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Better Politics Podcast
Giving You A Political Hope
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Welcome to A Political Hope! In this introductory episode, Apolitical Foundation CEO Lisa Witter and Communications Manager Rebekah Ison talk about the importance of political hope, where they find it and what's to come in this season.
Episode reading list: Psychology of Politicians by Dr Ashley Weinberg, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.
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A Political Hope jingle plays.
Rebekah Ison:Hello dear listeners, welcome to the first ever episode of A Political Hope, the podcast exploring how to get the courageous, ethical and trusted leaders we need for the 21st century. My name is Bek and I'm Communications Manager at Apolitical Foundation. I'm joined today by Apolitical Foundation CEO Lisa Witter. Lisa, do you want to tell the good people what we're doing here today?
Lisa Witter:Absolutely. I want to tell them that I'm doing it sitting next to my dog. Oh, my goodness, this is a pre COVID dog. But boy, boy, the dog is is a team mascot. And we're here today, Bowie and I are here to tell you about a new podcast we're putting out called Apolitical Hope, a kind of play on Apolitical. And really, why I want to do this is we hear day in and day out about what's not working in politics about the politicians, you don't believe it about, you know, the mudslinging in politics, about the broken systems, about election outcomes that you may or may not agree with. It's kind of dark and bad news. But what you don't get to see is the privilege that we get to hear about all the political innovators, the political entrepreneurs, the people behind the scenes, really trying to not just save democracy, but make it better really make it for the 21st century. So this series is going to be about people you may have heard of or may not bring new and different ideas to politics.
Rebekah Ison:Yeah, I can't believe I forgot to introduce Bowie. I'm sorry, Bowie. That's so rude. So, Lisa, you've been wanting to start a podcast for a while now. Why? And who is this for?
Lisa Witter:Yeah, like I said, it's really easy not to hear what's going well in politics. So we're going to mythbuster that and we're going to bring you one liners that you can take to your dinner parties, or bring to your kids or your partner or your workplace as a "did you know that this is going on?" Or there's quadratic voting going on? Or participatory budgeting? Or have you heard of Audrey Tang? Or have you heard of this person doing this great work? Do you know there are political leadership incubators? So no more hanging on the bad news, we want you to hear the good news too. And hopefully in that good news, we can go toward the light, but a little bit of juice on it and make it even better.
Rebekah Ison:Yeah, when I was kind of conceptualising, this podcast for me, it was really important that it was solutions oriented and as practical as possible. And like the name suggests, I want it to be a dose of hope and to help push us out of this kind of cynicism that keeps us stuck. Lisa, you talk about the possibility of politics and the politics of possibility. And that's kind of a theme that I'm hoping comes out of this season and series. And I want the listeners to know that I'm really not a Pollyanna person.
Lisa Witter:I really can tell you she's not, she's kind of a crusty journalist at her young age already. So yeah, I wouldn't call you Pollyanna at all Bek.
Rebekah Ison:Oh, no, I'm crusty already? I found myself despairing about you know, climate and democracy backsliding around the world. And honestly, the only thing that's really helped me deal with that is working or feeling like I'm working to make it better. And that's why I feel lucky, actually, to work for Apolitical Foundation. So I'm hoping that I can kind of give something back to some of that hope to people that are listening. And also something I wanted to do, which is something that I think we're really quite good at doing at the Foundation is connect smart, passionate people with other smart, passionate people. And maybe that will happen through this podcast. So yeah, I'm going to talk a little bit now about how this is going to work. So we're going to release a podcast and episode each fortnight it's going to be an interview with someone in politics, or with ideas that helping to make politics and democracy better. I'll do a lot of the interviews but Lisa will also do a fair few, then a few members of our team are going to do interviews here and there. And that's usually topics that they work really closely with or are particularly passionate about. So listeners, you're really going to get to know a lot of the people within the foundation. To give you an idea about themes and interview topics. Our first episode is with Mehdi Jomaa, who was the acting prime minister of Tunisia after the Arab Spring. And then we've also got episodes this is just to give you an example on politicians mental health, what a good climate politician looks like, and how to bridge activism to political power. And we were super lucky to partner with the Democracy and Culture Foundation to produce some of these episodes at the 2022 Athens Democracy Forum. You might not always agree with the people you hear on here, and that's okay. I can honestly say that I come across ideas I disagree with every day in my work. In fact, disagreement, as you probably know, is good. And what we want, though, is political leadership that you can respect, even when and if you don't agree with them. So remembering that I want this to be as practical as possible, there's going to be a few questions that every guest answers. The first is they're always going to give their key takeaways for the audience. And they're going to close. Secondly, each interview by answering the question, what is giving you political hope? Because there are good things happening out there. We promise. This is season one. We currently have 12 episodes lined up for this season. So you're going to have new content well into 2023. So Lisa, why should we be the ones to make this podcast? Can you explain a little bit about your background and how we all came to be at the a political foundation?
