Building Bridges Across America: The American Exchange Project with David McCullough III 

Kate Tucker:  I'm Kate Tucker, and this is Hope Is My Middle Name, a podcast from Consensus Digital Media. And I've got a special episode for you today. There are so many reasons why it's special. First and foremost, because of my amazing guest, David McCullough III. But it's also unique because David and I actually got to have this conversation in person in Boston this summer, which means you can also watch this episode on YouTube and at HopeIsMyMiddleName.com.

But let's get to it. I am so excited to introduce you to David McCullough III. He is the co-founder and CEO of the American Exchange Project, which sends high school seniors on a free week long adventure to a faraway community very, very different from their own. It's a simple but profound mission to connect our divided United States.

David started AEP when he was just 24 years old, back in 2019, and the organization officially launched in 2021. To date, AEP has sent more than 1, 000 students to 75 towns in 36 states. Now, David is a visionary, and he believes that the polarization and division in the U.S. ultimately comes from the fact that we don't know each other, and he wants to change that, in a very big way.

His goal is to have 1 million kids involved in the American Exchange Project by 2030. As you'll hear, the inspiration for AEP came from a road trip David took when he was in college, where he visited towns that were vastly different from his own. And as a white male coming from a lot of privilege, he thought he'd be shunned by the people he met. Instead, the opposite happened, and it changed his life.

Kate Tucker: David, thank you so much for being here.

David McCullough III: Thank you for having me. 

Kate Tucker: It's so good to see you. So, tell me for our listeners who you are and what you do. 

David McCullough III: My name is David McCullough III. I'm the co-founder and CEO of the American Exchange Project. And we are our nation's first domestic youth exchange program.

Kate Tucker: And I'd also like to know your life story in six words. 

David McCullough III: My life story in six words. Um, 

Kate Tucker: Because hang on a second, this is your own game, right? It's something that I read that you do at American Exchange Projects. You ask people to tell you...

David McCullough III: Well the irony is that the chef rarely eats what they actually are cooking.

Kate Tucker: Right?! I was hoping you had like a ready answer, but I kind of like that you don't... 

David McCullough III: Life story in six words, yeah. Um, let's see. Trying to live aloha everywhere I go. No, shoot, that's seven. Um, 

Kate Tucker: I think we can give you seven.

David McCullough III:  Seven

Kate Tucker: Yeah. Let's start with that.

David McCullough III: Yeah. 

Kate Tucker: Okay. What do you mean by trying to live aloha? 

David McCullough III: I was born in Hawaii and aloha is used to explain that invisible thing that keeps all of us together.

It's the mutual respect, mutual kindness, a conjugal kind of love for all people. And aloha is not just therefore a saying, it's really a spirit. And what I'm trying to bring into the world is trying to bring a little more aloha into a world that seems to be very short on it right now. 

Kate Tucker: Yeah. Tell me more about growing up in Hawaii and I'm curious what you think it was, maybe it was the spirit of aloha, but what was it that helped you develop the curiosity for other people's lives that you have carried with you today into the work you do? 

David McCullough III: I have wonderful, loving parents. My mom was a stay at home mom when we were little kids. My dad was a teacher. So his hours were our hours. And so I got them almost every minute of the day. And that was wonderful. And we grew up on the campus of a private school where on any given day we'd be having dinner with a Harvard educated history teacher and, you know, Julian and Maté, the grounds crew guys who would bring me on their lawnmowers around the playground. But I think part of what it means to be human is to be curious and to ask questions. And it's conversations and the questions that inspire conversations that unlock the lessons one can learn and the way we carry out and show our curiosity. And I think the exercise of living is an exercise in growth. And if you're not pushing your curiosity out in the world and learning all the time and developing all the time, you're not really going to grow.

So, I grew up on a campus where my curiosities grew. were able to grow in every single direction. If I wanted to learn about trucks, you know, there's my Tonka truck in the front yard and there were trucks building new buildings at the school. If I wanted to learn about World War II, there was Pearl Harbor. If I wanted to learn about baseball, I mean, there was the high school baseball team. So it was just a rich environment to play around in. And we moved when I was eight and my dad and I took this cross country road trip. It was a very savvy parenting move to kind of numb the move away from Hawaii by saying, Hey, ballparks of America tour, we need to get the car from LA to Boston.

And so that then opened me up to our entire country and then I've gotten to see the world. So I think that the world is there for exploration and people are there to get to know them and to learn from them. I've always felt that curiosity and questions is how you access all of that. 

Kate Tucker: Ballparks of America road trip?!

David McCullough III:  Yeah. It was the, golden memory of my childhood. I was a baseball nut. I wore my Nomar Garciaparra jersey so many days to kindergarten that they stopped calling me David and they just started calling me Nomar every day. In fact, my wife, when we met around the corner from here in Boston, one of the things we bonded about is we were both playing third base at the same high school at the same time. We were both number five because of Nomar Garciaparra. So baseball and the game of baseball and those American traditions and American culture and identity is very important to me. 

Kate Tucker: So you're on this road trip and I mean, you're eight years old, but you have these memories that have potentially like led you to where you are today. But let's first talk about where you ended up. You ended up in Massachusetts. I'd love to hear the difference and the things you started to notice growing up in Massachusetts versus being in Hawaii and what you started to kind of see about the community there.

David McCullough III:  Yeah so we landed in Sudbury, MA. It's a lovely town to grow up in, kind of kid-raising heaven, and a bit of a cookie cutter suburb. And it was very interesting in a way that I never really noticed growing up. I never thought of it, but looking back now, Hawaii is an island where there is no racial majority. It's the only state in the country in which there's no race above 50 percent of the population. And so it's inherently a really, really diverse place. And because it sits in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, it becomes this melting pot of all of the cultures of the Pacific. If you look at my yearbook photos, and I was a little kid, I'm generally one of the only white kids in my classes on my baseball teams. And it's not because I'm a minority, it's because everybody is. And so the idea of mixing different cultures is really inherent on that island.

