Melissa Chen is a contributing editor for The Spectator, she serves on boards for non-profits, has been on Joe Rogan, and typically speaks on politics, global events, and human rights - and I decided to ask her about friendship! She has a lot of strong opinions, but is really good at being friends with people who have completely different views - a pretty rare and valuable skill to have today. She grew up in Singapore and currently lives in LA, which is where I sit down to speak with her.

Our conversation is wide-ranging, but one of the most important reminders is to stay open to ideas (and people!) that are different from what we're used to. Focus on finding the things that we DO have in common. I believe that if you really went deep enough, you can find things in common with pretty much anyone in the world, no matter how different they may seem at the start. And to look for that, instead of looking for what divides us, is its own kind of special magic.

Keep on searching! And thank you for being you.

Episode nuggets:

"Time is not the resource here. I think it's attention... To be able to sit down one-on-one with a person, to fully immerse and just not be anywhere else."
"Be able to engage with somebody and not immediately take offense at something that comes up."
"It helps to have intellectual humility. One of the problems today is that people just feel like they have the answers. And they're so quick to cast the other side as evil.... I don't have all the answers. Maybe you are right."
"How you use social media really matters. I can be snarky sometimes when it calls for that, and I enjoy it. But that's also my natural humor, I'm not going to tailor that just because I don't want to draw the hate."