NPR's Joshua Johnson Gets Polarized Americans to Talk to Each Other

A lot of people are bemoaning the polarized state of our nation's political discourse - but one of the few doing something about it is Joshua Johnson, the out host of the NPR public affairs show 1A.

Five nights a week, Johnson hosts a national conversation on the political and cultural issues of the day. The show's themes vary widely from one episode to another - from the Russia investigation to the #MeToo movement to concepts of hell to even a segments called "Ask a Drag Queen" or "Ask a Muslim."

Johnson's show aims to give a platform to a broad range of voices, not only those of his guests, who are usually experts in some field, but also listeners who call and email the show every day.

"The basic mission of the show is to kind of be a mirror to the country," Johnson tells The Advocate. It has managed to get people out of their ideological echo chambers and expose them to differing views.

1A, whose title pays homage to both the First Amendment to the Constitution and the front page of newspapers, recently celebrated its second anniversary. It began airing January 2, 2017, on 172 NPR stations; now it's doubled that to 344 and reaches 3.6 million listeners in a given week.

While Johnson isn't the a creator of 1A, rather was recruited to host it, he has quickly found that the show's approach to public affairs programming aligned with his own. 1A was in the works at its home station, Washington, D.C.'s WAMU, before the 2016 presidential election, as a replacement for The Diane Rehm Show, whose host was retiring. "We knew that a show like 1A was going to be necessary no matter who won the election," Johnson says. "Either way, the conversation was going to be dialed up to 11."

But Donald Trump's presidential victory made the program even more crucial. "We knew we didn't have time to ramp up," the host recalls. "We just hit the ground running at top speed."

Since then, not only has the show grown in listnership as Trump continues to push many people around the country to engage with more news programming, but also the types of listeners has expanded past what many will stereotype an NPR show to be: just urban liberals.

"We know there are conservatives who listen to NPR," he says, even though a plurality of listeners are certainly liberal. The audience, he adds, can trust the show to be a "fair arbiter of information," without giving a false sense of equivalency to all viewpoints. "They trust us to ask equally incisive questions of both sides," he says.

Guests actually appreciate that, he shares, noting for instance that Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro was glad to appear on 1A even though friends had told him not to do the show. "An advantageous echo chamber is still an echo chamber," Johnson says.

However, even in these echo chambers, real issues arise and Johnson finds himself needing to manage truly heinous ideologies that may arise in the programming - racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry. The host says he takes a clinical approach to these, just as a doctor approaches disease - trying to understand it but not endorsing it.

"You can't cure what you don't understand," he says.

And while as a gay, black man he finds himself not able to be neutral about homophobia or other prejudices, per se, he is able to many times find ways to help people inevitably discard such views through these conversations.

"I give people kind of a chance to reconsider what they think," he says. "It's like magic, the power of a well-asked question."

As we look towards a 2020 election cycle, Johnson says he intends to not only keep asking those questions for some time to come and to make sure a variety of voices are heard - the host is ensuring even more people are brought to the proverbial table to talk.

1A has recently announced that it will be partnering with six public radio stations around the country to bring attention to regional concerns and underreported stories. The stations are located in Minnesota, Michigan, Alabama, Kansas, Texas, and Colorado.

Johnson hopes to continue to expand 1A's audience through initiatives like this at a critical time when many feel talking more with one another is what is most needed now in the country.

However, his ambitions won't be easy to accomplish: the program and public radio in general only reach a small minority of the total U.S. population. So to accomplish the task at hand, he says, the onus is soley on him and his team.

"It's not the nation's job to be interested," he says. "It's our job to be interesting."