UPPER DELAWARE RIVER, NY & PA — In an increasingly isolated and politically polarized world, it’s exceedingly rare that two strangers, with different politics, race, gender, ages or religious beliefs, sit opposite one another to just talk—not to debate or to change each other’s minds, but to merely get to know one another as people. 

This is the concept behind WJFF Radio Catskill’s newest series, One Small Step (OSS), in partnership with Story Corps and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  

“If we can’t find the humanity in each other, then I really think we’re screwed,” Elizabeth Williams, an OSS participant, told the River Reporter.

Throughout 2024,  WJFF’s OSS team (including Isabel Braverman, project manager, co-facilitator and producer; Judy Balaban, co-facilitator; and Ronald Kelson, assistant producer) planned to record 50-minute conversations between 25 different pairs of politically different members of the river valley community.

As of December, the team has facilitated 19 of the 25 conversations, all of which are permanently archived in the Library of Congress in the American Folk Life Center. 

The concept is simple, but the basic structure of two people talking has brought listeners to tears. Tim Bruno, the radio station’s general manager, was teary after every piece the team played for him, according to Braverman. 

“The feedback we’ve gotten from people is that it really makes them emotional… What I hear all the time is, ‘Oh, this is so needed; like, this is so needed right now,’” Braverman said.

Reflecting on her experience, Williams said, “There were so many moments when my partner and I were both in agreement that then I had a hard time understanding what steps got us to a place where we’re on such opposite political perspectives, because there was so much that I felt like we had in common.”

“But, if anything, it might provide hope, where I might not understand why we find ourselves so oppositional to one another, but just realizing or remembering or learning that we have a lot of shared common goals—maybe [that] can open the door to more collaboration in achieving them.”

Data from research conducted to assess OSS’ impact also indicates the power of the program. 

The research, conducted by Story Corps with Yale University’s Social Perception and Communication Laboratory, examined the changes in interpersonal empathy and perceptions before and after someone participates in an OSS conversation. 

It found that both liberal and conservative participants felt more empathetic toward their interview partner after their OSS conversation. Story Corps also reported that the most recent results suggest that some participants show significant levels of increased empathy for all people on “the other side” after participating in OSS.

Kelson, the project’s assistant producer, said in every conversation the participants found commonalities and points of agreement. 

An OSS participant, Tom Candela, shared his experience at WJFF’S community listening event. He said, “We found our common ground almost immediately.” 

Candela said common ground is what they talked about for almost the whole hour. “He has adopted children... my wife and I adopted our daughter. We have concerns for the environment, the same concerns. We are volunteers in our community. We are active participants within our community. He likes to write. I found out he wrote a book, and went out and purchased his book.” 

However simple the format, the team agreed the biggest challenge was finding enough diverse participants. Specifically, the team had difficulty recruiting Republican and conservative-identifying individuals, people of color and people of varying ages to participate. 

The conversations attempt to address the fissions of political difference by challenging participants to engage in more than a political debate. As facilitators, Braverman and Balaban attend all of the recordings and “help the conversation move along,” but are clear that their “role is to take the back seat—we’re not there to interview them or be part of the conversation,” Braverman said. 

Participants are prompted with questions like: Who influenced you most in your life and how did they influence you? How do you think your political beliefs were formed? What were some of the influences on your political beliefs? 

Braverman said, “It’s been really interesting doing this with the election going on. We started in June, and you could see how the conversations changed as the election got closer and closer.” 

As a byproduct of recording conversations against the backdrop of the 2024 election, the project produced a documentation of the interpersonal human experience of local residents in a moment dominated by national politics.  

In the recordings earlier in the year, politics were brought up very little or not at all, according to Braverman. But as the election neared, she said, “Politics got brought up a lot, that became dominant in the conversation, and not necessarily about the election, but it was on people’s minds and it became more political.” Post-election, she says, people have discussed their thoughts on the future at greater length. 

Balaban urged people to listen and “don’t judge, don’t go into it with your judgments about the people. You know, people say like, oh, I’m a Republican, I’m a Democrat. You react immediately to that. So don’t go in with those judgments. Just actually listen to what they’re saying.”

“When we listen that way we recognize so much more of the humanity that we share,” Balaban said.  

See box at upper center for how to listen and participate in One Small Step.

To weigh in on who influenced you most in your life and how they influenced you, check out the River Reporter's Monthly Conversation Experiment here.