Polarization Part 2 with Dr. Dominic J. Packer, Dr. Jay J. Van Bavel, Dr. Hahrie Han, Evan Mawarire, Uriel Epshein & Joshua Fryday
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Welcome to Stories of Impact. I'm your host, Tavia Gilbert, and along with journalist Richard Sergei, every first and third Tuesday of the month, we share conversations about the art and science of human flourishing.

This is the second of a special three-part series exploring polarization in America, with Drs. Dominic Packer, J. Van Bavel, and a think tank of polarization experts who came together to define polarization and explore its causes and effects. In today's episode, we consider what these writers, researchers, and scholars say we can learn from the history of polarization in other countries and offer potential solutions for polarization.

Experts say that former President Trump's big lie that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, that the institutions responsible for running a fair political contest could not be trusted, and that they enabled President Biden to steal the election—a lie perpetuated and accelerated especially through social media—is one of the most damaging attacks on democracy in American history.

And that election denialism has normalized attacks against open-mindedness, against facts, and against nonpartisan institutions that manage political processes, says Uriel Epstein, executive director of the Renew Democracy Initiative. Election denialism in the U.S. is...

It's not entirely new, but I think the scale and scope of it is certainly new. It's something we have to address. It's something we have to defeat, whether through storytelling, whether through being more transparent about how ballots are counted in a way that inculcates trust in the general public.

And we should also be honest about places in which disinformation can arise regardless of the political ideology. I think that election denialism right now is the single greatest, most immediate threat to American democracy. And there's no way to simply say, well, this is a two sides thing. We need to find an alternative path to return trust to our institutions that doesn't simply dismantle those institutions.

Dr. Hari Hahn, professor of political science and the director of the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, agrees that election denialism is a threat to American democracy.

Democracy most fundamentally is about accepting loss, right? That you have to be willing to accept loss. And when you have one political party that is unwilling to admit defeat, then that is a rot in the core of the political system. It fundamentally denies rule of law, all these things that we think of as being pillars of democracy. You know, one way to think about democracy

is that it's a very unique form of government in that it fundamentally requires that people accept uncertainty over outcomes in order to have certainty over process. So I don't know if my guy is going to win or lose, if my policy is going to get passed, if my candidate will win or lose, but I should have a certain confidence that there's a certain set of protections, civil liberties, processes that will be upheld.

The opposite is true in authoritarianism, right? That when Russia has an election, we know who's going to win. It's going to be Putin. We don't know how he's going to get there exactly, but we know what the outcome is going to be.

And I think the question for us to think about then when we think about polarization in the mass public is, what are the conditions under which people are willing to accept that uncertainty? And one of the things I think that we're seeing right now is that people's willingness to accept that uncertainty is lower when the range of outcomes they're asked to accept becomes bigger.

Dr. Hahn asserts that the level of risk and uncertainty modern citizens must tolerate also contributes to their unwillingness to accept loss. Citizens are obviously unwilling to accept loss when losing can be an existential threat.

As we see rising income inequality, if people feel like the outcome they might have to accept is that they can't feed their family, then yes, I don't think it's an unreasonable choice for people to say, "I don't want to be part of the system where I might have to face that outcome." The other thing is that if we're in a situation where people feel like the other side is an existential threat to their existence,

because of that layering of social and political identities that we see, then again, it's not necessarily an unreasonable choice to say, I'm unwilling to accept this other side because it feels like it's an existential threat to me. And so I think that very often when we talk about polarization in the mass public, we don't have that conversation about the extent to which it's layered in with people's

feelings of their own agency in that process and how that shapes their willingness to accept the kind of uncertainty that is necessary for politics to work. This pressurized moment when citizens are evaluating their own willingness to engage in our political systems and whether or not to uphold civic institutions...

actually signals that we're in a potentially productive transition to a more expansive democracy than we've ever enjoyed, says Dr. Hahn.

It's not that polarization is a new thing. I think what is new in this moment is that we are simultaneously on the precipice of democracy being real in a way that it never was before, and we're grappling with whether or not we're willing to allow it to become real in that way. And so what I mean by that is...

is the story of American history has really been this progression of our democracies progressively including more and more people. It used to be that people who didn't have property, that people who weren't white, that women, all sorts of people were excluded from the polity and increasingly become increasingly more included. And one of the things that we've seen in the 21st century is that not only are they more included in terms of things like voting rights, but with the rise of the internet and all these different technologies,

There are fewer gatekeepers, and so they're also included much more in the public dialogue, in the public arena in a way that simply hasn't existed in the past. And so that's created, I think, an opening and this possibility of democracy being more in our grasp than it had been in previous generations. But it's also created this possibility of people being unsure about whether or not that's the country we really want to be. And I think that's really the battle that's going on.

