America's Why Project
To solve America’s toughest challenges, we need to begin by listening to each other’s stories. The America’s Why Project (AWP) creates a space for conversations that invite Americans from all walks of life—and friends of America around the world—to explore their perspectives on America’s past, present, and future. By opening our ears and opening our hearts, we can start to rebuild mutual trust and rediscover our shared purpose. One story, one conversation, one open mic at a time.
Episodes
14 episodes
Episode 13: Hard Jobs – Listening on the Front Lines of Healthcare
Some of the most important listening happens in the most emotionally demanding spaces. This episode launches a new subseries within our “How to Listen” chapter: Hard Jobs, conversations with people working in some of society’s most demanding ro...
Episode 12: Part 2 — How Deep Listening Builds Trust
What actually changes when people stop talking at each other and start truly listening? In Part 2 of this two-part series, host Matt Levinger continues his conversation with Merissa Khurma, Founder and President of the AMENA Foundation and a st...
Episode 11: Part 1 — The Power of Listening in Divided Worlds: Narrative, Trust, and Conflict
In a world where everyone is talking, why does it feel like no one is truly being heard? In Part 1 of this two-part series, host Matt Levinger sits down with Merissa Khurma, Founder and President of the AMENA Foundation and a strategic communic...
Episode 10: Chapter 2 — How to Listen
In this opening episode of Chapter 2, host Matt Levinger brings together the team behind the project to reflect on their journey so far and where they believe they should go next. Through personal stories from multiple continents, cultures, and...
Episode 9: Talking About Migration, Part 2: The Coming Wave
In Part 2 of our deep-dive on migration, writer Sohrab Ahmari continues to explore the future of global mobility and what it means for democracy, culture, and the American common good. As climate shocks, conflict, and economic pressures displac...
Episode 8: Talking About Migration, Part 1: ‘It’s Complicated’
Immigration is the hottest flashpoint in American politics, but far too often, the conversation skips past the most important question: why do people leave home in the first place? In this first episode of a two-part series, writer and thinker ...
Episode 7: How Monopoly Capitalism Challenges American Democracy
What happens when a handful of corporations hold the power to shape everything: what we buy, how we work, even how we connect with each other? In this episode, anti-monopoly expert Matt Stoller joins host Matt Levinger to break down how decades...
Episode 6: How the Attention Economy Drives Polarization
In this second installment of our two-part series with Brian Katulis and Danielle Pletka, the conversation shifts from the craft of foreign-policy storytelling to the pressures that warp it. They discuss how algorithms reward confrontation, how...
Episode 5: Storytelling in U.S. Foreign Policy
Leadership depends not only on power and policy, but also on the stories that give them meaning. In this first episode of a two-part series, Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute, and Danielle Pletka, Distinguished Senior Fe...
Episode 4: The Long Shadow of the Civil War – Part 2/ Leadership in Turbulent Times
In the second half of our conversation with historian Jeremy Suri, we turn from America’s complex past to the pressing question of how leadership works today in a time of turbulence and distrust. From Lincoln’s unexpected transformation to the ...
Episode 3: The Long Shadow of the Civil War – Part 1/ Slavery and Freedom
What happens when a country loses its unifying story? When the story of 1776 squares off against the story of 1619, when the smoldering legacies of the Civil War erupt into 21st-century culture wars? In this episode, historian and b...
Episode 2: The Neuroscience of Human Relationships – Part 2 /The Power of Love
Last week, Dr. David Rock showed us how fear hijacks the brain. This week, he flips the script by diving into the power of love. Host Matt Levinger and Dr. Rock looks into the high-reward states that unlock people’s capacity to care, create, an...
Episode 1: Chapter 1 – Rediscovering America's Why / The Neuroscience of Human Relationships – Part I/The Power of Fear
Modern life pushes our brains in ways they were never built to handle. In this episode, Dr. David Rock, neuroscientist, bestselling author, and the creator of the SCARF™ model*, joins host Matt Levinger to reveal why fear, uncertainty, and soci...