Hello there. This is Mark Bowerline with another conversation.

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Alexandra Hudson is founder and curator of civic renaissance.

She was a 2020 Novak Journalism Fellow.

She's been a contributor to Fox News, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and many other national organs.

Her new book is The Soul of Civility. Timeless principles to heal society and ourselves.

That's today's topic. Welcome, Ms. Hudson. Thanks for having me, Mark.

Why don't you first just tell us, what is civic renaissance? What does that do?

So when I left government in 2018, the spring of 2018, it was, I was very dispirited about the state of our public life and public discourse.

And I wanted to have an outlet to kind of keep learning and reflecting on some

foundational ideas that I cared about that I thought were relevant to this question of how to

do life together across difference that is the foundational question of not just my book but

also human community in general across all times and places.

And Civic Renaissance is how I kind of started doing that.

I love being a writer because it allows me to ask questions and ruminate on and keep learning publicly and alongside other people.

So it's a newsletter, publication, intellectual community that I founded, dedicated to the ideas I love. It's dedicated to beauty, goodness, and truth, and reviving the wisdom of the past to help us lead better lives today. So it's been really fun to the community grow over the last several years. And it's my kind of primary outlet to ruminate and reflect on

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