Whether or not you see that as a good thing or as a bad thing, I think depends a lot on where you sit. Citizens absolutely have responsibility for the democracy. I think, though, that the problem is that right now, even people who are really concerned about political issues or upset about the direction that our democracy is going, they don't know what to do. Democracy, I think, always is an unfinished project, and part of what makes democracy

I think democracy is so vibrant and the reason why it has both the peril and the promise that we're seeing right now is because it's this complex system that people have to constantly create and recreate and create and recreate.

Joshua Friday, whose work with the Office of the Governor of California is to create opportunities for mostly young people to contribute in a meaningful way in their community, agrees with Dr. Hahn. He says the story of American democracy has always been the effort to diversify, to include more voices than ever before. That expansion can create conflict.

Our system was built for individuals to have an impact. Our entire system

was created for individuals to have a voice. Now, whether they exercise that voice or whether everyone is equally given the chance and the opportunity to exercise that voice, that's a very different question. And those are the fights that we are having in America. Who has a right to have a voice? Who is given the opportunity to have a voice in our democracy? These are the existential challenges of our country from the very beginning. That's what democracy is.

Democracy is this political gift we've been given

to actually have a voice in the community and world that we live in and to actually change it if we think it's going in the wrong direction. That's the power of democracy. And volunteering is the same act. It's understanding and feeling empowered in your community to do something that's going to make a positive change. And it's empowering when you volunteer. It gives you a sense of voice. It gives you a sense of agency. It gives you a sense that you can actually create change. And if you volunteer,

aren't given that ability, if you feel like you don't have a voice, that you can't impact your surroundings, that you can't make change, that the community around you is being led by people that are never going to listen and you can't make a difference, why would you engage in our democracy?

At the end of the day, all of us want to belong and feel like we're part of a community. We're social beings, and we all want to desperately be part of a community. We want to be loved. We want to love. We want to belong. And by feeling like we're in this together, by feeling like we're on a team, that we're part of a unit, whether that unit's your Peace Corps unit or that unit is your community, your city, or it's your state or your country,

It is, I think, a natural desire, inclination of us as human beings to want to be part of something that's bigger than ourselves.

Dr. Dominic Packer, social psychologist and professor of psychology at Lehigh University, agrees that it is a fight to safeguard and expand democracy. The outcome is far from certain, and that cultivating community is the way forward. I think the biggest question, how can democracy be saved? What we seem to be seeing is an erosion of the institutions that allow for healthy democratic debate and elections that actually are competitive, right?

And I think that there's an urgent need to think about and try to figure out how do we reverse this trend to what political scientists often call democratic backsliding. I think that's a very urgent question. My particular approach to it at the moment is to think carefully about the intersection of institutions and identities.

identities are all about who am I, right? If you can make people aware that they share some bigger identity in common, we're all Americans or maybe we're all humans, it actually helps bridge divides of those lower order identities. I think what's often proposed as a potential solution, at least in part to polarization, is to get people talking to each other. I think that does have limitations. On the other hand, I think

It's useful because it reminds us that when we talk to people, they're not just their political selves, right? That may be a part of them. In fact, you actually share some common identities that you hadn't realized.

And so those sorts of conversations, I think, help to undo that collapsing of identities. Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at New York University, Dr. J.J. Van Bavel, also highlights the importance of cultivating a shared national identity as an antidote to the myriad problems our democracy faces, especially the problems of polarization.

The composition of who is American has grown and changed over time in healthy ways and important ways that are more inclusive. Who gets to vote has grown. That's the primary determinant of citizenship, really, of being a good citizen. It's grown to include women and African Americans. It now is an increasingly interesting and diverse mix of people from all over the world who've moved to America because it represented something important to them and gave them an opportunity. And so we have to continue to evolve our definition of what it means to be American.

But it's important that there is some shared definition of it. We need to think of the structural changes. We need to deal with real issues like inequality in society, with the problems within our democracy, with things like gerrymandering. But we also have to think of what the psychological solutions are for individuals. How do you create shared senses of community in an environment where people are incredibly lonely and disconnected even with their own communities? How do you create a shared sense of national identity and a common purpose and meaning?

in an environment that's increasingly polarized. We're going to have to think about solutions that hit all of those problems. As Americans grapple with what kind of country we'll fight to create, what the rules of engagement will be, and how we can solve our national problems, we can look to other nations to inform our own perspective.

