healing divides
starts with conversation.
What is a Living Room Conversation?
A Living Room Conversation is a simple way to heal divides.
It is a conversational model developed by professional mediators in order to facilitate connection between people despite their differences, and even identify areas of common ground and shared understanding.
Within this model, we have developed over 80 conversation guides on all sorts of topics that can otherwise be tense to talk about with friends, strangers, and even loved ones of differing backgrounds and political persuasions.
You can explore all of our current topics (we’re developing new ones all the time) and even join an upcoming online conversation event to experience it for yourself!
What We're Up To
Projects
A joint nonprofit collaboration between Living Room Conversations and AllSides.com, AllSides for Schools helps educators teach essential skills in critical thinking, collaboration, listening and respectful discourse, media literacy and social-emotional learning.
Our unique focus on building relationships and revealing multiple viewpoints across the political spectrum avoids the potential problems with bias and disrespecting individual beliefs.
Explore the work of Living Room Conversations with communities of faith across the nation.
This Living Room Conversation addresses the uncertainty felt by many Methodist congregations in the wake of the vote on human sexuality taken at the General Conference of The United Methodist Church.
Projects
A joint nonprofit collaboration between Living Room Conversations and AllSides.com, AllSides for Schools helps educators teach essential skills in critical thinking, collaboration, listening and respectful discourse, media literacy and social-emotional learning.
Our unique focus on building relationships and revealing multiple viewpoints across the political spectrum avoids the potential problems with bias and disrespecting individual beliefs.
Explore the work of Living Room Conversations with communities of faith across the nation.
This Living Room Conversation addresses the uncertainty felt by many Methodist congregations in the wake of the vote on human sexuality taken at the General Conference of The United Methodist Church.
Videos
LRC at TED: Free Yourself from your Filter Bubbles
Watch the talk given by Joan Blades from Living Room Conversations and John Gable of AllSides at the TEDWomen Conference. Image links to TED website.
Money in Politics: Robert Reich and Debbie Dooley
Watch a high-profile Living Room Conversation co-hosted by Tea Party Patriots co-founder Debbie Dooley and fmr. US Secretary of Labor and UC Berkeley professor Robert Reich.
American Creed Documentary
Watch a clip from the PBS documentary American Creed, featuring Joan Blades of Living Room Conversations.
Upcoming Events
Press
Justine Lee | Bringing America Together One Conversation At A Time
This week on Borderless, join our host Vale Sloane as he sits down with Justine Lee of Living Room Conversations and Make America
How America Can Rebuild the Community Bonds It Needs to Face the Next Pandemic
As the Omicron variant spreads across the globe, we are reminded again that a pandemic is a disease of populations, not of individuals,
Opinion: Candidates, keep it clean! The exhausted majority is asking
On December 31st, as I uncorked champagne with my family, my stomach suddenly clutched with dread. For the first time, I feared the
Trending Topics
Living Room Conversations and America Indivisible invite Americans of all backgrounds to join us for a discussion about the America we want to be. We invite those who have been impacted by anti-Muslim bigotry (which may include South Asian, Arab, Sikh, Black, and other communities) to join their allies and neighbors in small-group conversations.
In this series of three in-depth conversations, participants explore the complexities of the concepts of Race, Ethnicity, and their impacts on people from all walks of life.
Projects
Explore the work of Living Room Conversations with communities of faith across the nation.
A joint nonprofit collaboration between Living Room Conversations and AllSides.com, AllSides for Schools helps educators teach essential skills in critical thinking, collaboration, listening and respectful discourse, media literacy and social-emotional learning.
Videos
LRC at TED: Free Yourself from your Filter Bubbles
Watch the talk given by Joan Blades from Living Room Conversations and John Gable of AllSides at the TEDWomen Conference. Image links to TED website.
Money in Politics: Robert Reich and Debbie Dooley
Watch a Living Room Conversation co-hosted by Tea Party Patriots co-founder Debbie Dooley and fmr. US Secretary of Labor and UC Berkeley professor Robert Reich.
American Creed Documentary
Watch a clip from the PBS documentary American Creed, featuring Joan Blades of Living Room Conversations.
What a Living Room Conversation looks like
Two conversation hosts from different viewpoints each invite one or two others to join together for structured conversation on a specific topic. (We have a lot of structured topic guides to choose from, or you can create your own).
The Conversation Agreements and structure help assure a good experience and allow participants to get to know each other.
Living Room Conversations can happen anywhere: our homes, coffee shops, conference spaces, churches, and even online via video chat.
What People are Saying
