there. Your name is there. You've already agreed, and everybody else in the room has already agreed to follow some rules. So it's like a lower bar.

And it's amazing. We-- all these different conversations we've done with so many times online. People will often say they were a little bit scared at first. And then, they, like, love it and want to do it again. And it was so much easier and more fulfilling than they thought and so more useful than they thought. And we can attract them. There are so many ways to attract people to this.

Sometimes they just are attracted because of a friend or a peer invite them, which is what got Living Room Conversations first rolling or organizations do or schools do. There's also just issues. I really care about, Joan, about the environment. I really care about homelessness in San Francisco that's gotten out of control-- in my opinion, two really bad policies. And I care a great deal about education. So there are different things we bring in.

And so when there is a discussion on an issue I really care about, that will attract me to join that conversation. And there is one issue that everybody across the board is concerned about, which is the health of our democratic society. Everybody thinks the other side is going to bring us over the edge. They all think the other side is authoritarian or socialist, which is basically a different kind of authoritarianism or what have you. And we're all terrified that our nation as we know it's going to die because of those other people.

But we all are common in that wanting to preserve that freedom and that helpful democracy that enables people to help each other and have a healthy society. So there's a lot of opportunity there and a lot of interest too.

JANICE BRUNNER: Yeah, I think that what's inspiring and what's hopeful about this conversation and others is just how much interest there is. When you learn about your organizations and when you start to talk to people, one of the things I've found that's been very meaningful about this work with Citizen Travelers is how many people are so excited about the opportunities to bridge divides and to re-engage in solidifying our democratic system and how much it really matters to people.

And so I think that in itself is very inspiring and a very hopeful message. You've given us some ideas as to how to get going with this kind of work and to re-engage. Are there any others aside-- obviously, getting onto AllSides, joining Living Room Conversations, things of that nature are great steps. But beyond that, just, what could everybody do today to try and start down this path or tomorrow or this week, at least?

JOHN GABLE: Go ahead. I have some thoughts, Joan, but go ahead.

JOAN BLADES: I always want people to have a conversation. And if you can't have a whole conversation, just find a guide, and use a couple of questions with friends or someone that you're truly curious about. It's a great way to have a deeper connection with people. We tend to ask about the weather, which, that's nice. The weather is good.

But it's so satisfying to get in deeper relationship with family, with friends, with neighbors. So just try it out. And yeah, definitely sign up for AllSides because I love it when, every day, I get what's top of news? And I'm curious what's going on out there. And I don't want to see just one side or the other. It's too much to process. So we need it. Thank you, John.

JOHN GABLE: And Living Room Conversations, too. I will give you another thing outside of our LivingRoomConversations.org and AllSides.com. First thing is to recognize that we're not just doing something that's kind of fun and feels good. But when you talk to academics about how to change a society, how to change policy on a national level, they talk about movements and successful movements. And they tell us that, when you get about 3.5% of a populace engaged in that movement, every time you hit that critical mass, culture changes, policy changes, historically.

Now, we have 330, getting closer to 340 million Americans in the U.S. today. That's 10 1/2 to 11 million people. If you just look at voters, it's more like 5 1/2 to 6 million. Those are very achievable numbers, particularly coming in my Microsoft-Netscape world. Those are very achievable numbers. This is not just kind of like, oh, fun thing to do on the side. So I feel like I'm fighting the good fight, but an achievable change we can bring to society.

So I'll steal from Nike and kind of say, "just do it." Just do whatever it is, whether it's in your school, whether it's with Living Room Conversations or AllSides, or even just having a party. We just had a party this last weekend, a Kentucky Derby party because I'm from Kentucky. And we had lots of friends from different groups. And it's amazing, when you just get together, how that builds these relationships that we’ve lost and lost even further over COVID.

There was a group-- I can't remember where they were, what town. But they had a big problem in their city because there was a big divide between people of color and police. And they were going to have a town hall. Instead, they had a cookout. And the communities got together and had a wonderful cookout, and that basically resolved the problem. They began to know each other as human beings and solve it. Anybody can have a cookout.

And for your school or for your church or library or whatever organizations you are, and you just have to take the time to invite people who are different than we are. So whatever it is, just do it. And my gosh, particularly our teenagers who are feeling such deep depression as a result of being cut apart from real relationships and even the increase in suicides, particularly among young girls, this is bigger than politics. It's a big, big thing to do.

JOAN BLADES: Real connection is human. And that, depression, anxiety, when you have real connection, that goes down. And one of the things I was going to note is, actually, businesses-- are one of the places where healthy conflict happens because good business knows conflict is human and that, if you have a conflict and you deal with it well, you come up with better answers. You come up with a team that feels closer and works well together.

And so if successful work environments could start filtering out to our social environment, that would be a gift.

JOHN GABLE: And Living Room Conversations has programs for businesses. AllSides does. And it's also not just-- I mean, you can go to HR groups and show how retention levels increase when you have people communicating or working with each other better. And also, when they begin engaging in their local community-- I know that Travelers says that a lot. But that's actually a really, really healthy thing. And that can be, whether it's schools or businesses or churches or organizations or whatever, they can bring these practices because our lives are spent in all these places.

