Democracy Cafe

Global Socrates Cafe March 20, 1 pm ET — Distance and Closeness

We will be convening on Friday March 20, at 1 pm ET, a global Socrates Cafevia Zoom video. The question we’ll examine is: When and how can distance bring us closer? Here is all the info you need below to join our gathering. Christopher Phillips is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.Topic: Christopher Phillips’ […]

Winners of the Second Annual Alexander Phillips Arete Award

Congratulations to Odin Halvorson and to Michael Dea for their winning submissions for the second annual Alexander Phillips Arete Award. Our theme this year is on innocence, as you’ll see from the link I posted some months back on our website. I’ll post their winning submissions shortly on the site, and also look forward to having them as guests on […]

SocratesU — A Modern-Day Agora for Exploring All the Right Questions

WELCOME TO SocratesU(™) A number of you have written to us expressing a keen interest in learning still more about the Socrates Cafe and Democracy Cafe way of exploration, inquiry and human encounter. Many say you’d like to delve deeper with us into what this transformative method, and the history, scholarship and the nuts and […]

My 60th Birthday wish for Democracy Cafe / Socrates Cafe

Dear friends and supporters, It’s my 60th birthday on Monday, July 15, and my high hope is to start off my seventh decade and the second half of 2019 with a bang, making an even bigger splash with our nonprofit Socrates Cafe and Democracy Cafe initiatives.  In the last two years alone, we have established over 40 new gatherings […]

Chris Phillips on nationally syndicated PBS series ‘Between the Lines’

Democracy Cafe / Socrates Cafe founder and executive director Christopher Phillips was the most recent guest on the Emmy Award-winning nationally syndicated PBS book program ‘Between the Lines,’ with inimitable host Barry Kibrick, recent winner of the prestigious Ellis Island Medal of Freedom Award. You can view the episode here.

Happy July 4 — Let’s get declarational

While July 4 is the day for fireworks and picnics and such (and now a military parade at the behest of our Commander in Chief), the fact is that July 2 is the anniversary of our nation’s real Independence Day — the day Continental Congress voted for independence on this day. We hope you’ll take […]

America’s Exclusion Party

I hear much too often these days from parents who’ve found out that all of their child’s school friends or neighborhood friends have been invited to a birthday party — all except for their own child. It’s happened twice to my own children. When I witnessed their shattered, bewildered looks over being left out, it […]

Nueva guia para facilitar un Socrates Cafe en espanol

Thanks to my amazing wife we now have a new and much improved guide in Spanish on how to start and facilitate ongoing Socrates Cafes. Gracias a mi esposa maravillosa Ceci ya tenemos una nueva guia sobre como establecer y facilitar un Socrates Cafe