In early March, AllSides attended the 10th annual Wisdom 2.0 conference in San Francisco. AllSides CEO John Gable joined Joan Blades, founder of Living Room Conversations, to gave a presentation on celebrating political diversity. Check out the video on the Wisdom 2.0 Conference website or below.

The annual conference addresses “the great challenge of our age: to not only live connected to one another through technology, but to do so in ways that are beneficial to our own well-being, effective in our work, and useful to the world.”

At Wisdom 2.0, John and Joan talk about how they came together to form a friendship despite their differing political backgrounds. They both identified the same problems with polarization and animosity in American society, and are creating solutions that will heal our democracy — such as balanced news and media bias ratings at AllSides, plus civil discourse tools like our newly launched Mismatch platform that connects students for respectful conversations across divides. And of course, Living Room Conversations brings people of all political stripes together for meaningful conversation on topics that divide us, building relationships and trust.

As John puts it: “There is a thirst out there for not being manipulated by outrage, but for understanding what is going on and having that personal connection.”