Sudbury was the opposite of that. It was a white collar, lovely town full of good people. It was the kind of town that sent probably 98 percent of the kids in our graduating class to a four-year college. We had a really great baseball program there that I learned a lot from and was a part of and got to go play college baseball after that. But it was a very, very different place from Hawaii. And that always made me feel a little bit like it was a wonderful place to grow up, but not the right soil for me because the picture here is fundamentally incomplete. It was, culturally speaking, kind of the opposite of the melting pot that I grew up in in Hawaii. And because that felt off to me, now looking back and seeing what I do now, it explains a lot of kind of where my heart is with respect to the work we do today. 

Kate Tucker: Mm. So you had this very cross country experience, East Coast and Hawaii. And you also grew up in an interesting family. You know, your grandfather was the historian David McCullough. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice, National Book Award, Presidential Medal of Freedom. What was it like growing up with your grandfather, and when did you start to recognize who he was and what he meant for the country? 

David McCullough III: I remember we were about, I would have been maybe six or seven years old, and John Adams had just come out, and I don't remember if it was the Boston Globe article announcing the release of the book, or that it had just won the Pulitzer Prize. And I remember sitting in the front yard and my parents were attempting to read us the article and we were way too busy playing because why would we want to read the newspaper about pop pop? Like, what is the big deal? He writes books, we know. You know, there was never an "Oh my gosh, this is who he is" moment. His notoriety never superseded the fact that he was my grandfather and someone I looked up to and a dear, dear friend.

And I looked up to his character and his integrity as much as I looked up to his accomplishments, and his view of the world and his perspective on our national identity and how one ought to dedicate their career to something bigger than themselves and how one ought to leave the world a better place for their having been a part of it is much more how I strive to be like him as a person than any kind of accolade he won.

It was a little interesting when you'd walk into AP U.S. History and, you know, get a B minus on your first paper in the year. Way to go, McCullough. Oh, gee, thanks. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we were very, very close. It meant the world to me that he got to be around to see AEP get up and get going and to see him feel a sense of hope for the future of our country because he left it at a time when our future is not set. And when there could be darker days ahead. It was challenging for him. And so to see him feel some hope from our work there at the end meant more to me than I could ever put into words. 

Kate Tucker: Thinking back to you at the time when you're discovering what's happening with your grandfather and you're kind of coming into your own as a human, what did you start to think for yourself? Like, what did you want to be? How did you see yourself as you were growing up? 

David McCullough III: I had a lot of ideas. And I still want to be the shortstop for the Boston Red Sox. Although I think my chances are a little, a little slimmer than they were earlier. If Alex Cora is listening, I'm open to it. Uh, I mean, I wanted to be a ballplayer growing up.

There's no hesitation. I was a kid with that dream and I wasn't, I wasn't within, you know, a country mile of being good enough for that.

So I've always loved stories. I've always been very captured by stories. And I always knew that if I was really gonna succeed at anything, it needed to touch my heart. And I've also believed in, in taking big, harebrained, crazy risks. And I've defined for myself early on that what I wanted to do with my professional life was to use the English language to motivate people toward the good, bring them together and help them realize that they're capable of more than they know.

So I was tossing around all sorts of ideas and it wasn't until I took a road trip in college that my heart was really won over by that. And at the same time, learning a lot about not just my grandfather, all of my family. My mom's side of the family is Armenian. She is the first in family to marry an Armenian. Her grandparents, my great grandparents, came here fleeing the Armenian genocide. Two of them narrowly escaped being killed. They watched as their whole families were shot outside of the little village of Malatya. And my great grandfather, at the age of nine, ran off and lived in the woods for about five or six years before he was able to make passage to America through an orphanage in Aleppo.

And my great grandmother was a concubine in a Turkish family at about the age of 12 or 13 years old. That's how she survived. Her son, went to MIT, and as important to me as the McCullough side is, so too is my Barmakan side, who are the total beneficiaries of the American dream. I mean, none of my great grandparents, I think, had beyond an elementary education, if that. Many didn't even speak English, and yet still, they could send their children to college. That is the American dream in many ways manifesting itself.

And today when you read data that the number one predictor of a child's outcome in America is the zip code into which they're born, but not their skill, ingenuity or their work ethic, you realize that the society that benefited my family decades ago is withering away right now. The rungs on that American dream ladder are getting further and further apart. That matters to me a great deal.

Kate Tucker: Mmm.... So tell me, you are going into this road trip as a junior at Yale, what did you experience and who did you meet? 

David McCullough III: So combination of, uh, no talent and a hurt shoulder had me fresh off the Yale baseball team at the beginning of my junior year. And I spent a couple months just kind of flip flopping between everything the university had to offer to figure out what I would do next. And I heard about a program that had three of my favorite professors at the university all guiding and teaching it. The problem was you had to apply to get in. And I found out that the application was due three hours after I found out about the application. So I run up to the library and I sit down and it turns out the guy I'm sitting next to, a friend of mine named Sam, said that, you know, it helps if you have a thing, quote unquote, that you know a little bit about and they're going to ask you what you're going to do with a research project as part of the program because the program ran from junior spring to senior fall, and they gave you money to do a project on whatever you wanted in the summer in between the two semesters.

And so I thought, you know, gosh, what do I know about? I don't know. I mean, not very much. Well, I thought, okay, here's what I'm gonna do. My dad's a teacher, and I know him really well, so I can just write the stuff he says about education, and my brain immediately went to that. Eight year old memory of the road trip. And I thought, well, I'm going to combine the road trip with, with a passion for education. And at that time I was writing a story about Wilbur Cross High School, which is a very interesting school in the city of New Haven, one of the lower performing schools in the state of Connecticut. And I just, the night before, gotten out of an interview with a teacher there who was crying because people come in all the time and tell her what to do and tell her how to teach but never come in and say, Mrs. Sasso, you've been here for 30 years, what can you tell us about how we can do education better?