Polarization is not just a problem in the United States, but globally, says Dr. Van Bavel. And other countries' histories show us what we might face at home if polarization remains unchecked. Polarization is a big problem in the U.S., but it's also increasing in many other countries. So there's nothing unique about this being an American problem.

And I think that understanding it through these other lenses and seeing what's worked in other places is really useful for getting an insight about other possibilities, other possible directions that America could take.

But this is a responsibility of all of us to work together across different countries to help preserve and restore democracy in its healthiest form. And so I don't think that's something that America can do alone. It's going to require people from all of these different countries to committing to it and using evidence and science and policy together to figure out what works best. Uriel Epstein agrees. He's an expert on international democracy and threats to democracy.

Polarization is absolutely a global issue right now. I mean, we're at a place where the free world writ large is having a crisis of confidence. We've lost a sense of who we are and that our systems actually work and that they're the best that humankind has managed to produce over 2,000 years. I think one of the single most important things that we have to do in order to be able to address the flaws of our system is to recommit ourselves

to having faith in the system in the first place. Because it's only from a position of confidence that I think people are going to be willing to take the sort of risks and to have the sort of faith in their fellow citizens that allow for a pluralistic, diverse democracy to function. I think we need to understand that no matter how historically successful

democratic experiment has been, because remember, we're only a few hundred years old, a couple hundred years old. This is still an experiment. The type of institutional and democratic failures that happened in countries like Venezuela and Russia and so forth could still happen here. We are not immune. We can't simply be willing to sacrifice fundamental values at the altar of political expediency without risking our society as a whole.

Epstein also sees the opportunity for democracy to mature and flourish. Even in this dark hour of uncertainty and the amplification of division, he says the answer is healthy communication between citizens committed to the social good. Civil discourse is absolutely possible. It needs to become more prevalent. And the way that we do that, I think, is one, we assume good intent.

We assume good intent of our interlocutor, even if they agree with us viscerally, we don't automatically think that it's coming from a bad place. Epstein believes that more people than ever understand what's at risk if we cannot disagree peacefully with each other. I think that people are starting to wake up to the threats that our democracy is facing.

And I think that if we continue down kind of this, what I hope is going to be a new path that we're on, we will be able to bring ourselves back to what was a truly fairly successful open and free republic, whatever its flaws. And my hope is that we can get to a point where we can

disagree with one another. We can even fight powerfully for, you know, whatever it is that we believe in without necessarily hating one another and without necessarily trying to rewrite the rules of the system to favor our side or some other side. And I think that's feasible. I think it's realistic. I just think we have to commit ourselves to making it happen.

In fact, says Epstein, we can look to teachers from outside our own country. They're eager to share their hard-won wisdom and help us avoid the perils they've faced at home.

Dissidents, people who are actually outside of the American political system altogether, who have risked their lives for some semblance of freedom in their home countries, are in a very unique position and a very powerful position to help break through people's partisan shields in the U.S. They are truly uniquely positioned to communicate how inspirational American democracy is, how unique it is, but also that it faces certain threats.

Usually when we hear about dissidents, it's about how America can help them. But today, I actually think that dissidents around the world are in an incredibly strong position to help us. We are going down a path that dissidents have trodden before, and they've seen where that path leads. And I really hope that they can help us

start walking in the other direction. And they can also highlight for us how incredible what we have is, because I think we've lost faith in our own political system. And people who have experienced true oppression abroad know the value of our system, whatever its flaws. The imperative to safeguard democracy is very personal to Epstein. We want people to remember the value of being an American.

and of being free. Because when I think of why I chose to go down this profession, the thing that I remember most are the stories that my parents told me of having lived in Soviet Russia, of having lived under Joseph Stalin, of having been afraid that their neighbor would rat them out to the KGB.

Those are the stories that I remember. And so when I try to combat the trends of illiberalism in the U.S., I think back to my family history in the Soviet Union. Now, of course, most Americans don't have that. And so what we want to do is instill those same takeaways, that same emotional connection that I have to our freedoms. We want to instill that in people who have never known oppression the likes of which people in the Soviet Union knew or people in China know now.