Lisa Witter:Well, first off, I think that we as a big we, we really see ourselves at Apolitical Foundation as a platform, we really tried to do everything with humility, and generosity, and agility and really learning. So this really isn't about us. It's about platforming, other great people and great ideas. And as a bit of a context, I mean, I'm a lifelong lover of politics, which is a weird thing to say, because to say that people are like "what's wrong with you?!" But I grew up as a competitive athlete, I loved winning. And I also went to church every Sunday. And so if you love winning, and you love helping people and being part of something bigger than yourself, you get into politics. So I've been tracking the good in politics for a very long time. And I've been really concerned that if you swallow the cynicism pill, and you become cynical yourself, there's a saying in English, if you have a hammer, you see and now I want to give someone a different utensil, so they have the the hammer of what's working so they can see the nail of what's working. So I want to change the carpentry in our minds about the possibilities. And I'm really privileged about eight years ago to co-found Aolitical with Robyn Scott. And we always thought about democracy as a flywheel. Democracy is just much more than elections. The bottom of that flywheel if you can follow me are the citizens are the people and those citizens elect the politicians from the people, they are of the people, that's what we fought for. To have politicians that through that campaign cycle, they build a mandate, then deliver it to the civil servants and the civil servants alongside the citizens deliver on democracy. The company is a peer to peer learning platform, they have an amazing podcast out about public service about government. So how to really do that for the 21st century, RS is focused on the other side of the flywheel, which are the politicians and so with that, you're going to see the completeness. And you're going to hear a lot about the role of citizens because politics doesn't work without citizens. So that flywheel is going to be turning all the time and our work. And we want to give you the good news about what's working in government as well.
Rebekah Ison:Yeah, so just to make that super duper clear, you might hear us refer to Apolitical and us as the foundation or Apolitical Foundation. So Apolitical is our sister company, that was the one that was founded first, and they help public servants to serve people better. And we are the Foundation, we are born out of Apolitical and we help politicians to serve people better.
Unknown:Maybe Bek, can I talk about just what we do at the Foundation? So think of it as two pillars. The first pillar is getting new, different people into the political system. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that we don't have very representative politics almost anywhere. There's 134 year gender gap for women. And if you look at underrepresented group, indigenous people we're really far behind. So to make representative democracy work, we need to do more, we need to like build bridges. And so we do that through what we call Apolitical Academies. And we have them all around the world. And if you're interested in starting one, call us! We also have a network of what we call political leadership incubators, who are people like us doing that in different places. How do we go bigger and faster. So one pillar is getting new and different people into the system. The other supporting people are in the system. There are countless politicians that I respect deeply that need support. We're going to be doing some interviews, our interview on mental health and politicians that you're here in this series is a big I would say epidemic, and politics is the mental health and resilience of politicians in these sort of stressful times. And we know, if we don't support people differently in politics, we won't get good people to run for office. So we really think about those two pillars and we do that in three ways. We do research. Last year we had a report out called "Better Leaders, Better Democraciess", really trying to understand the landscape of who shaping 21st century politicians. We do convenings, we ran a workshop this year and we will do more on how to address polarisation, and how to advance the public interest. We do a lot of convenings a lot of Academy work. You and I just did a piece at the Athens Democracy Forum on what if AI takes over politicians? And how do we start thinking about where technology and politics come together. And then we also develop curriculum, and we build things for other people to use. So we can go bigger and faster. So we've got a real comprehensive approach to thinking about politics. And we think about it with really like, what is that better future ahead of us? Like, maybe back, maybe we're living in a world where by 2050, we're not in liberal democracies, maybe we're living in a whole new structure, we're open to that we're not in love with the system, we're not defending the system as it is. We're trying to make it better now, as we look at the innovations to be more inclusive and more effective governance systems.
Rebekah Ison:Yeah, one thing I think that's very important to add to that is that we are strictly multi-partisan. That goes through all our work, including our academies, so people who attend those can be from the left, they can be from the right, they can be more centrist. As long as there's no extremist ideologies. We want to work with you. And the Apolitical Foundation is a partnership with the Daniel Sachs Foundation. Okay, Lisa, we're getting, I would say, almost towards the end of this interview, I wanted to ask you, why is the concept of Hope important to you?
Lisa Witter:I was walking to work today and I saw climate activists glued to the streets. We're here in Berlin, and you may be seeing this in your city. And there's a lot of despair. And we want to talk about what is possible and what is working. And for us, it's really about hope. I know a lot of people can be cynical even about the word hope, my line that I like to use that I heard actually from Cass Sunstein, who is an author and scholar and a lawyer that I think he took from someone else, I don't consider myself a pessimist, I consider myself an optimist, which is different than hope. But I like to be an optimist, because I'm only disappointed once, once when the thing I wanted didn't work out. So I'm an optimist with low expectations, but really striving for a better world. And so for me, whether you like the word hope or not just know that this is a place where you can come get some great ideas.
