Welcome to the Preamble Podcast. This week I speak with David McCullough the third, the grandson of the famed biographer and historian.

He is here to tell us about a program he's spearheaded to help Americans learn from people who aren't like them.

It's like a study abroad program, but it's here in the United States.

His goal is to get people out of the bubble they live in and to bring people together.

And frankly, it's needed now more than ever.

He'll explain ahead.

Plus, journalist and author Catherine May joins me to discuss something I know we all feel. Like we're stuck in an

endless whirlwind of bad news, social media outrage, and lack of connection that leaves us

exhausted and anxious. She'll tell us how we can pull ourselves out of that cycle. I'm Sharon

McMahon, and this is the Preamble podcast.

Joining me now is David McCullough the third.

I am so excited to chat because when I first got to meet you, you were telling me about a really, really interesting idea you had, a really interesting project that you've been working on.

But underpinning these ideas that I do want to share with the listeners today is this notion that we cannot have conversations with people with whom we disagree. The idea that we are perhaps in some kind of an ideological Cold War where people who have different life experiences or who don't align with us on the political spectrum, that any idea they have is so tainted that we cannot even be seen in a room with them.

And these are not actually foundational American ideas. In fact, the opposite

is true. The idea that our neighbors are people with whom we cannot associate lest they make us

impure is one that I think, I don't know that we're better off for living in this position and time and space.

So as a student of history, I'd love to hear your take on that. And I also want to hear more about

what you think we can do about it. Well, Sharon, first off, thank you for having me and thank you

for that question. I've never quite thought of it framed in that way. But you're really right.

I think we are grieving right. I think we are

grieving something. I think we are feeling like we're losing something. You know, we've always

been a secular country, but I do believe there are some core moral tenets at the center of not

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