And I thought, well, I'm going to do more of that. I'm going to combine this memory of a road trip, and I'm going to interview teachers and students and parents about the grand strategy of how we educate our nation's poorest children. And lo and behold, the department went for it. So fast forward eight months, I'd just turned 22, borrowed my mom's Mazda CX-9 and pointed it south toward Cotulla Texas. I'd known a couple people but hadn't heard from anyone and just started driving and spent two months on the road. 

Kate Tucker: How did you choose the locations? 

David McCullough III: I wanted to look at different poor communities within the country, and I wanted to look at communities that were, I felt, indicative of the different types of poor communities that were in America. So I wanted to go to a small town, I wanted to go to a, what was kind of a unique area, a town caught in a difficult situation, and I wanted to go to a big city, and kind of fell into all three in many ways. 

Kate Tucker: I mean, it's a long drive from Massachusetts to Texas. What did you start to see? And I'm curious how maybe your perspective shifted from going out that first day and coming back home.

David McCullough III: Oh, gosh. Um, I was adopted everywhere I went. I, I'm David McCullough, the third. I was of Andover and Yale and then off to Cambridge. I was born in the ivory tower. I, I knew that that wasn't who I was as a person, but I knew that I'd be seen that way. And I was really worried being a white male of privilege would have a lot of doors slammed in my face and a lot of anger thrown my way. Couldn't have been more wrong about that.

And I think it was because, one, people are that way. People welcome the stranger. People are deeply kind. This country's full of wonderful people everywhere you turn. And I also think it helped that I arrived with questions and not answers. and that I arrived with curiosity, which showed a respect to the people that I was meeting. I was excited. I wanted to have an adventure. I wanted to have a blast. The crazier, the more harebrained, the more I was into it. And I was a little bit nervous, but you know, being the 22-year old guy was, I would never have admitted that to anyone.

So when I got to Cotulla, the people that were hosting me were very concerned that I would go out at night and I would land in bars where a kid who's not from town probably shouldn't be. And so they linked me up with a guy they knew named Hornet, who was given that nickname because when he was 14 years old, his hunting rifle went off, shot him in the neck, a 22 Hornet. So he says, I have two birthdays, the day I was born and the day I lived. The day he was born, he was named Kevin, and the day he lived, he was, they called him Hornet. So he's Hornet. And Hornet and I became best friends. In fact, he and two of my other pals, Otto and Omar, were at our wedding a year ago.

And then, you know, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation had the same thing happen. They gave me a Lakota name. I was allowed to attend the Sun Dances with a family there. Yeah, I even gave a little flesh offering off my shoulder and they adopted me into the tribe, allowed me to take part in all of the sacred ceremonial rituals just because I sort of showed up and was curious and wanted to learn more. And it opens your heart. And it makes you feel so a part of the world and there's nothing you wouldn't do for the people who have shown you that level of kindness. And it changed my life.

And I'd loved baseball every day of my life. I still do since I was a little kid, since I first saw it, but I was forlorn because it had been taken out of my life earlier that year. And so in some sense, I was a lost kid and I hit the road and I found something and I've been running with it ever since. And it's absolutely without question because of the people I met while I was there. And the way they welcomed me into their lives. And so by experiencing life in that town, I got to live there. I got to be a part of that place and those places are now part of who I am.

Kate Tucker: I'm curious what those people and those encounters taught you about prejudice, ignorance, polarization, maybe ways that even your own sort of sense of those things shifted over the course of that trip. 

David McCullough III: I think, for starters, um, it made prejudice seem to me like a utterly vile sin, like a corrosive cancer that is wired into our brains with all of the other qualities and emotions and feelings that have been wired into our brains. Prejudice, I believe, evolutionarily, comes from our reality that humans have been a vulnerable species for most of the 250,000 years that homo sapiens have been evolving. And so prejudice is our way of saying "That thing looks dangerous, we need to stay away from it." But the reality of the world that we're living in today is that we are now the dominant species on Earth, and we are vulnerable to very, very little.

And so what I learned about prejudice is that fundamentally, if you are going to push people away because of any sort of preconceived notion you have about them, you're only going to limit your own life. I feel what we're doing at the American Exchange Project is trying to provide an antidote to prejudice.

I saw in terms of polarization in America really where I feel it. And it is in a sense, a kind of Tale of Two Cities that's happening in our country. I think a lot of people feel unheard, unlistened to. I went on that road trip in the summer of 2016. So as I was making my way around the country, so too were the Trump and Clinton campaigns. In fact, I didn't intend for it to be this way, but I landed in Cleveland the day before the Republican National Convention started. 

Kate Tucker: Ooh. Timely. 

David McCullough III: Yeah timely. Quite a thing to see. And I'm still trying to rationalize why my experience turned out so different from the experience we see in America today. And what I believe most Americans are failing to appreciate is how large a country we live in and how most of our beliefs and our views, especially when it comes to politics, are not from rational philosophical thought or classical training, they're from personal lived experiences. And in a culture and in a country as large and diverse as ours is, people's lived experiences have been shaped by factors that are very different from the ones we're experiencing in our own lives.

And so it's not that you have to agree with everybody. It's fact, it's not even that disagreement shouldn't exist at all. It should, but it's that you should approach conversations with people with a mind to understand the lived experiences that have shaped the views that you're hearing them talk about. And you should approach people generally with a grace and a humanity and a mutual respect and to not be so afraid that someone's opinion about something is going to be dangerous or harmful to you. It takes a little bravery, but if you can cross that threshold and try to see the people beyond the rhetoric you're gonna add to your life in a way that'll only enrich it.

Kate Tucker: I agree with you. I think it's tricky when you have some people who are coming into that experience from a place of scarcity who maybe are struggling or, are coming from a place where survival is more top of line. How do you help people who are wondering why the country's abandoned them? Why there's no grocery store near them, but there is one down... you know, like, where did you see sort of some hope around those sorts of spaces if you did at all? 

