announcer: c-span's washington journal, our live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from washington and across the country. friday morning we will talk about the recent protests on college campuses as a potential impact on campaign 2024 with the national review editor in chief,

and we discussed efforts to pass the kids online safety act with former democratic congressman richard gephardt. c-span's washington journal. join in the conversation live at 7:00 eastern friday morning on c-span, c-span now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org. announcer: utah governor spencer cox is the current chair of the national governors association. up next, we hear him talk about his disagree better initiative, that aims to champion political stability and mitigate polarization of the country. this was at an event hosted by the ronald reagan presidential foundation and institute center on civility in democracy.

>> in america today, the very fabric of our nation is being torn apart. we have never felt more divided. and we are too fixated on our differences. he's black, he's white. he grew up in the city, and he's a farm boy from utah. he's a democrat, and he's a republican. on paper, we could not be more different. and yet we are both dads. we both love college basketball. we both have really stylish haircuts. and we are both proud americans. we disagree passionately on lots of issues. but we are friends. and we respect each other. politics is important. but it should not define us or

destroy our relationships. his name is spencer cox. and his name is wes moore. and we approve this message. >> please welcome to the stage, chairman of the board of trustees of the ronald reagan presidential foundation and institute, mr. fred ryan. [applause] mr. ryan: good morning. welcome to the reagan institute. we are delighted today to be joined by governor cox and first lady abby cox. thank you for joining us this morning. each year the chair of the national governors association tackles an issue they care deeply about. ultimately they shape that issue into the initiative that helps them define their time as nga leader. as this year's chair, governor

cox took on a bold challenge. getting americans to get along better. the governor's disagree better initiative was born of a deep concern over polarization in our country. governor cox recognized the nation needs leaders to step up and model a more positive path forward, and the governors to be the front line of this work. the nga and organizations around the country have convened conversations recorded as, written not beds, and organize debates in service of the role of disagreeing better. to learn more about the progress of this program and ways we can expand it, we're delighted to have the governor with us this morning. please welcome the 18th governor of the state of utah, spencer cox. [applause] welcome, governor pritzker's great to have you here at the institute.

-- gov. cox: we will welcome y'all to utah whenever you want to come. mr. ryan: we will take that as an invitation. we are working to showcase innovative programs helping close the divide and help find common ground among americans. of all the things you could do as chair of the nga, you picked this issue. could you share a little bit about why this was important and why disagree better became your signature issue? gov. cox: thank you again for having me here picked it is a true honor to be here and i am so excited for this center. it is timely. it is so necessary. we get to do an initiative and bill mcbride, the head of the nga, is with us here today. governors before me have had wonderful initiatives. computer science in our school.

infrastructure. teen mental health. and we were looking at those types of initiatives. at the top of our list we were looking at health care reform. we looked at critical minerals and energy policy. more traditional issues. this had always been in the back of our minds. it became very clear that we cannot solve our nation's problems if we hate each other. and we were seeing so much dysfunction in washington, d.c. i think that was on display yesterday, although dysfunction was replaced with a little bit of function which was kind of nice for a change. i want to give credit where it is due. and so, we started kind of kicking this idea. could we elevate civility -- although this is a little different, we can touch on that in a minute. could we elevate that issue to become an issue like guns or abortion or something else?

i fact, i would put it above all the other issues. because again, if we truly care about doing things, and sadly, there are elected officials who are not interested in solving problems, who are here for performative reasons. but could we try to do something there? so i have to say, this was not just a feel-good something that we made up. we reached out to experts, researchers, we spent a lot of time with stanford's polarization and social change lab, darkness and others who have really tried to influence the work that we are doing. this is something i cared about before i was mgh chair. he saw the ads i did with governor moore. i had done an ad in 2020 with my democratic opponent when i was running for governor. a friend of mine had talked to

me in the end of september and said i am really worried about what is happening in our country. 2020, we were on the presidential cycle, so 2020 we had had rioting across the country in the wake of george floyd's murder, and then we were already hearing from my party that we were undermining the legitimacy of an election that had not even happened yet. so she said, isn't there something i can do? i said, i don't know, what can i do? but it kept me up all weekend. i called my opponent that next week and said, i have this crazy idea. what if we did an ad together, and he was very confused. a campaign ad. but i talked him through and i said i know you care about our country and i do too. so we did something similar to that where he said, i am chris peterson and i think you should vote for me. while we disagree on a lot of things, we both agree we can

