In college, CHLOE MAXMIN co-founded the Divest Harvard campaign calling on the university to divest from fossil fuels. After graduating in 2015, she returned home to rural Maine, and In 2018 was elected to Maine’s House of Representatives, in a district that had voted Republican by a 16-point margin over the past three elections. In November, at 28 and after one term in the House, she defeated the incumbent minority leader to move to the State Senate. Chloe Maxmin bucks the obstacles to living democracy by focusing her energies on listening to the citizens she represents and then representing them. Today this is fairly radical behavior, radical in its simplicity and its potential.

Last week I spoke with ARLIE HOCHSCHILD, author of STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND: Anger & Mourning on the American Right, about the Trump years, the insrrection, and the future. Given the inauguratiopn of Biden and Harris and the several immense crises we face, nothing may be more important at this moment than understanding our neighbors with whom we disagree. So here’s my 2018 conversation with Hochschild, in which we learn about her path to her current work and the lessons she learned from the folks she listend to. Finally we ask each other what new story might inspire more Americans to yearn for the future rather than the past.

I last spoke with Berkeley sociologist ARLIE HOCHSCHILD in 2018 about her book, STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND: Anger & Mourning on the American Right, in which she shares what she learned in five years talking to Tea Partiers turned Trumpers in Southern Louisiana. Turns out she’s continued to talk with the folks she met researching her book. I call on her again to try to make some sense of my fellow Americans and find a path back from the chaos and breakdown that seems possible in the days and weeks ahead.

THOMAS HOMER-DIXON correctly predicted a lot of the crises we face. But, as we leave 2020 behind and give birth to 2021, i talk with him about his new book, COMMANDING HOPE: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril. Sample “To keep our hope from being vague and naive, it must have a clear vision of a positive future. Then, to keep it from being false, we must avoid wishful thinking about the likelihood of that future.” Learn more at commandinghope.com

Planetary health is by definition big picture, but it’s made immediate by the pandemic. I see our environmental goals as an effective reckoning with climate change and a healthy relationship with the rest of nature. I’ll talk about that relationship with SAM MYERS, Research Scientist at Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health and the Founding Director of the Planetary Health Alliance (planetaryhealthalliance.org). Myers is one of the editors of PLANETARY HEALTH: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves, which explores the impacts of environmental change on human health and offers solutions by reimagining our cities, our food and energy systems, and even our economics and ethics.