David McCullough III: The hope I saw was in how I interacted with people and in the conversations that we were able to have about political issues and issues generally after we'd become friends. And I think to let that someone's a Democrat or Republican or wears a a Trump hat or doesn't define them is like defining an entire person by a small fraction of who they are and to shun them or shut them out because they say something or think something is really only going to come back and limit you. I didn't see as polarized a country as we think there is out there. I saw a country that gets very heated on certain topics because they think they're about to be attacked when you ask them about a certain view.

And I've also seen a country that is profiteering off of our tribalism and divisions in a way that is extraordinary. And that I think is part of the real driver of division in America today. Where do we get our news? What kind of stories are those news outlets putting forward. Why are they not more unifying than they should be? Why are our viewers so fractured between different worlds? If you watch MSNBC every day or Fox News, it's not that you see different takes on the same story, which would be fracturing enough. You live in a different world. And so when you make a point about the world that you see on MSNBC to someone who watches Fox, they don't get it. That's not what I've heard about that. Political candidates and the rhetoric they're using is very divisive and very attacking. When did stumping and giving political speeches become about attacking the other and not about talking about what you stand for?

So I saw a country longing for something better and dealing with situations in all of their communities, whether it was on Pine Ridge or whether it was in Cotula or Cleveland, that was not equipped with the mentality or language to really talk about the issues they're facing in a way that is empathetic and gonna help people realize what's going on in their communities. The hope that I saw is kind of what we're building AEP on, which is the belief that the vast majority of Americans are really good people who under the right circumstances will get along with each other. So if we can find leaders and programs and ideas. that provide the right circumstances, it's going to be an accelerant across the country.

And when you look at the local level, you see wonderful people doing good work in communities across the board to make their towns a better place, to resolve the issues that they're facing. So my trip affirmed that, and you also saw heaps upon heaps of young people that were hopeful and idealistic and ready for a better future as well. That's where the hope comes from. I think it always comes from good people doing what they can with what they have where they are.

Kate Tucker: Let's talk about the young people in AEP. So this trip kind of paved the way for you to come up with this idea for the American Exchange Project. I'd love to hear that story and I want to tell you first what I love the most about what I've learned so far is that intergenerational genesis. I love how the students kind of gave you the idea, you know, saying, Hey, I live in a bubble. What do I do about this? And you were relating to that. So tell me the story of The American Exchange Project

David McCullough III: So after graduate school into the fall of 2018, I went out to lunch seeking career advice with a professor from the program that sent me on that road trip. Paul Solman, who's the economics correspondent for the PBS News Hour and was kind of moonlighting as a Yale prof for the program. We became pals through Yale and we went out to lunch and he had been trying a number of different efforts to try to bring the divided country back together again. And we were talking about how polarization in America was really the greatest issue in the world because so long as we were so divided as a society, the issues our nation and our government was meant to come up with some collaborative solutions on would be stalled. We'd be exactly what we're seeing now, which is a kind of stalled American Democratic Machine, and so we figured if we're going to fix one thing in the world, it should be that. So we kicked off a six month research project on what social innovation can scale up and bring the divided country back together again.

And because starting a non profit isn't the most lucrative thing one can do, I needed a job. And I got a job as a substitute teacher back at Lincoln Sudbury Regional High School, which in many ways was kind of the opposite sort of public school from the ones that I'd visited out on the road in 2016. And as we were realizing some core tenets of how we can create social cohesion among people who disagree with each other, or even more generally than that, diverse peoples, I was teaching kids every day. And some of those tenets were in order to bring people together, you got to do a thing. And that thing can't advantage any individual at the table. You know, if you debate movies, the kid who knows a lot about movies is going to run the conversation. And that thing also can't be marketed on a "Hey divided people, let's come together and do this thing." We also realized that if it was about opening people's minds or changing people's minds, doing that with an adult was kind of like, turning around an aircraft carrier midstream. They have been for years living on the tack that they've been living on and to turn them around would feel like an opportunity cost to them or an admission of wrongdoing or, or a need to feel guilty about something. 

Kate Tucker: Yeah, it's literally a threat to our psyche, to our identity.

David McCullough III: My whole orientation is off and I'm violating a certainty I have because of a lived experience I've had. This happened to my brother. This happened to me. And so this is what I think about it. And I'm not going to abolish that memory in the name of just changing my mind because you made a really good point over coffee one day. But with kids, with young people changing their mind, opening their minds was what they were doing already. They were in formation.

Frederick Douglass said, it's always easier to build strong children than repair broken men. And we've been seeing that across the country. We also found that there was a bit of a double hit on the kids point because young people are a quick way into their parents hearts. And so my head's swimming in all these things and I'm substitute teaching and I'm back at Lincoln Sudbury one day and two girls in the front of the room, uh, see me writing Mr. McCullough on the board and one of the girls says, Mr. McCullough, where'd you go to college? And I said, I went to Yale. They said, really? I said, yes. And they said, really? And I said, yeah, why? And they said, well, you live at home with your parents and you're a substitute teacher. Like, shouldn't you be at a bank somewhere or something like that?

Very funny. And I thought, well, I'm going to have to tell them what I do in addition to this. And as I thought that, I realized, you know, I've never really talked to teenagers abou polarization and division and my road trip and that I was working on this idea to try to bring our country together.

And so I started talking to these girls in the front row about the sorts of places I'd been traveling to and the work that we were doing. And I noticed as I was talking to them, every single conversation going on around the room got quiet. And five months back at LS, I had not seen that happen. And then they started firing questions at me that came from a level of curiosity that I'd also not seen in the last five months. So I thought something about Uh, me going to Davenport, Iowa, is getting these kids interested.

And so I thought I'd ask kids from this affluent, liberal, white collar suburb of Boston the same question I asked kids out on the road in 2016 in the opposite sorts of communities. What's your least favorite thing about where you're growing up? And ironically, they said the exact same thing as kids in Ketula, and Cleveland, and Pine Ridge, and then later Lake Charles, and Kilroy, Texas. I feel like I'm growing up in a bubble, and I've never seen life outside the bubble. I was 24 at the time, and I thought about that observation as they said it, and I realized that when I was in their shoes six years before, all of my friends and I went off to effectively the same sorts of colleges, and we all majored in one of a handful of majors, we all partnered up with people from our town or our college, Most not only moved back to Boston, most were living in Southie at the time, working at one of three or four companies, living with your partner or about to, and saving money to move back to a suburb like Sudbury.

