UNUM | "We Hold These Truths" with Monticello's Dr. Jane Kamensky
Village SquareCast
In this 250th year since the Declaration of Independence was signed, the American idea—an idea that has changed a whole world around it—finds itself under extraordinary pressure. As the Declaration’s author, Thomas Jefferson has gifted us with both breathtaking credal words and a life lived so firmly in contradiction to their meaning that we cannot possibly look away. Our very special UNUM guest, Dr. Jane Kamensky, has made history her life’s work as the President & CEO of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. She calls our founding idea “leaky,” as people of every color and creed...
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God Squad | Us vs Them, Good vs Evil: So who’s wearing the white cowboy hats in this (tired ole) rerun?
Village SquareCast
The hallmarks of high conflict include a narrowing middle ground, the growing sense of a binary “us vs. them” narrative—and absolute clarity that “we” are the good guys in the story, and “they” are the black hats. Some of this might feel a little new to us, but this accelerating vicious cycle of conflict is how most of human history has unfolded. Before there was a Magna Carta and Constitution, life was a Manichaean cosmic struggle between good and evil and (retroactive spoiler alert) it wasn’t pretty. After all, if you’re convinced you’re fighting on the side of...
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UNUM: The Pursuit of Liberty, with Jeff Rosen
Village SquareCast
As we now find ourselves officially in America’s 250th anniversary year, we are truly honored to be joined by the legendary scholar Jeffrey Rosen. As the CEO Emeritus of the National Constitution Center and the author of numerous books, Rosen’s iconic body of work gives us a richer understanding of the tensions, rivalries, and principles that have shaped the American experiment. His most recent book, “The Pursuit of Liberty,” tells the vibrant story of how the tensions in the visions of founders Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton haven’t just endured since the...
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God Squad: Why Does God Squad Even Work?
Village SquareCast
For 15 years now, God Squad has quietly defied the fashion to avoid talking with people who don’t look and think like us. From “Ten Paces at High Noon” to “Shut Up and Sing,” from abortion to race, The Squad hasn’t shied away from much. As we celebrate 15 years of programming, we thought it was high time to get a little meta and talk about what holds us together—year after year after year—when so very much is falling apart. We’ll even be joined by two people around at the beginning of God Squad—Liz Joyner and Betsy Ouellette Zierden. Learn more about the program and meet...
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UNUM: Pride, Reckoning, Aspiration with Dr. Theodore R. Johnson
Village SquareCast
Navy veteran Dr. Theodore Roosevelt Johnson, his family name a legacy first chosen to honor the new possibilities for Black Americans many presidents ago, about a football game when he stood during the National Anthem and his son—on the field as a player—chose to kneel. Both, he argues, are acts of love of country. Ted’s life, service and scholarship are a love letter to America—both when he confronts our failure and takes pride in our accomplishments. Now Ted leads New America’s Us@250 initiative which “seeks to reimagine the American narrative with a focus on three...
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America at 250: "Her ability to repair her faults"
Village SquareCast
“The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” —Alexis de Tocqueville When Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to a freshly-minted America, he found a people gathering and talking and deciding on things—they were building, and they were repairing. That’s a 250-year-old spirit we’re going to need to rediscover, so we’re bringing together two young leaders of this very old idea—John Wood and Manu Meel. Of the people, by the people and for the people is how these two have been getting it done. John...
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Flying Pig Academy: Conservative 101 for Liberals and Liberal 101 for Conservatives OR Empathy 101 for Everyone
Village SquareCast
Introducing the newest thing in higher (and we really mean higher — like look UP) education: The Flying Pig Academy. A dream of The Village Square (with support from Florida Humanities) for many years, it’s finally aloft. The division in American society is big and seems impossible at times to address. The Flying Pig Academy is kind of an insider's how to. Spending two decades trying to build trust between people who don’t look or think alike changes you. It’s been like a stereogram where a whole different way of understanding the world pops out at you, like a second picture...
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Flying Pig Academy: Bad Therapy OR why we really ought to think groupishly to address our political division
Village SquareCast
Introducing the newest thing in higher (and we really mean higher — like look UP) education: The Flying Pig Academy. A dream of The Village Square (with support from Florida Humanities) for many years, it’s finally aloft. The division in American society is big and seems impossible at times to address. The Flying Pig Academy is kind of an insider's how to. This Flying Pig Episode: We live in a highly individualistic society, so maybe it’s not a surprise that when we’re trying to solve a big wicked problem like our deepening political division our approach is based on the...
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Flying Pig Academy: Walk Away from That Box OR Why Fixing Civil Discourse Requires Less Politics, not more
Village SquareCast
Introducing the newest thing in higher (and we really mean higher — like look UP) education: The Flying Pig Academy. A dream of The Village Square (with support from Florida Humanities) for many years, it’s finally aloft. The division in American society is big and seems impossible at times to address. The Flying Pig Academy is kind of an insider's how to. This Flying Pig Episode: Politics are a mess, the American electorate is fed up. So what do we do about it? Way too many of us doom scroll through the latest political news from the comfort of our couch in the suburbs. Rightly...
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UNUM Series: Our Common Purpose with Dr. Laurie Patton
Village SquareCast
As we begin our reflections of the 250th year of our shared experiment—in the 5th season of our UNUM series—we are truly honored to bring you the current president of The American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Fresh from the founding of a brand new country with a Big Idea (but still in the throes of the Revolution), John Adams was among the founders of the storied . Devoted to bringing diverse thinkers, professions and talents to the task of creating and communicating knowledge to serve this new nation, the earliest members of the Academy included George Washington and Thomas Jefferson....
info_outlineAs we barrel toward America’s 250th, one could argue that if we crack up before we get there (some bad days we’d take even odds), it’ll have something to do with the complexity of being in charge of executing one of the founders’ biggest ideas — that the church and the state were to be separate in this new nation of theirs. (It had been so much “easier” when the king told all us peasants what religion we were.)
Our framers, for the first time in history, asserted that a citizenry had “natural rights” as human beings, given to them only by God, to follow (and be responsible for) our individual consciences — including the right to not believe at all. These rights could then not be taken by the government. Those dudes in tights, both Christian and Deist, had birthed a country where all sorts of religious belief would thrive.
Turns out high principles about freedom for everyone all at the same time wouldn’t be a piece of cake and after 250-ish years of disagreement, we’re still haggling over those darn specifics — partly because we’re masters of not seeing the log in our own eyes. God Squad goes right to the real conversation on this age-old prickly topic.
Learn more about the program and meet the God Squad here.
The Village Square is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
Funding for this podcast was provided through a grant from Florida Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of Florida Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.
This program is part of a larger project "Healing Starts Here" funded by New Pluralists. Learn more about our project, and other inspiring grantees here.