This is the second episode of a ten episode season of The Beacon Project Podcast. In this season, Daniel Yudkin describes this podcast as a public workshop for Potentialism. Daniel is a social psychologist and researcher and his new political philosophy, called Potentialism, is built around a simple but surprisingly radical idea: everyone has something to offer. Potentialism asks what it would look like to build our communities, institutions, and even our politics around the belief that everyone has gifts worth discovering, developing, and sharing and that we all have a part to play in helping one another flourish.

The second guest is Matt Shinners.

Americans are exhausted by politics, frustrated with both parties, and hungry for something different. But what would it actually take to build a political movement that brings people together? Daniel talks to Matt, former chief of staff for Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign and co-founder of the Forward Party, to explore what he learned trying to create an alternative to politics as usual. Matt shares why organizing independents is harder than it sounds, why political reforms alone won't fix what's broken, and why Americans may have more in common than our political divisions suggest. Together, they consider whether a shared commitment to rights, responsibilities, and contribution could offer the foundation for a new kind of politics and what it might take to turn that vision into a movement.

Resources:

• Forward Party — The political party Matt helped found with Andrew Yang, focused on building an alternative to the two-party system.
• Hidden Tribes: A Study of America's Polarized Landscape — More in Common's landmark research identifying the Exhausted Majority, a central theme of the conversation.
• More in Common Research — Research on Americans' underlying values, political identities, polarization, and shared aspirations, including the work Daniel references.
• Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend — Yang's 2020 universal basic income proposal, which Matt uses to illustrate how political policies can be rooted in shared values.
• Ranked Choice Voting — FairVote — An explanation of the electoral reform Matt discusses as an example of a good idea that can struggle to connect with voters.
• Open Primaries — An organization advocating for primary election reforms that would allow more voters, including independents, to participate.