Epstein believes more personal stories, like his parents, should be told about what is at stake. There's a million ways to tell a lie, but only one way to tell the truth. That means that truth-tellers are at a unique disadvantage. But the way that we combat that, I think, is through storytelling.

We need to be incredibly compelling in the stories we tell with the facts that we have. And I think it's one of the biggest failures of the pro-democracy movement to simply assume that ultimately the truth would win. We need to actually fight for the truth, and we need to do it in a way that will be emotionally compelling and in some ways visceral to people who don't think about politics very much.

One important story about the fight between democracy and authoritarianism is playing out now, between Ukraine and Russia, says Epstein. If Ukraine were to continue down the path of being a free and democratic country, which it was already doing, it would show the Russian citizens what was possible.

And that's something Putin couldn't allow. He couldn't allow his people to see that you could live in a free, fair and open country, which Ukraine was doing everything it could to become. And the fact that he went in and he invaded Ukraine in the hopes that he could quickly take Kyiv and destroy this democracy should be seen as a threat by the leaders of every single free country in the world

And simultaneously, brave and fierce resistance of the Ukrainian should be an inspiration to all of us who have been fortunate enough never to have to actually fight for our own freedoms. So what I'm hoping is that this will serve as a wake-up call for us to not only combat authoritarianism around the world, but to remember what a free people is actually capable of and that our systems are worth fighting for.

Epstein believes we have a moral responsibility to fight for the future of democratic freedom in America. If RDI's director of education, Ivan Moeride, could come back from torture and from just the most unbelievable repression in Zimbabwe and still be optimistic and hopeful and still believe that we could fight together towards a better future, we have absolutely no excuse living in a free society in the U.S. with genuinely open and free elections to think anything different.

Yvonne Mawarire is a Zimbabwean pastor and democratic activist who was tortured under the Mugabe regime. But despite that adversity, he considers himself... An eternal optimist. And many of my colleagues have often said to me, you fail to be pragmatic sometimes because your optimism is on steroids. But I think the alternative to being optimistic...

is one that for me does not allow us to be excited about the possibility of the future. You know, I think that once you're an optimist, you think in light of, you know, what is possible and every single action we did was born from what if, the possibility of what we could do rather than

what we couldn't do or rather than what we were afraid of because there was plenty to be afraid of and we live in a world where we have plenty to be afraid of. I don't think anybody needs to be convinced what we're afraid of. What we lack is what we can hope for, what we can be excited about. I think there needs to be more of that. I understand the fact that this country is not perfect. I understand the fact that there are challenges.

But I think what I understand more than anything is that there is a sense of democracy operating, there is a sense of democratic institutions operating, and they are worth fighting for. They are worth strengthening. They are worth engaging. Mawariray lived under the authoritarianism of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, and he responded to it by founding #ThisFlag, a pro-democracy movement.

This flag was an enormously influential, citizen-led political organization

I think amongst the biggest lessons that personally I've learned from Zimbabwe that can be applicable here where democracy is facing challenges is first of all not allowing the small cracks or what people call small cracks or you know what they feel are not big issues to go unchallenged because essentially in Zimbabwe that's what allowed us to eventually have a full-blown dictatorship

is that people became apathetic concerning their involvement in the process of democracy, which is not just voting. It's the whole process of voting and then remaining engaged, holding the people that you have elected accountable or at least working with them to deliver the kind of democracy you want. So, you know, when I see people stand back or I see people not taking interest

in very important processes here. It's a moment for me that's a teachable moment to say the eventual collapse is a result of these kind of small beginnings or these moments where we feel like, well, you know, it doesn't matter. Let's leave it alone. You know, the loss of democracy is not an event. It's a process. That's a big lesson that it is a trick of

how democracy is lost to say your disengagement is not a problem, democracy will take care of itself. To say the institutions will look after themselves. Well, they don't. It's people who look after democracy through the institutions.

