A podcast about politics, people, and common ground
When you mix blue and red paint, you get purple, but sight is a little different: when you mix blue light and red light, you get magenta. Magenta arises from the way our visual system interprets the combination of red and blue light. It is a product of human perception rather than a single wavelength of light. How we see things is how we tend to believe.
America feels more divided than ever — but is it? I grew up in red-state America, surrounded by conservative Christian communities in Oklahoma and Texas. For the last twenty-five years, I've lived in some of the bluest places in the country: Seattle and San Francisco.
What I've learned is that most people — left, right, and everywhere in between — are motivated by the same things. We want our kids to be safe. We want work that matters. We want to feel like we belong somewhere. The loudest voices make it sound like we're enemies, but the truth is quieter and more hopeful than that.
Seeing Magenta takes on the topics of the day and looks at them through this lens: how do people actually agree? What are the shared motives underneath the surface disagreements? And what becomes possible when we start from what we have in common?