Village SquareCast

Updated: 15 May 2025 • 114 episodes
tlh.villagesquare.us

Village SquareCast is the podcast your mother warned you about. We talk politics, religion and race — across color, creed and ideology — and we do it like the partners in democracy that we really ought to be. At The Village Square, we've had hundreds of conversations with tens of thousands of people — and now we bring you our favorites of these conversations via podcast. We talk in bars, we talk in churches, we talk across a hundred continuous tables in the middle of a street downtown. And through all this talking, we've discovered something truly remarkable — people are hard to hate close up. Oh, and we really think civics ought not to be boring. We hope you'll join us.

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We’re making our way through a time of extreme disruption, led by rapid transformation in technology, especially in how we communicate information. According to our special guest Renée DiResta, the way power and influence have been profoundly transformed reveals how a virtual rumor mill of niche propagandists increasin

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04 May 2025 • EN

God Squad: America Fourth?

We’re wondering if the secret to a healthy America is to… wait for it… put “America Fourth!” Perhaps too much of our lives are now wrapped up in this life or death, us v. them struggle for us to be happy people. According to political scientist Eitan Hersh, this is making us insufferable “political hobbyists” who need

63 min
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  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 bigger, g

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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 second in t

75 min
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Why does it feel like those on the “other side” are not just different but dangerous? According to our special guest UNC psychologist Kurt Gray in his new book OUTRAGED: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground the conflict lies in our human instinct to protect ourselves and the ones we lo

96 min
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We have become a most tediously offended people. We’re not talking about the big stuff — it’s the “little” things we wonder about. “Sticks and stones may break my bones” and “water off a duck’s back” seem quaint and anachronistic in today’s culture of maximal aggrievement. Provoked by even the slightest offense — that,

65 min
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