Through the Renew Democracy Initiative, Ivan Mawarire has brought more than 100 dissidents from nearly 40 oppressive countries to not only talk about their experience of living under authoritarianism and about how dissidents view democracy and freedom in America, but how America inspired them when they were in the darkest depths of despair in their home countries. Mawarire and his fellow dissidents hope to galvanize Americans,

to move them to action to protect their precious democracy. I think one of the conversations that is important in answering how do we convince people, how do we get people to understand that democracy is important, is to talk about what the alternative is. What are the alternatives to democracy? And that's why for me the goal is

How do we get more and more people to understand what you have collectively together, the value of what you have together? Because again, this is not just for you. Remember, this is for the future. It's for your children and your children's children. What will you leave them? Mawarire wants us to imagine what life outside of democracy could look like.

what it would feel like, how we would cope without democracy on a day-to-day basis. He wants us to wake up to the possibility that unchecked polarization could lead to our democracy disappearing. We must learn how to cope with and productively navigate conflict and disagreement, he says. People have to have a very good think about what they stand to lose.

as a result of the polarization or as a result of the extreme partisanship that people do not want to move from. And you have to get to a place where you ask yourselves the question, what is more valuable to us collectively than what is valuable to us in our individual camps? And if there is a failure to have that conversation openly and honestly,

then you're going to lose what is most valuable to you. And this is part of the narrative I'm trying to bring to say, if you lose what you have right now, let me show you what you will have after that. Nobody wants what will come after losing the democracy or the freedom that you have. So I think there has to be a place in which

Those people that value what Americans have collectively speak louder than those who are only fighting for what they want individually. There's a lot of work to be done concerning understanding that the opposition to my views is not bad. It's healthy. In fact, I need it.

for my own views to become better if they are better because the interaction of our views or the competition of our ideas means that the best ones are going to survive. If people start creating a new power center, a new power dynamic,

you will see that they will then be able to change the narrative. And instead of calling each other enemies, they call each other countrymen like people used to. And this is my countrymen or my colleague. We see differently on this issue. But, you know, we're talking about it and we're finding a way to get the best out of it.

Moa Rire cautions us about the hope that we can use social media to organize to protect institutions and democracy. But he says social media is a tool, one he believes was never meant to, and never actually could, replace personal leadership and community. Those are the only things that truly have the power to radically and positively transform society and protect democracy.

Social media organizing and messaging cannot be a substitute for reaching people, one person at a time, authentically and genuinely.

In order to build a healthier society, particularly for democracy, my belief is that we're going to have to go back to the models of reaching people that are person-to-person based, that instead of building them in these kind of

big wholesale models that go out to thousands of people at the same time, that there is a sense almost of evangelizing. I'm a pastor, that's my background. So the sense of evangelism one-on-one and building communities

And people that believe certain things and that want to be part of certain movements or certain initiatives is going to have to go back to person to person. If we get rid of that element, the human touch, the direct communication, then we fall into the trap of just being fed headlines, being fed the exciting soundbites and so forth.

Each citizen, says Mawarire, has the opportunity to contribute to the greater good of their country and provide an antidote to polarization through their words and actions. Sometimes it takes a few brave people to build a model, a consistent model of what should work. In other words, people that keep the flame and the hope of sense and sensibility alive.

At some point, people will begin to realize the lie. They will begin to realize what the game has been and will begin to come back to sense and sensibility. The loss for me would be a place in which people completely give up that

There is no group of people that have a sense of mission to keep the hope alive, to keep the seed of a better country, a democracy that works for everybody. At some point, that seed will grow and it'll take root and it'll bear fruit for a return.

to a better way in which democracy and freedom are handled in this country. We've had the eras of the knight in shining armor, the heroes who come through to lead and to stand on the hill and their cape blows in the wind. And that's great. But I think people are beginning to realize that

That's not the only way, that there's a different way. There's another way, and it's us. There is the way of us that can actually take us into a different direction because that's where we need to go now.

Dr. Van Bavel agrees wholeheartedly with Mawarire's urgent call to Americans to find solutions to polarization. He says democracy depends on it. I think democracy is at stake. I think there's a genuine threat to American democracy and democracy in other countries. And if those democracies fall, there's no guarantee that we're going to get them back.

And democracies die in different ways. Democracies can die in violence. I think maybe even a scarier way that they die is they die peacefully. Is that quietly, through a bunch of decisions over a period of time, we wake up and we no longer have democracy. I think that Americans would benefit a lot from talking to people in countries that have lived under dictatorships or authoritarian regimes to understand, first of all, what it's like to live under those, and second of all, how hard it is to get it back.