And so I thought it's not only that they're growing up in a bubble, it's that it's kind of like a railroad car and you never really explore other cars or better yet, get off the railroad tracks and see life elsewhere. And that immediately made my stomach drop. Because I thought polarization is only going to get worse if this is the case, because then people are going to continue to think of folks who are in different railroad cars or have been through different lives, if everybody were in a different bubble, as more and more different, 

and we're going to make people who are different from us the other, and Teddy Roosevelt said the only thing that'll sink democracy is if we start thinking of our fellow Americans as the other. More and more we're going to otherize More and more people who are different from us. And so we need to find a way to intervene and get people out of the bubble that they're growing up in and into a different one so that they can meet other people and get to know other people and start to understand lives that are different from their own in a way, again, not that I ever intended to do this, but kind of what I did that summer.

And if they're complaining about growing up in a bubble, then there's the common need that we can build a solution around. And so let's say go live in a different bubble for a while. And so I ran home that night and researched exchange programs. And it turns out that as a coming of age ritual, the act of going away and living with a different family and coming home stretches all the way back to the 16th century when affluent families were sending their little British kids in England off to Europe.

In fact, the coming of age ritual of going away out into the woods and coming back goes as far back as stories of the hero's journey. I'm not saying we need to put our little Spartans in their loincloths and have them go kill a wolf in the woods, but the idea of getting out in the world and being uncomfortable and approaching the scary things that end up not being that scary and going through an adventure and learning about yourself and where you're from and who you are and what that means and what that means in the context of your own culture and society is an age old idea that I think we've fumbled, that we've lost, that we don't really have anymore.

And then, in 1946, the State Department proliferated the idea of an exchange program. in the formation of the American Field Service in 1946, which had been an ambulance corps. And there was great concern at the time that post war peace policies wouldn't get anywhere because the next generation of young people would harbor the same animosities that their parents and grandparents had held. I don't like Germans because that guy's dad killed my uncle. And so they needed to create ways to kind of bring these cultures together again. And so in 1946, the American Field Service sent 40 Americans to high school in Germany and 40 Germans to high school in America. I read a report just this morning that 4 million students are registered as studying abroad in the year 2021 -- the year after the pandemic! So imagine where it's at now.

So this idea of study abroad as a post war peacekeeping tool and as a cultural immersion tool works very well between countries and the cultures of those countries. So we thought, why not do that right here? Why not send kids abroad from Boston to Dodge City, Kansas, let's say, or Muskogee, Oklahoma, to Palo Alto, California. And if the cultures are that different, and if the people are that different, and if the space that they're traveling across is that large, I mean, sitting here in Boston right now, we are just as far from Denver, Colorado, as we are from London. Then don't they stand to learn something from one another? And can't we then take this cultural meshing, this immersion, to create a more civil society, to reduce the likelihood of conflict, which is what we're seeing right now? Won't it work? That's what we do. 

Kate Tucker: What is the mission of American Exchange Project? Who's it for? How does it work? 

David McCullough III: So we send high school seniors in the summer after they graduate in a free, on a free week long trip to an American town that is totally different from the one that they're growing up in. It's a week long trip, but a two week exchange. So kids travel and they host in their own hometown. Our mission is to cultivate experiences that create a more united country. 

Kate Tucker: So you're saying it's two weeks, which means that one of the weeks is going to be in another place and the other is going to be where you're inviting someone from another place to your hometown. 

David McCullough III: That's right. So we partner with high schools across the country. Last summer, by last summer, I mean two weeks ago we sent about 500 students on 63 exchanges across 36 states. 

Kate Tucker: Wow. 

David McCullough III: So, where'd you go to high school? 

Kate Tucker: Field

David McCullough III:  Hmm?

Kate Tucker: Akron Public Schools

David McCullough III: Yes okay, there you go, cool, okay. So, yeah, Katie at Akron High School, would be walking down the hallway one day and hear about the American Exchange Project from Mr. McCullough, her history teacher, no doubt her favorite history teacher. And Mr. McCullough would be the school's exchange manager and would run the program as if it were an extracurricular at the school.

Kate Tucker: Got it. 

David McCullough III: And Mr. McCullough would pick one week in the summer when all the local kids are free. They wouldn't actually have to host in their own homes because that can be a barrier to entry for kids who don't live in a home that can handle another person. Pick a week in the summer and say, okay guys, we're going to host kids in week four and we're going to host it in week four because Akron hosts the best July 4th parade and we want our kids from California and Massachusetts and Maine to march in that July 4th parade. So you'd sign up, you would, you know, get in automatically. We say it's a registration process, not an application process. We've never once rejected a single kid. It would be totally free.

And on March 1st, you'd come into Mr. McCullough's classroom and there would be a bag sitting on your chair with your name on it. And you'd open the bag and there'd be some AEP schwag. And you'd pull out a letter that would say, dear Katie, the American Exchange Project is delighted to offer you a trip to Dodge City, Kansas from July 14th to July 21st. And off you go. Meanwhile, the friend sitting next to you would be placed in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and the friend sitting next to you would be placed in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the friend next to her would be in Ennis, Montana, and the other one would be in Palo Alto, California, and off you guys would go throughout the summer traveling to different towns. And then for that week, you would have kids from places like Palo Alto and Kansas and Texas. coming to Akron, Ohio. And you'd spend the week every minute with each other, staying with host families, immersing yourself in local culture.

That can be going down to Louisiana and Zydeco dancing at the back porch of a Cajun musician. It can also be doing what every kid in Lafayette, Louisiana does on Friday night, which is hang out at Sonic till 10 at night, drinking milkshakes till the sugar rush gets you. Then we do a lot of community events and activities. So, rodeos, and rattlesnake roundups, and chili cook offs, and July 4th parades. Professional development is a big piece of it. So, you might say, hey, I want to be a podcaster one day. We would find a podcaster in that town that has a podcast. And maybe you, the student, go on or learn what production is like. Or, lunch with the mayor. Or, uh, dinner with the front office guy at the Red Sox one day.

