Welcome to Kelly Corrigan Wonders. I'm Kelly Corrigan, and on today's episode, we're taking another look at hard conversations.

Because I'm wondering, along with everyone else, what it would take to bridge our political divides.

Maybe it's a project that uses transparent data to create report cards for Congress.

Or as Brad Porteus calls it, Rotten Tomatoes for politicians.

Brad is the executive director of something called bridge grades,

which gives really high marks to

those who work across party lines and really low marks to those who don't. Bridge Grades

is aimed squarely at changing congressional behavior from proud division to humble cooperation.

You and I both know it is a sad state of affairs here in the U.S.

right now when our most famous politicians are usually the ones getting Fs on their report card,

while the A's students, who are productively generating legislation that is good for the country

remain virtually unknown.

But Brad thinks we can change this by making collaboration famous again.

Here's my conversation with Brad Porteus.

So I feel like when you think about hard conversations,

there's sort of two drivers that make them better or worse.

One is people's personalities and their tendencies

and the ways they've learned to argue over the years,

maybe from childhood.

And then two is the environment that we live in.

And here in America, we have made lots of room for nastiness.

We have made it super normal for people to say horrible things to each other

...