The potentially ugly nature of the presidential election has many people increasingly concerned about a contested result, and disenchanted with the two-party stranglehold on American politics.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. More voters identify as independents than as Republicans or Democrats. Our guest, Lee Drutman, senior fellow at New America and author of “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop”, makes the case for a multiparty system, which, he says, would boost compromise, problem-solving, voter turnout and confidence in the political process.

“To try to shoehorn a country this diverse and sprawling into just two parties to me is insanity,” Lee tells us. “It creates an us-against-them zero-sum mentality every political election."

If independent podcasts are to prosper and survive in this era of growing commercialization, big media, and multi-million dollar podcast investments, we need to grow our community: Share, collaborate and promote groups, individuals and podcasters who share many of our goals.

In this first "How Do We Fix It?" episode of 2020, we include recent interviews with leaders and supporters of Bridge Alliance, Civic Hall, Heterodox Academy, Solutions Journalism Network and Listen First Project. We support their efforts to strengthen democracy, boost curiosity, find constructive solutions and emphasize the positive.

We've included clips from our 2019 interviews with Debilyn Molineaux, Arthur Brooks, Micah Sifry, Jodie Jackson and Pearce Godwin.