Hosted by Ron Steslow & Mike Madrid
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico | December 5-8, 2025
Technology, trust, power, money, culture, demography—everything is shifting. Politics is downstream of all of it. Unscripted is a gathering for intellectual curiosity and genuine connection, designed for people who enjoy deep conversations and wrestling with questions that don't fit neatly into headlines.
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Over four days at the luxurious Casa Aventura in Puerto Vallarta, we'll gather a curated group for guided salon conversations, a live Politicology recording, and long afternoons of unstructured relaxation and reflection. There is a thoughtful intention behind each conversation, an arc to the experience, and space for what none of us can predict.
We're gathering to make sense—not consensus. We intend to leave with better questions than we came with. You should bring your uncertainty, your curiosity, and your generous spirit. You should leave behind dogma, performance, and the need to be right.
Unscripted is a small, curated event. Politicology will extend invitations to the selected applicants.
Unscripted is a new kind of salon for a new kind of moment.
From Enlightenment-era Paris to Gertrude Stein's Montparnasse apartment, history's boldest ideas have taken shape in intimate rooms where minds mingled freely for centuries.
These salons sparked revolutions in democracy, science, Cubism, and Modernism. They launched the careers of artists like Picasso and Hemingway.
For centuries, they helped shape the world behind closed doors.
But they were exclusive by design—reserved for those who already belonged to the world the room was shaping.
Unscripted flips that logic. We're creating a salon for the restless 2020s, where curiosity is the only credential.
A modern salon for people less interested in winning arguments or performing ideology than in making sense of a rapidly changing world.
The ideas we'll explore are raw, thoughtful, sometimes unsettling. But the format is simple: generous conversation in a beautiful setting, with people you'll want to keep talking to long after it ends.
Ron Steslow and Mike Madrid bring decades of political experience and a commitment to honest, thoughtful dialogue. Ron is a former Republican strategist and the host of Politicology, where he explores the forces shaping the world in transition. Mike is a veteran strategist, a leading voice on Latino voting trends, and the author of The Latino Century. Together, they offer candid perspectives, policy insight, and real conversations about where the country is—and where it's headed.
This is a curated gathering. We're building a dynamic, interested group of thinkers, leaders, creatives, and citizens who care about ideas and how we engage.
If that sounds like you, apply below. We'll review applications and send invitations in the coming weeks.
Let's talk, listen, and think differently—together in paradise.
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To make better sense of a rapidly changing world—together. We're not here to win, to impress, or to convert. We're here to think honestly, listen actively, and engage in good faith—so we can leave with better questions than we arrived.
The following aren't rules to keep the peace. They're common sense commitments we make to serve the conversation—and to protect the delicate magic of truth-seeking in a noisy, complex world.