Our Course Catalog

What’s going on in the world of politics? Why does talking politics so often feel off limits or fraught with danger? How can we get back to the good old days when it was OK to disagree and we could still be friends despite different views?

In this workshop you’ll learn the root cause of the political divide: Your Limbic System.

You will:

• Learn what the limbic system is, the role it plays in our survival, and why politics today triggers into our fight our flight response.
• Do a Limbic Audit to get to know how your unique brain responds to perceived threats.
• Recalibrate your threat response.
• Design an action plan for working with your Limbic System to show up in political conversations more fully “you.”

Come learn how you can tap into your brain’s amazing powers to make talking across differences easier.

Civil, respectful discourse. Talking. Listening.

In CPL 102 we’ll covered the basics of how to Listen Politics in a way that fosters connection and understanding. In this class we’ll share the secrets of Talking Politics in a way that invites others to listen rather than dares them to defend against your ideas or shut you down.

Talking politics refers to sharing your views in a way that supports dialogue instead of debate. Rather than the typical political speak we hear in the media and debates that is all about telling others how they should think, CPL’s approach to talking politics provides insight into why your political views make sense to you; it promotes curiosity, respect and connection and helps others understand how their views and yours can coexist without either of you being wrong or immoral.

But it is not easy, because we’re conditioned to defend our point of view rather than share it or share about ourselves. In this meetup we will:

• Look at why our views are right for us.
• Learn skills that make it possible for us to speak across our differences.
• Explore strategies for overcoming communication barriers.
• Break into pairs to practice productive civil discourse.

One of the first things people ask us when they hear about Crossing Party Lines is how we get politically divided people to listen and speak respectfully to each other. Our response is that we’re about listening politics, not arguing politics.

Listening politics refers to listening in a way that supports dialogue instead of debate. Rather than the typical listening we see in political discussion that is all about listening for a chance to argue or to defend, CPL’s listening promotes curiosity, respect and connection; it enables an open-minded search for discovery, the kind that detectives use.

But it doesn’t come naturally because we’re conditioned to prejudge and to defend our point of view.

In this workshop you will:

• Learn how our intentions in joining a conversation dictate how we listen.
• Cultivate curiosity about views that are different from yours.
• Learn about Active listening as well as how and when to use it.
• Practice skills that make it possible for us to listen and speak across our differences in a way that moves us all forward.

Moral Foundations Theory provides a useful framework for talking politics.

We begin by discussing each of the six foundations and getting a taste of how they can manifest differently in different people.

This leads to exploring some of the tensions intrinsic within the foundations themselves, which opens the door to moving from the moral/immoral dichotomy to an appreciation of how interacting with people who are differently moral to us leads to a more nuanced view of any issue and eventually to better solutions.

In this workshop you will:

• Learn to recognize the moral underpinnings of your own views
• Listen for indications that one or more of the six moral foundations is at play in a political discussion.
• Bring morality into a discussion in a non confrontational way

In this workshop we’ll help you feel more comfortable bringing the CPL way of talking politics into your real lives.

We’ll look at four types of situations:

• Gatherings of friends who hold similar political views
• Family get-togethers with diverse perspectives
• Workplace conversations
• Chance encounters

We’ll teach you techniques and approaches you can bring to all these situations to help you navigate them in a way that leaves you feeling true to yourself and your beliefs.

Come prepared to share your own biggest challenges and practice new ways of handling them with fellow CPL members.

Explore what media bias is—and what it isn’t. Learn practical tools for identifying bias in headlines, stories, and reporting. Examine how language, framing, omissions, and personal assumptions can influence perception, and develop skills for becoming a more thoughtful consumer of information.

Learn to moderate conversations that cross differences through our 16-lesson online training.  This class is a mixture of self-paced lessons, virtual class discussions, one-on-one meetings with the instructor, and virtual practice sessions. Click here for Syllabus.

You will learn how to create a safe and welcoming environment, how to ask open-ended and probing questions, how to manage emotions and conflicts, how to listen actively and empathically, and how to foster mutual learning and collaboration.

Our goal in offering this professionally designed training for free is to meet our ever-increasing demand for CPL services.  Because of this, we ask that every student moderate a minimum of 3 meetups upon completion of this course.

Science and fact are at the root of almost everyone’s political views.  Yet we don’t all have the same facts or trust the same science and scientists.

Too often political conversations devolve  into my facts (or experts or news sources) against yours and none of the participants gets a chance to learn and grow.

In this workshop you will:

• Learn a new framework for talking about facts in a civil, respectful way that lets participants explore how and why their facts differ.
• Use this framework to find conversational entry points.
• Apply the framework in an exercise that leads to shared facts.
• Break into pairs to explore a topic that matters to both of you.

Science and fact are at the root of almost everyone’s political views.  Yet we don’t all have the same facts or trust the same science and scientists.

When someone doesn’t trust or believe the scientists or scientific studies you trust, conversation often stops.  Where else can it go besides name calling? It doesn’t have to, though.

In this workshop you will:

• Learn a new framework for exploring science and scientific studies.
• Use  the framework to find the point at which trust diverges, which becomes the conversational entry point that will allow you to connect with your conversation partner.
• Practice techniques for exploring the reasons one person trusts scientific results and another does not.
• Break into pairs to explore a science-related topic that matters to both of you.