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It's no question that America is deeply divided. A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 55% of Americans feel angry about politics. Only 10% of people surveyed - that's 1 in 10 - expressed hope. For the past decade, West Virginia Public Broadcasting has produced a podcast called Us & Them. It focuses on the issues that are tearing America apart and, by doing so, uncovers shared humanity. Host Trey Kay created the podcast, and he talked about it recently with ALL THINGS CONSIDERED co-host Scott Detrow.
SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: President Trump, now in office after another brutal presidential campaign that saw our country more divided than ever - obviously in the news a lot, right now, early on. I want to talk about an episode that you tackled this election cycle with what you called dinner-party episodes, and you recorded one of them just two days after the election.
TREY KAY, BYLINE: Yeah.
DETROW: I mean, that is a time where a lot of people had a lot of opinions, but tell me about the concept of a dinner party. How did you end up there?
KAY: Well, we started this back in the 2020 election kind of during the pandemic, and we just tried to get four West Virginians who identified as conservative or Republican and four West Virginians who identify as liberal or progressive. And we thought that it would be great to see if you could get people together over a meal, if it was a potluck type of thing, where - oh, my God, that's a really great casserole, or oh, my God, those green beans are fantastic, or that macaroni and cheese - where you could talk about things that are just common in living - you know, just living lives and recipes and stuff like that - before you got to the point where you're talking about, you know, the things that divide people...
DETROW: Yeah.
KAY: ...Things like immigration, abortion, etc. Before the 2024 election, we got people together. And then we said, OK, you guys got to commit to come back after the election. And we knew that - you know, that several were going to be very happy...
DETROW: Yeah.
KAY: ...About the outcome, and several were not gonna be happy.
DETROW: I'm just thinking about just two days after the fact and...
KAY: Yeah.
DETROW: ...(Laughter) that could have gone either way. Let's listen to a little bit of that. Again, this is one of these dinner-party episodes, a group of conservatives, group of liberals, getting together two days after the election to have a meal together.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
JAY GOULD: I'm not wildly enthusiastic with the way it turned out. I'm just hoping that it mends some of the country. Tickled absolutely to death that there were not the protest and everything that went on in '16 - yet, anyway.
OLUBUNMI KUSIMO-FRAZIER: What are you referring to?
GOULD: Do I think this one was fair?
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: Not January 6? What are we talking about?
GOULD: The - well, I'm sorry.
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: Whoa.
KAY: Jay's comment prompts responses from several people. The first comes from Olubunmi Kusimo-Frazier. She goes by Bunmi and is a lawyer in private practice who's registered as a political independent.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: OK, so we are all reacting to your most recent comment, that you're tickled that you don't have the protests from 2016.
GOULD: Sixteen - yeah.
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: OK.
GOULD: Yeah.
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: That's your concern. Your concern was that there would be...
GOULD: That was one of my concerns...
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: ...Protests from...
GOULD: ...That there would be - if you remember, I said previously that I told my daughter that no matter who wins, we're going to be in trouble.
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: I want to know why you went to 2016 and you skipped over 2020 because 2020 was a traitorous act against America.
UNIDENTIFIED DINNER PARTY MEMBER: Are you speaking about...
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: I'm talking about January 6, 2020.
UNIDENTIFIED DINNER PARTY MEMBER: OK.
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: I'm talking about protests after an election and when somebody who you don't like gets elected and what you do. Why were you not worried this time that 2020 would happen again? Why were you worried 2016 would happen again?
GOULD: I'm two days after the election, and '16 was whenever all the protest was as cars burnt and so forth. It did not happen in 2020. We go to January 6, several months down the road.
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: But that's still a protest in response to an election. So are you worried about January...
GOULD: This time around...
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: ...Of 2025?
GOULD: At this point in time, no.
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: Why are you not worried about there being a peaceful transfer of power in January of 2025? - because we did not have a peaceful transfer of power in January 2020. If we are talking about what happens when people are upset because somebody loses, and you go to 2016, and you don't go to 2020, why are we skipping over people storming the Capitol and attacking police officers?
GOULD: The storming of the Capitol - I watched on TV the Capitol police pulling gates out of the way, saying, come on, come on, this is your house, come on in. I watched videos of that. Now, not over everything, but over much of it - people who just walked through the Capitol are in jail now.