Rebekah Ison:And now for the questions that we're going to be asking all of our guests, I'm going to start with actually, what are you reading at the moment that we should, too?
Lisa Witter:I'm quite interested in what the emerging future is, you know, we are living in a time where we're outside of our planetary boundaries, and our governance system and our economic system don't seem to be able to handle the container that we need to be living in. So I'm trying to stretch my mind a lot. I'm spending a lot of time with science fiction. So I have two teenage boys and a husband. And we are all reading a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, really putting our mind in different places, and really thinking about science fiction, and really looking for the future. And I find when I read science fiction, that helps me think about the realities differently. So science fiction is a great place for me to go. I also read ministry of the future, which was great as well. So I really I'm really loving science fiction these days.
Rebekah Ison:Nice. I'm reading a book called The Psychology of Politicians by Ashley Weinberg, who actually we interviewed for this podcast for the mental health and wellbeing episode. And it's very interesting. He's one of the few people who is doing work in that field. What are the main takeaways that you want to leave the audience with today?
Lisa Witter:Number one, there's a wave of political entrepreneurship going around the world not just to save democracy, but to make it better. That's a really, really big one, too, that you can feel like that there are some solutions out there, there are no silver bullets. This is not an easy thing, fixing politics, because at the heart of part of the problem with politics is problem with people, our need for dopamine and reward, but we're gonna we're gonna give you really concrete things to get behind. So for me, it's really, it's about shining the light on the good thing, so we can go toward it, to do more of it. And then you back. What's your takeaway?
Rebekah Ison:My takeaway for the audience is like, I really want to reinforce that there is possibility and there are good things going on in politics. Things in some circles are very bad. I'm not going to say that they're not, we have to meet people where they're at. And that would just be lying if it's if we didn't acknowledge that. But I do wonder how often we kind of reinforce the story that we've already created in our head by continuously looking at what's negative. And yeah, I just really want this podcast to be shine a light on what's positive and to reinforce what's positive in our systems at the moment. Or if not in our systems, people who have ideas for making the systems better.
Lisa Witter:Yeah, and I can I just underline I know a value and ethos that's important to the two of us and the whole team is, we don't have all the answers. We need help. We all need help. So we really hope that if you hear something during this podcast that you disagree with, or you get an idea, or you want to partner with someone or a guest ask a question. We're really here, we really think of ourselves as facilitative. John Alexander, who you'll be hearing from in this series, he wrote a book called Citizens, and says the answer to everything is all of us. And he's been really pushing me to think about this, this word facilitator, whether or not we should reframe politicians as facilitators. And I think it's really interesting to think about them instead of just leaders from afar. They facilitate citizens getting things done, we really want to see ourselves as takeaway as a facilitator for people doing great things in politics.
Rebekah Ison:Okay, finally, what is giving you political hope right now?
Lisa Witter:As I mentioned before, we put together this report called "Better Leaders, Better Democracies", and we looked at 420 or so, we're still counting, organisations shaping 21st century politicians. And what's giving me hope is seeing we have a group of 43 of what we call political leadership incubators coming together, dropping their egos to say, how do we go better, faster, to build better politicians? That's hard. You know, collaboration is really hard. And the fact that people are coming together to do that gives me a lot of hope.
Rebekah Ison:Awesome. And what's giving me hope right now? Well, actually, one of them is quite old, but I'm sticking to it, because it's giving it did give me a lot of hope. And I continuously think about it. And that's the Australian general election results from this year. And what's giving me hope is not necessarily the change of government, but the really practical, smart, democratic innovation that went on with the Teal movement, that managed to kind of shake up Australian politics in a way that it hadn't been shaken up in a very long time, and managed to get candidates or MPs with a strong climate focus elected in a space where that has been neglected for too long. And secondly, what gives me political hope is working here and seeing organisations across the political spectrum, really getting on board with our work. And I think when you're in your day to day life, and you're hanging out with people who have similar political ideas as you, you might think that those people wouldn't be on board with this work, but they are they're really also concerned about the state of democracy and what we can do to fix it. So that has been very heartening. Okay, Lisa? Well, that was the end of my questions. Is there anything else you want to say before we head off? No, Bek It's an honour to work with you and everyone who's listening. Thank you. Thank you for caring. There's a lot that you can be listening to right now. Please give us feedback. Give us a little kick if you think it should be better or different. We really want to hear from you. Democracy is about co-creation, and so is this. So we want to hear from you. So thanks. Thanks so much.