disagree without hitting each other, that we care about our country, and we will accept the results of this election, whatever they are. that ad went viral and that was hopeful to me that there is a majority out there. stanford tested that ad is one of interventions with 35,000 people and found it has a measurable impact in lowering the propensity towards violence and de-polarizing. so as we were kind of kicking this idea around without, maybe we can convince other governors to do this as well and that is how disagree better was born. mr. ryan: if you look at the research data, and i am sure you have, it is disturbing to see how divided we are at this moment in a country and how difficult it is to find common ground. from your perspective, how did we get here? what brought us to this point? gov. cox: we have thought a lot about this. we have talked to researchers about this. and i have come to my own

conclusions about how we got here. and i like to start with the breakdown of institutions. i think that is kind of where this starts. if you go back to the 1830's and you read about alexis's visit here and the thriving of institutions that were so important to our country, especially religious institutions, but so many other volunteer organizations. we did not rely on government to do all of these things pretty we had a strong civil society. if we needed into hospital, we built a hospital. there was a rootedness and connectedness that was so important. professor robert putnam wrote a book which i am sure most of you remember, over 20 years ago, maybe 25 years ago. to me, that was kind of the first sign of trouble. that we were lonelier than ever before.

the concept was that more people were bowling in the united states than ever before, but there were fewer bowling leagues than ever before. instead of forming bowling leagues, we had community and thriving, people would bowl by themselves. so this loneliness epidemic that he kind of found and started talking about was growing in this country pretty americans had fewer real friends than ever before. and we are wired for connection. and so that predated social media. then we lay cell phones and social media on top of that. now you have fake connections, not real connections. i don't have any real friends, but we need tribes, so we can all hate the same people together on facebook. so we started those tribes. and then the algorithms of social media kind of took over our lives and cable news.

and they figured out how to get us addicted to contempt, which is a real thing. tim shriver, who is here with us, and his organization, they talk often about this. outrage is as addicting as opioids, as gambling, as sugar. it hits the same receptors in our brain. and so now we are in our tribes, algorithms are pushing us towards this, cable news figured it out too, that we can get addicted to outrage, and never have to have real conversations with anyone different from us. again, i think there are lots of things, but all of those things lined up. and then what happens is, now you have the perfect recipe for conflict entrepreneurs, in the media but also in politics, to kind of step into this void. and use fear and divisiveness to bring us together and tear us

apart, if that makes sense. bring a tribe together, but by defining others and tearing us apart, and we end up with this kind of morass that we find ourselves in today. mr. ryan: eric schmitt has defined as three pieces for certain media outlets, successfully get revenue, they need viewers or cliques, and to do that they need outrage. back to disagree better, you have rolled this out the last few months. can you talk about the areas you have seen the greatest success, then maybe about the areas where there is still a need for more impact, and maybe even how it can be scaled further? gov. cox: the area of greatest impact has been, i think, a little surprising to all of us. again, in this hyper polarized world i thought i might get left out of the room when i even brought up this concept to my fellow governors. it was the exact opposite.

i first presented it to the republican governor, since that is how they choose. national governors association, one of the last bastions of true bipartisan work, republicans and democrats working together, we alternate chair and vice chair every year. so the democrat from colorado is my vice chair. but the republicans choose their chair and the democrats choose their chair. so i presented it to my republican colleagues and was pleasantly surprised at the response, how excited they were. even some of them who would say, i cannot say this publicly, but we desperately need this and i want to help if i can behind the scenes. even better, those who are willing to help in front of the scenes. we have had now 20 governors who have filmed ads like the one i have done, most of them was someone from the other party, a mayor from their state, someone that they respect.

and so that's been great. also, just the overwhelming response from the public. everywhere we go we hear, this is so refreshing. like, we used to do this, we used to know how to do this. they are desperate for it. we talk often about the statistics and the pole and that shows how bad it is out there. i'm also optimistic about the polling that shows 70% of americans hate our policies right now. they are hungry for something different. there is an exhaustive majority out there, and we have seen that. also, how many great organizations are involved in this work? if nothing else, i think our greatest accomplishment will have been bringing all of those organizations together to have these conversations. they are all out there, but they have never really gotten together to see how they can maximize their potential. and so if anything outlives me

with this, in july, i hope it is -- and it is up in july, it is that they are working together to solve this problem. the hard part is scaling this. we have these ads --excuse me. when people see these ads, they like them, they are really inspired by them. they know it has an impact. we know from stanford's work that these can help depolarizing us as a nation. frank luntz also did some work around this. he did a massive poll and found it was overwhelmingly positive. people are dying for anything like this. and yet we just don't have the resources. we put them on social media and hope people watch them. i would love to see these running during the nba finals.

so, it's kind of budget and scale that is an issue. and then just hoping more people understand. the incentive structure in our country is all misaligned. there is no incentive to do stuff like this. so we are trying to help convince governors first, because governors have to actually do stuff. that is why we kind of thought they are the best group to work together. we do this bipartisan work anyway. but outside of that, to help people understand, not just that it is a good thing to do for our country but that it is good for politics, that you can get elected or reelected doing this. there are some problems with the way we select candidates that makes it a little more difficult to do this. where again, the incentives are to be performative, to be loud, to be outrageous. even though the vast majority of americans don't want that.

there is a misalignment there. and so that is a piece we still need to figure out. mr. ryan: on that point, how the political incentives, at least maybe in congress as an example, are at odds with trying to increase civility, trying to find common ground. some of the most visible of congress have their visibility because of the outrageous things they do, the divisive things they do, their place in social media. gov. cox: i don't mean to correct you, but i would say all of the most visible. mr. ryan: so how do we change the incentives? they are doing it because it works for them. maybe not for everybody, but for those who are doing it. how do we change the incentives so that does not work for someone who is seeking office? gov. cox: again, i think there are some structural pieces that are not necessarily part of what we are doing what that there are other groups working on that are important from an electoral standpoint. but there are things we can all do.

i do think we need to take a hard look at the internet and social media in general. just finished a book and had a great conversation with the offer -- with an author called my greatest fight that i highly recommend. and he has a very -- some very bold ideas around completely restructuring the internet itself, the very fabric of the internet and how it works, to help us so that we don't just have a few very large duopolies or monopoly-like companies controlling all of this and controlling those algorithms that i think is really critical to this conversation. but i have to say, the answer is truly all of us, and at the local level deciding that we are going to make this initiative. so that when you are in a town hall with a candidate and you're asking them what their position is on abortion or guns or

whatever, that you are asking them, what are you doing to depolarize us? asking that as a question. and our hope is we are trying to change the permission structure to let people know you can talk about this, to give them the actual language -- i am going to keep shouting you out. that is something you are working on, give people the language to do this. and then to show that the backlash is not what you think it is going to be. every one of the governors who has done an ad like this, they were pretty nervous when those ads were released. am i going to get all this backlash? very little. it is 10 to 1, the positivity. they hear this is so refreshing, thank you for doing this. then that gives them permission to do it again. and our hope is it will give

people who see this who would never run for office thinking, oh, i could do this. that interests me. and we can get some different candidates may be running for office again. because of the infrastructure now just brings out the people who thrive in that kind of environment. mr. ryan: talking about some of the challenges at this very moment, here we are into a presidential campaign that is probably going to be a very negative campaign. we are also looking at what is happening on college campuses. one thing several people in this room have spent a lot of time on is the looming threat of ai disinformation and misinformation coming to scale. are there things we can do -- when we launched our program people simultaneously said this is the best time and the worst time to launch a program like this. are there things you can suggest that people can do during this period where we are going to face these challenges? gov. cox: yeah, there are so

many things you can do. i'm glad you brought this up. yes, there is no question this is just going to be an awful six months. let's just all buckle in for that. but i'm an optimistic person. our nation has seen terrible things before and we have gotten through those things. and i do believe the pendulum swing and i think brush fires start and spread in ways we cannot imagine. and so it is incumbent on every person, every single one of us to find ways to bridge divides into be builders, architects, instead of arsonists. so, there are -- and i'm glad you brought up ai. it is about to get so much worse. if we think the algorithms are bad now, the power of ai to tear us apart is incredible. so what can we do?

there are things that the experts tell us is really important. one is to spend time face-to-face with people who are different from us. i get criticism for disagree better. one of the criticisms i get mostly on the right is, you just want us to go along to get along. you won't stand true to your principles. you are a rino, you don't believe in anything, you just want to hang out with democrats. they are not all bad. [laughter] we were very purposeful to say this is not just another civility initiative. that this is not a kindness initiative. we need more stability and we need more kindness. we chose the word disagree on purpose. we want people to stay true to their principles and their values, to be passionate about the things you believe in. not asking you to compromise on anything. that is the first part. on the left, the attacks i get

are, generally, why would i engage with those people? those people are irrational. those people don't want me to exist. or whatever it is. and i think screaming at each other is dangerous. not talking to each other at all is more dangerous. and that will never lead to a solution and make our country a better place. and so, we have to have real conversations with people who are different from us. and what we find out when we do that, i can give countless examples. it is that we are not as different as we thought we were. that is one. two, we need to stop defining ourselves by our political identities. when i was growing up in my congregation in my town, i did not know who the republicans and democrats work. that was so far down the list of how we define ourselves. that ad i did with governor moore is a great example of how to do this.

we're dads, i'm a utahn. i'm a republican or democrat was so far down the list. finding shared identities is really important. service is a big one. when we serve our communities and give back, the experts tell us that is a great way to depolarize. democrats and republicans working together in their communities, there is a bond that forms be give back to make a place better. that is another really important one. and the last one i would say is something that comes from john adams. he talks about political virtues. we don't often talk about virtue these days, but he had a quote. he talked about the political virtues of patience, moderation, and humility.

patience, moderation, and humility. without those things, we are all ravenous beasts of prey. he understood that this natural man, the natural human instincts are divisive. we're brutish and short, all of those things. but if we can practice humility, patience, and moderation, then we are not ravenous beasts of prey. it seems almost comical to talk about humility or patience in politics. but one of my favorite quotes, he was talking about the spirit of liberty. when we think about that we think, i don't know, an eagle with a machine gun, a truck with an american flag, whatever. he said that the spirit of liberty is that spirit which is that spirit which seeks to

understand the minds of other men and women. that is very powerful to me, this idea that i'm going to listen and i'm going to listen to learn, not listen to debate. we tell people to ask this question when you are in a high conflict situation, just to ask, tell me more about why you feel that way. that shows your interest in the other person, shows a humility, a willingness to listen, to understand. it gives me an opportunity to cool down, because i like to fight first, that is always my instinct. then it gives the other person a chance to think about why they believe the way they believe. sometimes you have to ask the question multiple times, but eventually you will find some common ground. and maybe,, maybe a common solution. maybe not. but if you can attack ideas instead of people, those are little things, but little things

add up over time and will make us all better in whatever sphere of influence we have. mr. ryan: we are going to go to questions from the audience in a second, but i want to point out that the first image you see here is a phone or -- is a photo of ronald reagan and tip o'neill, who could not be more different. they did not agree very much on the issues, but they did not let it get to the point where disagreement on issues meant you could not feel they were a good person. somehow we have evolved, if someone has a different view on you, they are a bad person and they are out to destroy the country. i guess my question is, it took us a while to get in this process. but how do we start to break that theory that because someone might have an idea that you think is really bad, they are not a bad person? gov. cox: i think that is where getting proximate matters. author of a book called just

mercy that i recommend to everyone, that was his big kind of a-ha moment. a black attorney in alabama representing death row inmates. kind of talking about the racial issues that were there, and some of the prison guards he had to deal with who humiliated him in terrible ways, and how hard it was to get proximate to those people, those people. but when he did, it changed everything. and it is just harder to hate up close. and so that is what ronald reagan and tip o'neill did. one of the things i limit most about what happened -- things i lament most about what happened in congress, congress people used to go to dinner together, they would have events together. that stopped happening. there are reasons for that.

one, people started running elections accusing members of congress of never being in a district. so, they are spending too much time in washington, d.c. so it was get there and get home as quickly as possible. then this animosity started to grow and those relationships fell apart. but ronald reagan and tip o'neill, that is the example i use all the time. it is the best example of how this is supposed to work. and it can work but it takes time and investment. and it is hard. it is really hard work. but it is worthwhile work. as a country we have become addicted to pleasure instead of happiness. pleasure is a false substitute for happiness. it is those dopamine hits in our brain. pleasure is addicting, and we see it in all cons of forms. addiction to social media, addiction to drugs, addiction to gambling, addiction to sugar. all of those things are supplanting or replacing true happiness. we are wired for connection.

there is a different chemical that gets released that hits those same receptors that is not dopamine, it is serotonin. and serotonin is fulfillment. serotonin does not lead to addiction. it leads to a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment. and what we know is we get that chemical and that happiness from human connection, face-to-face connection, in person connection, even with people who are different from us. we get dopamine from social media. so, tip o'neill and ronald reagan had it right. when ronald reagan was shot and was lying in the hospital, tip o'neill showed up, knelt by his bedside, held his hand, and prayed for him. and that's america. that's who we are, a pluralistic society.

our nation was founded in profound disagreement with institutions that knew we were going to have a whole bunch of different people. this idea that a nation founded on an idea, not on a religious people or a racial people. it was founded on this idea that all of us are created equal, and that we are giving these -- given these god-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. we set up institutions so no one could get to powerful, so that we would have to find ways to work together. it's the only way our nation can survive, is our willingness to be ronald reagan and tip o'neill . mr. ryan: just on this point of members of congress who infrequently engage with the other party, but governors do engage with the other party. why does it work for governors but not members of congress? gov. cox: again, i mentioned how the incentive structures are all messed up, and they are. there is still an incentive that

is different for governors than members of congress, and that is that we have to do stuff. [laughter] we like to say that potholes are not partisan. and one of the geniuses -- let me just throw this out there, i know this will sound a little political, but it is not meant that way, i believe this is more factual. one of the brilliant pieces of our country was this idea of federalism, that the states would be coequal partners. one of the big mistakes we have made as a country -- and i'm going to be a little critical of the left first, but trust me, i will get to the right -- is that if we feel like something is right, the entire country should be doing it. i think that is a huge mistake, and here is the problem. that used to be a right/left argument. now my team has decided the same thing, that whatever we believe is the right way to do something, we are going to get as much power as we can enforce

it on the rest of the country. -- and force it on the rest of the country. i think our country would look very different if we allowed the laboratories of democracy to work. because i have seen it. i have seen it with governors. we steal ideas from each other all the time, and we don't care where the idea comes from. if it is a good idea -- housing is a great example. we had a roundtable on housing with the governors. it is one of my favorite things. this was in february. the house of housing and how expensive it is. i said, if somebody just came in from another country right now, had no idea who any of us were, or someone from our country because they would have no idea either, they would not be able to tell who were the republicans and who were the democrats in that room because we were trying to solve a problem. so that's, i think, very unique and still a little bit different. now, franklin said that

governors were the last to know in a when it comes to politics. i think that is mostly true. i think there are some governors at the kids table. but mostly, mostly, because as an executive we are trying to solve problems, it makes a real difference. and i would just encourage us to allow more of that to happen. i think abortion is a good example. if you look at what happened in europe with abortion laws, they kind of, over time, found a stasis of abortions are illegal up to 12 to 15 weeks, in that range. but when we force it on the entire country, it led to so much hostility. now we have taken that away, and you see this crazy range, because we have never really dealt with it. and it is ok that california and utah are different. that is a good thing, it really is. and we will learn from each other. and when things get too far out

of whack in one place, their citizens will demand if utah keeps getting ranked number one in u.s. news & world report, 70 different categories, over 1000 categories raking all different states, and utah came out number one -- so, steal from us. mr. ryan: let's go to a couple questions from the floor. i think we have a microphone. >> my question is to governor cox. the local governors of ukraine are now copping you and your model for economic development, especially the governor elected regional council chair, who has your same role as the head of all the me discipline elected officials. how are you going to do that? because they want to copy your model bringing businesses when you travel, having their own

edc. this is something zelenskyy wants to do, take the power from the federal government to the regions. our federal government doesn't do any economic development basically, but you guys do, and you are the top state in the country so you're probably the best person to talk to. gov. cox: we have actually had conversations. in fact, i was not on the trip, but utah was the first state to take our economic team over to kyiv since the invasion. and our senate president was there and met with president zelenskyy to have those very conversations. so we are very involved with what is happening in ukraine and deeply troubled at the terror that continues to happen there. very grateful that we finally got some funding to ukraine, and grateful to speaker johnson for allowing that vote to go forward. i think ronald reagan would approve. so we will continue to work with

our ukrainian counterparts to help them develop that. and that is exactly right, that is what they are trying to do, to get that regional economic development moving. mr. ryan: there is a question over there. >> good morning. thank you for all the work that you are doing. i am curious to know what the perception has been like on college campuses, if you have brought discussion to different campuses. gov. cox: yeah. we kind of try to focus on some different areas. one, youth and families, and we will have more to say. we are convening in nashville in a couple days and we will be talking about that. working with ceo's whose slack channels are blowing up and really struggling with conflict resolution. of course elected officials. but the fourth area was on college campuses. so we've been working with different groups, some of you may be familiar with braver angels. braver angels has an amazing

campus debate model. and so we have taken that campus debate model to several college campuses and held debates with college students. a little different than the traditional debate. it is not just two people up on stage arguing with each other. everyone in the audience is part of the debate. and everyone gets an opportunity who wants to to come up and share their views. we pick a controversial topic, and then we let the students come uip a==- -- come up and argue their position. there are some ground rules. you are respectful to the person. it's really cool to see how this works. and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. and when i say overwhelmingly, i mean like, 100% approval rating for the people who participated in this, unlike anything i have

seen. what we hear is, this is so refreshing, i didn't know we could do this. so while i was so animated and excited, i also left deeply troubled and depressed about what is not happening on our college campuses. because when i went to college, i studied political science. and this is what we did. almost every class, it was deep and heated debates. and energizing. and then we would talk about it afterwards and we would go to dinner and hang out and never once thought, i can't be friends with that person because we are on the other site of an issue. and what we are seeing on too many college campuses is, one, on many college campuses there is so little viewpoint diversity that there is not much debate because of that. number two, when there is debate, people feel so uncomfortable or unsafe that they disengage very quickly.

and so, it's a learned skill and they don't know how to do it. i will say, one other very interesting thing, there have been some studies done that found that people who participated in organized debate in high school or college are much less polarized than the rest of the country. because to do so, you have to understand the other side of an argument. and when you understand the other side of an argument, you realize that they are not just evil people or stupid people, that they just see the world a different way, and that there is a rationale behind, even if you disagree with it. and that makes you much more tolerant of a diverse viewpoint. sadly, again, now, not every college campus and not everywhere on college campuses, but by and large we have just completely lost that. again, speaking of scale, i wish there was a way -- and there are groups doing this and there are

college campuses recommitting to this. i think the pendulum is swinging towards viewpoint diversity, towards removing the cancel culture and allowing unpopular voices to be heard, defending the first amendment, even if you hate what the person is saying and then getting back to figuring out how to have true debate without hate. mr. ryan: another question. >> thank you for being here. really appreciate all your efforts, governor cox. i work on the house select committee on the ccp. we do a lot of bipartisan work. and something that i think is very important to what you said here today is sort of the collective actiion problem of the pluralist project. once we have the members in a room on both sides of the aisle, a lot of good things can get done. but as you said, it is the

scale, the finances, the budget. what do you see as the most pertinent solution to that budget and scale problem from your perspective? is it through realigning the incentives through the electoral process? is it truly just getting donors in a room to back these efforts? is it more just giving people the language? what is the primary way we can solve that problem? gov. cox: yeah, that is a great question. and i wish i had a better answer. certainly a couple billionaires, if there are any in the room, stepping forward and just saying this is our live's work. i think we could make a difference that way. we always said that politics is now stream of culture -- is downstream of culture. one of the things i have been wrestling with is how do we get this into culture. now, politicians are part of culture. certainly governors speaking about this, again, the science says this can make a difference. i've been trying to figure out

how to get pop-culture, and then like, large corporations' advertising budgets involved in this. let me go back to the stanford polarization study. they had 25 interventions, so ours was one of the 25 interventions that got tested, our video. the most successful video was a heineken ad. some of you may have seen it. it kind of went viral. basically what heineken did was they would put two people in a room and they built a bar, it was kind of an ikea furniture project. these two strangers would build this bar together and the executives would say hey,, you did it congratulations. now you have a choice. you can have a heineken together, or you can leave the room, but before you choose we are going to show you a video.

and interviewed all these people before hand, and talked to them about their political views. and they were kind of extremists on both sides. one example was a person who was actually transgender, and another person who hated everything related to transgender people. they build the bar together and then say, you have to watch this first. and there's this really awkward, awful moment when they realize they just spent one hour doing this with someone they hated, but they didn't know they hated them until just after this. then they said, you get to choose. man, this moment when they choose to stay. if you have a soul or a heart, it'll make you cry. it is really powerful. i encourage you to go watch it. i think heineken sold a lot of beer, because they made people feel something. i would love -- and we have made

this pitch -- i would love corporate america to say -- because corporate america wants to stay away from politics. michael jordan famously said republicans buy shoes, too. he's right. but turn that around. this is not getting involved in politics, it is about bringing america together and helping them feel something. so i always had this great idea for an ad where two vehicles pull in front of two houses, they are moving in. you have a big truck rolling down the road, you have an electric vehicle pulling up on the other side. you've got a bumper sticker that match. two families get out with their kids and they side i each other. they walk into the new houses. one puts up a maga flag and the other puts up a pride flag. and you see the kids secretly talking in the backyard and they talk at night and they replace

both flags with an american flag. and then you see the dads walkout, and they mcdonald's together in the backyard, i don't know. but whatever it is, again, it is something that gets into the culture to give permission to us again to get together. we have been talking to the largest talent agency in the world trying to get celebrities to come to our nga meetings to have these conversations. i do think there is something about giving people permission again. what they say when they see these videos is, oh my gosh, thank you. i didn't know this is what i wanted, but this is what i wanted. so, i don't think we can leave it up to the politicians to fix this one, i don't. i think it is to the rest of us. mr. ryan: we are just about out of the time, but i do get the sense that you are proud of utah being number one. are they disagreeing better in utah? gov. cox: utah is very unique in lots of ways.

and the researchers will tell you this, too. while we have an amazing economy and we have been, by most metrics, the best economy in and -- in the nation over the past 10 years, we're proud of that. but there is something different and something unique. literally weekly, we get calls or visits from scholars from harvard, yale, all over the country, coming to figure out what is different about utah. now, i want to say, we are trending the way of the rest of the country, but we are just farther behind. so what they tell me is there are a couple of things. we lead the nation in service every year. we lead the nation in charitable giving every year. those institutions, again, alexis de tocqueville when he was here talked about the importance of volunteer

institutions. we have more of those in utah. i cannot talk about utah without talking about the religious peace obviously, although the church is only about half the population now. we have other amazing religious leaders in the state, and religion plays a very prominent role. it being an institution where people find connection with people who are different from them. back to bowling alone. where every week when something goes wrong, you have another safety net, not just the government. you have neighbors and fellow congregants and others. we still have very robust institutions outside of that. volunteer organizations that do this type of work. and i believe that does make you different. two of the rankings i am most proud of, we lead the nation in social capitol. again, i think that is a result of some of this. social capital and upward

mobility, they go together. if you are born in poverty in utah you are less likely to stay in poverty than any other state in the nation. so the american dream is still alive and well. the last piece i'm really proud of is that we lead the nation in non-zero-sum thinking. so, this kind of scarcity mentality, zero-sum thinking, that if you win i am losing, if i win you lose, that's very dangerous. so the abundance mentality, if you win, that is good for all of us. that still happens in utah. and it's something i think matters. because of that, we're also ranked the happiest state in the nation. again, happiness versus pleasure, as i mentioned before. that happiness comes because of those connections. government is not good, it was not designed to fill that gap.

government cannot connect us or bring us together. it can provide a safety net for sure, but we need strong civic institutions. we are seeing more people leave our churches in utah just like everywhere else. the fastest growing space in america are the nones, n-o-n-e-s. i'm not saying everyone has to be religious, but when you leave those institutions, what are you replacing them with? and we don't have a good answer for that in our country right now. we are not replacing them with bowling leagues, i can tell you that. we're replacing them with facebook eight, or whatever, twitter, x. -- facewbook hate, twitter, x. the experts will tell you that is what utah is doing better, but i think about it often. because it is not in our dna, it is not inherent. we have to be intentional about

it, we have to speak about it, we have to build our own communities. i believe that wherever you are, that is the answer. we need to stop telling kids to go out and change the world. it is making them anxious. they are not going to do it. and it's just not good for them or for us. what we need to tell kids to do is to change their neighborhood. right? to invest, to go volunteer, to get to know your neighbors, and to help them out. to go to the local food bank, whatever it is. that is how we fix all of this. it really is in our local families, our neighborhoods, and our congregation. mr. ryan: governor, thank you for your great leadership in this area, and thank you for joining us today. gov. cox: thank you, guys. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

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