For years, the Common Good Podcast has explored the significance of place, the structures of belonging, and the gifts that emerge when people are invited to contribute to their communities. Today, we're introducing a new podcast that shares many of those same interests. Daniel Yudkin is a social psychologist and researcher who's developing a new political philosophy called Potentialism, built around a simple but surprisingly radical idea: everyone has something to offer. Potentialism asks what it would look like to build our communities, institutions, and even our politics around the belief that everyone has gifts worth discovering, developing, and sharing and that we all have a part to play in helping one another flourish.

For the remainder of the year, we'll share ten episodes of The Beacon Project Podcast, which he describes as a public workshop for Potentialism. In these episodes, Daniel talks with people who are helping him explore and develop Potentialism.

Our first guest is someone many of you already know: Sam Pressler.

What happens when people have something to offer but nowhere to offer it? In this episode, Daniel talks with Sam about his research on friendship, isolation, and purpose among men without college degrees, many of whom feel disconnected from their communities and unsure of where they belong. Together, they explore the relationship between belonging and contribution, the importance of rites of passage and meaningful relationships, and the ways our political divisions can obscure the complexity of people's lives. Along the way, Sam challenges Daniel to think more deeply about potentialism and what it would take to build a society where everyone has the opportunity to discover their gifts, contribute to something bigger than themselves, and know they're needed.

Resources:

• Nobody to Call
• Disconnected: The Growing Class Divide in American Civic Life
• Connective Tissue newsletter
• Sam Pressler's projects
• More in Common
• Hidden Tribes: A Study of America's Polarized Landscape — the research behind the term "Exhausted Majority."
• The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy — Christopher Lasch's critique of the growing separation between educated elites and the rest of society.
• Democracy's Discontent — Michael Sandel's book about citizenship, community, and American democracy.
• Rob Henderson and luxury beliefs — The concept Sam references when discussing family and social class.
• After Virtue — Alasdair MacIntyre — Daniel mentioned MacIntyre in the conversation about life as a narrative quest.