Then one of the days of the exchange is service. And so you'd spend a day volunteering on a particularly pressing local issue in the community, which is not only meant to have some small impact on that issue, but also meant to prompt conversation about it and to have kids from Massachusetts and New York realize what it's like to live in a place that could get hit by a hurricane every fall or a place that really suffers from homelessness or hunger. And those conversations make kids much more aware of the issues of the world and the issues of their country. And meanwhile, all of that is done really as a device to bring your group of fellow travelers who will be from all over America and the group of local kids closer together. And what we've seen so far, four years into these trips, is that the friendships remain very, very strong for a long time. 

Kate Tucker: I would love to hear a couple stories where students are having some sort of transformative experience around the things that we've been talking about. 

David McCullough III: Yeah, there are all of these little stories I hear traveling around the country. Mrs. Cox, our host family in Kilgore, who says Sarai, the black girl from the Bronx who they hosted three years ago, has not missed a happy Mother's Day in three years. A young Ethiopian girl who emigrated from Ethiopia to Portland, Maine, brought with her, also to Kilgore, Texas, a traditional Ethiopian dress that her host mom had on on the last night.

You hear stories about Alana, who changed her college major from pharmacology to psychology because what have AEP taught her about people. You hear Sam who's at Cornell University and was in the Jewish Student Union and more able to approach pro-Palestinian students during their conversations around October 7th and was referencing back, his mom said he was, to his AEP experience. There are so many stories like that.

Two that really stand out though are a boy named ZJ from Albany, California, which is a neighborhood of Berkeley. If there's an epicenter of Progressivism in America, it's probably around Berkeley. ZJ went to a tiny town north of Sioux Falls, South Dakota called Flandreau, and totally had his life changed. After being in Flandreau for a week, he matriculated to the Culinary Institute of America, which is one of the most elite culinary schools in the country. And part of the program there is that after your first year at the institute, you have to work as a line cook at a restaurant anywhere in the world. And because it's such a prestigious school, most kids flock to the great restaurant cities of the world. London, Paris, New York, LA, you name it. ZJ said no thanks to all that and went right back to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And in the next summer, he volunteered in Philly where he was working at another restaurant to run the exchange in Philly as well.

Kate Tucker: How cool. 

David McCullough III: Then the second story, and I leave this boy nameless for the moment, but he had grown up in a city in the northeast that was pretty rough, and it was our first year, and his social worker was the mother of one of our employees, and asked that we include him on the trip because he'd not only never been out of his hometown before, he'd never been out of his house after 7 o'clock at night, something his mother did to keep him safe. And while it kept him safe, it left him with lots of developmental shortcomings, let's say, of a kid who just had not had a lot of experiences. So we put him on a plane for the first time. He was so nervous, we had a staff member fly in and travel with him. And we sent him to rural Texas, Kilgore.

Getting some space from his hometown allowed a whole other half of this young man to blossom. And one of our donors every year donates $200 to each student to buy whatever they want at the local cowboy outfit or Cavenders in the town next to Kilgore, Texas. And the transformation of this young man into jeans and a boot and a belt buckle and a shirt and I mean he became Tex, he became John Wayne, Clint Eastwood. I'm not the guy who hasn't been out of his house yet. I'll get off my horse and walk into the saloon. And, and then the next day with that puffed chest demeanor, he showed up and was working with cattle on the day that he had seen the first cow of his life and was very nervous at first and within an hour was up on the gate and whacking the cattle in the butt, yelling, Yeah, and getting them down the chutes so they could get their medicine and found a voice and a confidence in himself that he not found before and in doing so really bonded with the rancher who ran the day teaching kids how to work cattle. About eight months later, that boy was in the hospital dealing with some very difficult mental health issues and was calling every day to talk him through it and help him through it that rancher in East Texas who had become his mentor and dear friend. 

Kate Tucker: Wow. 

David McCullough III: That's an extreme case of the kind of impact the program can have. I think all of our lives are supported by people who care about us and the people who we care about too. And when our lives get thrown into corners or difficult situations, it's those people who are going to come for us and help us out. And in a way, I feel what I'm trying to do at AEP is just add more people to the lives of the next generation so that we can be in terms of social capital, a richer society for it. 

So when I think of impact, when I think of great stories, I always think of, you know, friendships and kids who've seen something that they never have forgotten and have started calibrating big life decisions because of that experience, just the way I did.

Kate Tucker: Yeah. And you're building these micro communities. Like you said, you're allowing these people to come up around these young people. Yeah. I heard you talking in another interview, I think, about how what you're trying to do is create an environment where there's no hierarchy. 

David McCullough III: Yeah. 

Kate Tucker: Tell me what you mean by that and maybe give me an example of how that would even work.

David McCullough III: So we ran during the pandemic about 500 calls on Zoom to, to see first if there was an opportunity to do a virtual exchange program and then also as a kind of social experiment and what would happen if young, really diverse cohorts of young people from across the country hung out together. And we found that progressive liberal kids asserted in their points a kind of moral superiority over conservative kids.

More than that, politically engaged kids. made kids who really didn't have a political opinion or just had a thought or two about an issue they cared about, which is most kids and most people, feel like they were going to say the wrong thing and then get cancelled behind their backs on social media. Um, we also saw that rich kids made middle class kids feel poor. And more than any of that, that kids who had had a lot of privileges in life and were off to plush post-high school opportunities, made other people feel like some people are born on third while others are born on first, and that's a reason for animosity. So we felt that the program and that people in this country weren't really ready to talk about issues or politics yet, that we needed to go pre-political and we needed to dig for something deeper and more human than just our desire to reconcile differences about beliefs.

