A Potluck Prescription for Loneliness — Margaret Hathaway & Karl Schatz on Food, Stories, and Community

Margaret Hathaway and Karl Schatz traded New York City for a goat farm in Maine. Then a pandemic-era cookbook project led them to create Community Plate, a series of story-sharing potluck suppers that bring strangers together over food… More

Journalism in the Business of Hope

News can feel relentlessly negative, but as this week’s guest points out, that’s a choice about what gets covered, not a reflection of what’s actually happening in our communities. Mebane Rash is the founder and CEO of EdNC, a nonprofit, paywall-free online newsroom that covers every public school and all 58 community colleges in North Carolina… More

Introships – Career Optimism for College Students, With Joe Fiveash

Joe Fiveash — a longtime digital media executive with stops at the Weather Channel, IBMWatson, and Raycom Media — joins Bill Burke to talk about Introships, the nonprofit he now leads that helps college students figure out what career path is right for them before they chase a traditional internship… More

“Can We Talk?”: Teaching High Schoolers the Art of Civil Dialogue

Educators John Holdridge and Lowell Libby join Bill Burke to talk about the Can We? Project-a Maine-based initiative launched in 2018 that teaches high school students the mindset and skills needed for constructive dialogue across political, social, and cultural divides. Through full-day retreats held in schools across Maine (and now New Hampshire), students learn to move past their first instinct to react and their second instinct to rationalize, and instead reach what one student memorably called her “third thought”-genuine understanding… More