The Problem

Othering is when you decide that someone on the other side of a difference – a politics, a faith, a generation, a border – isn’t really as human as you are.

Once that’s decided – you don’t have to listen to them or understand them. You can dismiss them, mock them, or – in the worst cases – hate them.

Othering has always existed. But right now, in 2026, it feels like it’s everywhere. Louder, faster, and seemingly more rewarded than ever before.

musicto.com looks, in retrospect, almost purpose-built to combat it. When we started in 2016, we didn’t realise that what we were doing was an antidote to othering. And yet, ten years later, this is the program where contact happens and strangers cooperate towards a shared goal. It speaks directly to the problem.

The community at musicto.com endures. It has simply kept going, year after year, and it’s out of that continuity that everything else has grown. As the hate in public discourse rose, it became clear how directly our work spoke to it.

In 2025 we began asking people what they were afraid of. Thousands of people answered, across all continents and generations. That became the Global Emotions Project.

Insights from Others, our new Substack, is about to begin carrying what we find out into the world. And a fourth program is on its way, bringing the community together in person.

The musicto Foundation grew out of all of this: a response to the moment we are in, built on a core engine that turns out to be an antidote to othering.