How A JetBlue Experiment Reminded America That Our Politics Can Get Better

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The airline JetBlue conducted an experiment called “Reach Across the Aisle” on a flight from Boston to Phoenix. The 150 passengers on the flight had the opportunity to win a free roundtrip airfare to one of 20 destinations, which included some international locations. The catch however, was that all the passengers on the flight had to agree on one destination.

Passengers argued in favor of one place or the other and for different reasons. People made arguments, people agreed, disagreed, and agreed again. Compromise however, eventually happened as you can see in the video. (The passengers eventually unanimously decided on Costa Rica.)

I sat down with Matt Walton, the “announcer” in the video to discuss the experiment in relation to our current political climate. Walton is an actor and a political commentator, and together we discussed contemporary American politics, the state of our political discourse, voting, and everything in between. You can watch a condensed version of our dialogue below.

For more dialogues on culture, check out Kovie’s new Thought Catalog book, ‘Let’s Agree To Disagree’ on iBooks and Amazon.