It doesn't have to be about politics. In fact, sometimes it's better if it's not. And then you can bring into that political world, and we can come together because there is a problem in my town that we need to solve. And then we're already the friends to do that and work on that together.

JANICE BRUNNER: You just made the case for Citizen Travelers. I think it's just that is exactly what we think. We talk about this virtuous cycle. And the business case for civic engagement really is there's so many things you do well in the workplace as a team. And you innovate, and you discuss different perspectives, and you come up with a common solution, and you learn from each other.

And then, the idea of taking out those skills into the community and doing the same thing is such a positive way to accomplish so much more. And then, when you're in the community working with people across the spectrum and also learning new things and innovating, there's so much you learn there, in leadership that you take back to the corporation. So it's really this virtuous cycle that's just such a win-win and is so important, I think, for us to succeed in business is relationships and the ability to form connections and work with people in a positive way.

So it also comes together. And this kind of is like a very fitting end to the end of our conversation. But one other-- we have a few questions in the chat. And then we didn’t get-- we won't have a chance to get to nearly all of them by any stretch. But one thing I did want to just kind of have as a last takeaway, there's a question, what advice would you give to someone who wants to become a more informed and discerning consumer of news information?

And I think one of the things that I'm going to add before I turn it over to the experts is this idea that, if you actually have these human relationships to know the other side on a human level, you're less likely to be fooled by information in the media that is so far extreme one way or the other, or that it doesn't give all sides. So if I know my neighbor thinks about this issue in this way, I'm less likely to follow the bait.

And so what are your thoughts, like from the expert perspective of, just even action items, how people can become more discerning consumers and where even to go in addition to AllSides or how to approach it?

JOHN GABLE: I love your answer very much. That's really starts with the relationships. The other thing is the first thing to do is, what this person already did with the question, which is, you need to own your own information flow. Don't just let it come to you. Don't just let it come to you in social media or in whatever news that Google or some other search engine gives you in the first place. Recognize that they have biases and agenda, and they're, actually, their job is to get an emotional reaction from you, either positive or more easily negative so that you click more.

So don't get sucked in. Do the work. Pick. We have a bias chart on AllSides. Pick some groups on left, center or right, and just make it a habit to look at both or come to AllSides and see. We'll do that work for you. We try to make it easier for you.

But I love the way you came, Janice. It's, like, you came with a conversation first. If the news is telling you something that's very different than what you're seeing from your friends and neighborhood, don't necessarily think the news are really that smart. They may not be writing about what your situation is. And they could be seeing something very different.

JOAN BLADES: I'll also add that, when I see something that really resonates for me and I think is really right, I'll often think, what would John think?

JOHN GABLE: I do the same thing with Joan. I do the same, and it's really fun.

JOAN BLADES: And sometimes I share it with him and say, it seems right to me, but what about you?

JOHN GABLE: Yeah.

JOAN BLADES: Because I know I miss things. So it's also the things that you really like, think twice.

JOHN GABLE: We are great friends, but we do have different ways of looking at things. And more often than not, we're-- actually, I can't think of an example right now where we're trying to get the same goal. But often, I miss stuff that I never thought of that just seems like so obvious to Joan, she doesn't think about it. And I think I sometimes bring up things to Joan that she didn't realize either. And so it's actually been really cool.

JOAN BLADES: The relationship softens you towards the other viewpoint. It doesn't totally change my perspective. But it causes me to go, OK, there's other ways to see this. And that part makes sense. And sometimes-- one of our dear friends wrote, you're not as crazy as I thought, but you're wrong anyway. That's the book he wrote with his friends, these two.

JOHN GABLE: OK, a better quote which sounds similar is from Senator Howard Baker, who was a senator back in the '80s who was known for getting Republicans and Democrats to talk with each other. He had a phrase in his book is about, "The other guy just might be right."

But it's that kind of human thing. It's, like, OK, they may have a point. Or maybe they're not entirely right, but maybe they got a point. And you really get there when you know each other or you-- or you're willing to hear each other, not to answer and tell them why they're wrong, but to hear to understand, to listen to understand.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's amazing. I think we just need to all model the two of you and your connection and your relationship because it's very inspiring.

JOHN GABLE: Your group is so well aligned with everything we're doing. Just ask us and Joan and I will come running. You're doing great stuff.

JANICE BRUNNER: Likewise. So thanks to everyone for joining us today. And before we leave, I'll just say, we have two additional webinars coming up, three actually.

(DESCRIPTION)
Citizen Travelers (service mark) at the Travelers Institute, A Series on Civic Engagement. Upcoming Webinars. Register: travelersinstitute.org. 

(SPEECH)
Please look forward to our next webinar on May 15, "From the Driving Range to Driving Change: Inside the Travelers Championship." On June 12, we have "The Road Ahead-- Personal Insurance Market Trends." and on June 26, "Beyond the Surface-- Insights from the Middle Market Decision Makers." Thanks so much, and we look forward to seeing you next time. 

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(DESCRIPTION)
Citizen Travelers (service mark) at the Travelers Institute, A Series on Civic Engagement.