ALEXUS STEELE: Just walked?
GOULD: Just walked inside the Capitol.
FRANK ANNIE: So did the individuals...
GOULD: Yes - prosecuted.
KAY: The next comments come from Frank Annie.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
ANNIE: Fourteen people died. A hundred and forty officers have irreversible damage from the protesters where they had to be on medical retirements. They testified calling for help the entire time, and there are videos of these guys screaming at the top, you know, please stop doing this.
KAY: Bunmi wants to finish her comments.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: I just - can - if you all - let me just make my point. The reason I was asking these questions is because you want us to shut up.
GOULD: No, I don't want you to shut up.
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: The point is be quiet.
GOULD: Never.
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: What you said was, they didn't do anything after - the two days after the election. And the people who you cheer for - they stormed the Capitol trying to overturn the election. You were concerned about 2016, and my whole thing is...
GOULD: There was some...
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: What I want, just...
GOULD: ...That stormed the Capitol.
MICHAEL BORSUK: Can we let Bunmi speak?
GOULD: Yeah.
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: My problem is that the fear that a lot of people have right now and that they are feeling is that we will not be in a space where a voice that is not your voice is able to be heard safely, where a life that doesn't live like your life is able to live that safely. You're more worried about them fussing than you are about them storming the Capitol, and you don't even think they're going to storm the Capitol. You know for a fact they're going to do exactly what they're supposed to do. It's y'all who don't do what you're supposed to do. Now you've won. And...
GOULD: Are you assuming that I'm racist? Is that what you're implying?
KUSIMO-FRAZIER: Wow.
BORSUK: That escalated quickly.
(CROSSTALK)
GOULD: Is that what you're implying?
BORSUK: No. I don't think at all...
ANNIE: I don't think so, either.
BORSUK: ...That's what's implied here. We're just having a conversation.
DETROW: I mean, that got tricky, huh? That got emotional.
KAY: Yeah. Yeah, it got tricky really quickly. And I have to say, most of the episodes, both sides are collegial. They're very kind to one another. But that one, after that election - it went 0 to 60 really quickly.
DETROW: Yeah.
KAY: And I think one of the things, Scott, that we also try to do is we try to have diversity at the table. So, you know, there are persons of color. Jay, who spoke - he's probably, you know, in his 70s, and we have certain people, who you heard in that clip, who are college-aged students. So we really try to have a lot of different perspectives politically and racially and where you are on the age spectrum.
DETROW: How did the night end?
KAY: (Laughter) You know, It's funny. It was a tense evening, but I think by the end of the evening, we take little breaks. And at least at these dinner parties, people don't just peel off into their party-affiliated corner or their tribes. They kind of continue the conversations and try to still continue talking across this divide.
There was a really lovely moment where Jay, who you hear in that clip, was going to speak to a young 20-something Marshall University student, who is African American and who has a different political outlook than he does. And it was really kind of a remarkable thing where it seemed - at least it seemed like people are really trying to listen and understand each other.
DETROW: You've been doing this for a while. Let me ask you about something because I think there's a lot of stuff here that makes sense, right? The idea of getting offline, getting together, finding areas where you can share a space, eating a meal together - that makes a lot of sense. But a lot of the big divides in politics right now often come down to core questions of identity. And...
KAY: Yeah.
DETROW: ...I feel like if you don't think that my identity - whether it's that, you know - whether it's how I identify, whether it's - you know, whether it's my race, whatever - if you don't think I belong at the table, it's hard for me to bridge that gap on something so personal. How does this approach work when there are such core questions about identity and who belongs and who doesn't belong playing out right now?
KAY: You know, when we invite people to this gathering, we pretty much say we're not here to win a debate. We're not here to, you know, best somebody in a discussion because Scott, as - the way I see it, the conversation as it is now - it just seems to be ratcheting up more and more to the point where we don't see the other people in society - we don't see the people who voted for Kamala Harris, we don't see the people who voted for Donald Trump - as humans. And I feel like what we're doing here is, like, just a little step to see if there's a way we can maybe set some breadcrumbs to help us find our way back...
DETROW: Yeah.
KAY: ...At a time where things are incredibly polarized.
DETROW: That's Trey Kay, the host of West Virginia Public Broadcasting's podcast called Us & Them. Thanks so much.
KAY: Oh, thank you so much, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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