Dr. Hahn underscores why it's so important to keep democratic institutions strong and resilient

and to not lose ground. Fear rolls downhill and you have to push hope uphill. And so it's a lot easier to organize people based on their fears and stoke people's prejudices than it is to organize people based on hope. You know, and a pro-democracy movement is fundamentally, I think, it's about pushing that ball of hope up the hill. And so it is harder because people respond more to threat than they do to opportunity. She agrees that we must look to experts like Mawarire

drawing on their wisdom and experience in order to move away from polarizing forces that would threaten our democracy. We have to think about institutional solutions. We have to make the institutions of democracy work. How do we think about things like the balance of power between the courts and the legislature and the executive branch? And how do we equip people to engage with each other with the kind of courage and the compassion and the empathy and humility that you need to really engage with people across difference?

Because if people feel connected to each other, then their level, their sense of their own threat, their willingness to accept risk, their willingness to accept uncertainty, all of that increases if people feel connected to each other and to institutions in society. And one of the real challenges that we have right now is that there really isn't a supply of opportunities where people can go to learn and become equipped with the skills of citizenship that you really need.

Joshua Friday agrees that one of the solutions is healthy and engaged citizenship. I think there's a sense with the polarization that's happening in this country and the political division that we're seeing that people feel like those who are on opposite political parties or political views

actually have a radically different vision for where they want to take the country and somehow that that vision is threatening. We know that people feel disconnected, we feel isolated from each other, we feel disconnected and divided by race, by economics, by politics, by geography.

And we need something in this country that's going to actually bring people together, that's going to make people feel like we are in this together, we are on the same team, and we're not enemies. And it's been my experience as a military veteran, and for anyone who was in the Peace Corps or had served in their community, that service is a really powerful tool

to bring people together, where you get to have a common experience with someone who may be very different than you, may have a very different background, a very different perspective, a very different ideology.

But because you had a common experience around a common purpose, which was doing good or accomplishing a mission, you then have a baseline of understanding each other and understanding that they're not the enemy. They may think differently than you and they may act differently than you, but you have something that creates an understanding of common humanity. And if we can create more service opportunities, more opportunities for people to have this common experience, to

work together around helping their community, we feel like we can make a real dent in the polarization and division that exists in the society. The polarization that we're seeing and the division that we're seeing in the country right now, I think is being driven by this sense that those who think differently than us are actually our enemies, that we need to fight them. And we're seeing that actual physically with physical violence, like we saw on January 6th.

And so what we need to do is rebuild through, and again, this is my experience, this is the experience of many people who have done a service program, through common experiences, this sense that we can think differently and we can have different beliefs, but we are by no means enemies.

There are growing coalitions of researchers and citizens seeking solutions to polarization, and their efforts are promising, says Dr. Van Bavel. A team led by a researcher out of Stanford University invited practitioners and experts and scientists around the world to submit the best messaging to make people immune to the threats to democracy, to make people resist partisan animosity and partisan violence.

I'll tell you the three things that work best according to this huge study. The first one was basically contact. If you see positive contact between people from different parties, where they're able to work together on something and hear out people's differences and stick in the room and have a conversation about it, that that seemed to be one thing that moved the needle and reduced animosity. Another thing was helping people understand that they are caricatured and misrepresented by the media. And so when liberals and conservatives both hear that

the other side understands that they're being misrepresented in the media or the worst kind of forms of them are being presented in media. They develop a shared understanding that they might be a little bit different than the way their group has been portrayed. And then the third one, and this is something that I developed with my lab, is that you need to also remind people that they have a common shared purpose and identity that supersedes their political party and that

leaders of both parties affirm that shared identity. And if they hear that message, that turns to be one of the most effective ways to reduce partisan animosity, but also to increase support for democracy. And part of it requires the right leadership. So in our book, we talk about how Nelson Mandela, I think, helped save South Africa when he was elected from descending into civil war, which would have been absolutely devastating. Probably would have been millions of lives lost, potentially. ♪

What we have to do is look to those types of lessons of leadership and support these other types of leadership that can help bridge and connect people, but that can also help reconcile past injustices. So that was also part of healing in South Africa was the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. But there has to be a way to deal with historical grievances and conflict and oppression that's happened in the U.S. There's a pathway that other countries have taken, that America itself has taken in previous times in history and could take.

What I'm talking about is hope. We'll return next week for the final episode in this special three-part series, where we explore why it's important to make a long-term investment in polarization research.

This has been the Stories of Impact podcast with Richard Sergei and Tavia Gilbert. Written and produced by TalkBox Productions and Tavia Gilbert with senior producer Katie Flood. Music by Alexander Filippiak. Mix and master by Kayla Elrod. Executive producer Michelle Cobb. The Stories of Impact podcast is generously supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation.