Political polarization is out of control.

There's too much rancor and division. It's gotten so bad that it's showing up not just in our public life anymore. Some are losing long-time friendships and even family to the divisiveness.

But there is another way.

We can learn ways to talk across differences. We can come together for productive discussions. We can begin to see one another again as fellow citizens, worthy of respect and consideration.

Braver Angels offers one approach.

Braver Angels teaches ways to communicate in depolarizing ways, then puts those skills to work.

We hold events that bring people with a variety of viewpoints together in structured conversations, where they can openly share their values and perspectives without fear. These events range in scale from small-group conversations to larger town-hall-style debates.

All Braver Angels events are guided by a couple of principles:

• To the greatest degree possible, the group should be balanced between what we call "reds" and "blues" - conservatives and liberals. An essential part of Braver Angels is that you encounter actual, flesh-and-blood people - face to face - who believe and think differently from you.

• The goal is not to win. Or to teach. Or even to persuade. The goal is to understand. Understanding people's values and life experiences is a first step toward seeing one another as people, not as a faceless "other", for whom no respect is due. Only with understanding can we begin to depolarize our public life.

To give you a flavor of the teaching component of Braver Angels, here are a couple of communication workshops we run locally:

• Depolarizing Ourselves - Helps people recognize how they, themselves, might be a source of polarization in the ways they think about the political "other" (whoever that "other" is) and the ways they talk with like-minded people.

• Skills for Disagreeing Better - Helps people learn ways to talk with people with whom they disagree without the conversation devolving into acrimony.

Ultimately, Braver Angels seeks to bring together what we call the "exhausted majority" - everyone who is sick and tired of the arguing, anger, division, and vitriol - and with some hard work and luck, forge solutions to our common problems.