And so what we have done is become a kind of pre-political program. We focus on fun. And the only thing you need to know a lot about is the one thing that everybody is an expert in, which is yourself. Who are you? What are you about? What does that mean? And the reason we don't want to have any sort of hierarchies or anyone feeling special is because it can create within the constructs of a group, an unhealthy dynamic that creates resentment and animosity for an experience that is fundamentally about bringing people together. And if the experience is about helping people see the aloha for one another. then we need to frame it up in a way to show that everybody has value, that everybody has worth and that there's something to learn from everyone. There's no dumb or smart.

One day on the road trip, my car broke down and I pulled it over to the side of the road and I opened the hood and I looked down and thus ends my knowledge of how to fix a car. And here I was, as educated as a 22 year old could possibly be. Totally alone, totally screwed, like, I had no idea what to do.

Kate Tucker: Where were you?

David McCullough III: I was in, uh, the middle of the plains of South Dakota, just within the borders of the res. And two guys pulled over and helped me and spent all day fixing my car. And by saying help me, they did everything. I sat there and like held the wrench so they could grab it. And I thought, well, you know, Who's the ignorant one now? Um, we keep it equal at AEP because people are that way fundamentally and finally. And if we're going to remind young people and teach young people that we're all in this together,

they need to feel the benefits of what it means to come together. And if you impose hierarchies on groups or you let people be the expert, it's not going to create a very cohesive environment. 

Kate Tucker: Talk to me about mental health and kind of the things that you're seeing with AEP and the students, the impact of AEP on their mental health.

David McCullough III: So one of the great honors of the year and surprises was when we got referenced as a solution to the mental health epidemic and the rewiring of American childhood at the end of Jonathan Haidt's new groundbreaking book, The Anxious Generation.

Kate Tucker: It's a great book.

David McCullough III: It's a great book. Yeah. Check out page, I think it's 273. There we are!

Self esteem and confidence, I think with adolescence can come from two arenas. And the first is working up in yourself that somewhat irrational courage to give something a go, give it a try, and realizing, oh my god, I can do this. And then thinking, that tough part really wasn't that bad, and here I am on the other side of it, and I'm fine. And then imagine what's possible. 

Kate Tucker: Yep. 

David McCullough III: The other thing too, is to surround yourself with people, healthy relationships, people who think you're wonderful, who think you're really great. I don't adore Hornet because I can go on podcasts and tell charming stories about him. I like Kevin cause I like Kevin. He's my pal. Like we're just friends. 

Kate Tucker: I like him and I haven't even met him. 

David McCullough III: They're great and Otto and Omar and all of them and, and whatever they do, I'm there for them. They're my friends and no different than any of the friends I would have made in Sudbury or Hawaii or college or grad, you name it. There's no question that teenagers today are dealing with a really, really, really serious epidemic of mental health. And I think it stems from loneliness. 250,000 years of human evolution has not inevitably landed us where we are today. And young people today spend nine, sometimes as much as 12 hours a day on a screen. Seven of those hours are doing nothing of consequence. I read about a year ago that if you took All of the feet of social media that a young person scrolls through in a day and made it a string, that string would be taller than the Statue of Liberty. 

Kate Tucker: Oh, that makes me so sad.

David McCullough III: And so much of our lives are trapped on these things that they give us a false sense of reality and that's particularly difficult for young people. In addition to that, the bleak future that adults are constantly talking about, makes an impression on young people because that's the future that I'm growing into, that I'm going to arrive in. The communities that are very poor in social capital, that young people are growing up in today, do not make young people feel like it's a village that's raising me, but rather individuals, and that village is something to be scared of.

And if the world is a dark and scary place, and the future is bleak, And the phone is comfortable, but ultimately leaving me not feeling that well, where do you go to be happy? Where do you go to feel like a kid and enjoy a little freedom? I'm trying to help kids be kids again, in some sense. Travel, have fun, raise a little hell. You know, go camping. Um, go for a hike, make friends with new people. We're working with kids that are 18 years old, so they do have a sense of themselves more often than not at that point. But we're getting them away from the towns that they're growing up in and the places that are giving them trouble.

Taking some space is always a recuperative thing to do. And then we're surrounding them with a crop of new friends, new people to connect with. And those friends are in three dimensions. And they're realizing through those friendships that it's not just that the world is black and white or even gray, it's full of color. So by surrounding themselves with healthy three dimensional friendships, by giving them opportunities and experiences that are so exciting and fun that the phone never even begins to come out of the pocket, I think we're providing young people with resources and experiences that I hope gets the root of the mental health issues today and the, and the issues around loneliness, um, moving away from the kind of corrosive aspects of what's happening to kids and towards something that's much, much healthier.

Kate Tucker: And you're not only getting those kids out of their situation, you know, the limitations of that, you're also, in my understanding, you're helping them see their own communities anew when they return, because they're also welcoming other people into their towns. 

David McCullough III: My grandfather used to say that when you go to another country, ironically, the country you learn the most about is your own. I've seen the same thing happen just at the unit of the hometown at AEP. And our results from our surveys last year, we saw that not only did young people feel that people who disagreed with them were more moral, thoughtful, and kind after their trips. We saw that they thought people who agreed with them were less moral, thoughtful, and kind after their trips. As if to say when you get some space from the tribe that you've been born into, you're able to voice your frustrations with that tribe a little bit more. 

Kate Tucker: Tell me, you know, when you look at the long view of American Exchange Project, when you think about it 10 years from now, if it were to grow in the way that you are seeing it, because I know you want to scale it, what does it look like and how does that potentially contribute to the strengthening of our democracy at this crucial point?

David McCullough III: My dream is that one day senior exchange becomes as normal to the experience of a high school student as senior prom.I think a mark of many healthy societies is rituals. Coming of Age Rituals, and I see what our students do every year, the thousand students that have done it, as the next American Coming of Age Ritual, Civic Coming of Age Ritual, and that's what I do every day.

Kate Tucker: I love it.

David McCullough III: That's our job. That's what we're trying to build. It is extraordinary, the experience we've been able to provide kids so far, what they've had and what I've heard has warmed my heart beyond all get out. But I work hard every day for the millions that I want to see do it one day. And I know that it's possible. The more we do it, the more we grow, the higher the ceiling of its potential becomes. And the more we realize that the dream is very much there. And all it takes, truthfully, is people willing to do it. believe that most Americans are good people, believe that all kids are in need of an experience like this, and saying, I'll take the risk of opening my home to you. I'll take the risk of signing up and traveling. I'll take the risk of talking to you. And when they see as the vast majority of the time they will, that that goes well, It opens your heart to a newer, better, brighter world. And it frankly creates what we're trying to inspire, which is a sort of moral awakening that reminds all of us or instills in all of us the certainty that we're all in it together.

Kate Tucker: I want to go back to That student who's maybe going to a place that's razzle dazzle got it all and they're coming from their humble hometown like I come from a humble hometown that I'm very proud of, but you know, actually, to be honest, growing up, all I wanted to do is leave. I thought if I'm going to make anything of myself, I got to get out of here, right? That is a lot of American kids. A lot of us grow up thinking there is nothing for me in this small town and we see small towns across America saying we are losing our most precious asset. Tell me what this program can do to kind of restore dignity to these places where you're bringing kids, you know, that they're just not getting visitors otherwise.

David McCullough III: Yeah. Where do you live now? 

Kate Tucker: Well, I live in Akron.

David McCullough III: There you go.

Kate Tucker: Right?! And I love it. I love it. 

David McCullough III: I once had a group of students in a outer borough of New York look at me and say the same thing that kids in small town America used to look at me and say, which is why would anyone want to come here? It is so boring. I think most teenagers, most all teenagers, very naturally, partially because at that age, you're establishing your own identity away from your family, right? And graduation is one of those major life's transitions, not just because it means you're leaving high school, congratulations, here's your diploma, but it's because you are moving on from the town and the people that raised you. That's a big moment, so you're establishing your identity, and for that reason, I think every kid at that age Feels a little bit like George Bailey when he says, I'm going to shake the legs of this crummy little town and see the world, you know, and we're there to help them do that. It's part of why we build the program the way we do.

So there's no such thing as a boring town. In my opinion, there's no such thing as boring people and everything has worth and interest and has an opportunity for adventure. And if you can't see that right away, then you got to look a little harder at AEP. We're not trying to bring kids away to never come back. We're trying to show them that their country is there for them, too. And if you want to go one day and work in Lake Charles, Louisiana, fantastic. You know people now you can do that. And if you want to see Lake Charles and think this is great, I love it. But my goodness, does it make me proud of my hometown? That's great, too. The idea is that these places are are there for you, too. 

Kate Tucker: Yeah, and you're building networks, right? Huge networks, 

David McCullough III: Yes.

Kate Tucker: I mean, even for future careers, because that's the time in your life when you're thinking, Gosh, I really would love to do this, but I have no idea how. 

David McCullough III: Show me your friends and I'll show you your future. And, and that, ironically, has a huge economic salience as well.

Kate Tucker: What is one of the bigger challenges or the bigger surprises you've encountered in doing this work? 

David McCullough III: One of the most surprising things.... I mean, just, that it's like, that it's worked. Yeah. Like I, I'm convinced the real Dr. Frankenstein didn't say, it's alive. He said, it's alive.  Like what? Yes. Um, uh, uh, so there's a, there's a, like, there's an, oh my God, it's working! And it's working way better than we thought. I knew what it would do to bring a divided country together again.

And I always knew that our divisions were not just reds and blues, that it's deeper than that. It has to do with class and culture and beliefs and prejudice. I knew all of that always. I had not imagined how formative an experience this would be for the people doing it. How much this feels like a coming of age ritual when you see the kids do it. And when you hear them years later, talk about it. And I also had not imagined that we would really have opportunity, as we've realized in the last year, working with some academic partners to actually move the needle on economic mobility through cross class friendships, to actually be referenced by leading thinkers in the field to say, this would help the mental health crisis that we're seeing now. I never imagined that. So all of that is kind of beyond my wildest dreams. 

Kate Tucker: What's giving you reasons to hope these days? 

David McCullough III: People. Everywhere I go and all of the different people who give me all the exact same kind of hope and belief that if we can just find a way to work together a little bit better than we're doing it, everything will be all right.

Kate Tucker: Well, this has been an incredible conversation. I feel like I've learned so much. It's just really nice to meet you in person and to hear about this amazing vision you have for the country. So thank you. 

David McCullough III: Thank you. It's been wonderful to be here. You're giving me great hope and I wish we could talk all afternoon.

Truly. 

Kate Tucker: Awesome. Awesome. Thanks! 

David McCullough III: I appreciate it.

Kate Tucker: Thank you so much to David McCullough III for believing in the good of our fellow Americans and reminding us that there's more that unites us than divides us. Oh, and for helping kids be kids again, we could probably all stand to have a bit more fun like they know how to do. You can connect with the American Exchange Project at americanexchangeproject. org. And we'll put links to videos and more in the show notes over at HopeIsMyMiddleName.com. Hope is My Middle Name is hosted and executive produced by me, Kate Tucker. You can find me on YouTube and on Instagram at KateTuckerMusic. And if there's someone you know who belongs on this show, I would love to hear about them. Send me a message!

Hope is My Middle Name can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you're listening. It would mean so, so much to me if you would leave a rating and a review. We might put it up on the website. It's just always good to hear from you. And if you're still listening, please copy the link to this episode and text it to a friend. That alone makes a huge difference in helping us reach more people with more hope.

Hope is My Middle Name is a podcast produced by Consensus Digital Media in association with Reasonable Volume. This podcast was produced by Christine Fennessey with editing from Rachel Swaby. Our production coordinator is Percia Verlin. Sound design and engineering by Mark Bush. Music by the fantastic artists at Epidemic Sound, Soundstripe, and me. Big thanks to Conor Gaughan, our publisher and fearless leader at Consensus Digital Media. And thank you so, so much for listening. We'll see you next time!