Learning From Our Differences and the Antidote to Doomscrolling Anxiety

Summary

Podcast Summary: “Learning From Our Differences and the Antidote to Doomscrolling Anxiety”
The Preamble with Sharon McMahon
Date: March 9, 2026

Episode Overview

In this episode, Sharon McMahon explores two of today’s most pressing social dilemmas: the deepening divides between Americans and the anxiety created by our information-saturated age. She first interviews David McCullough III, founder of the American Exchange Project, about the critical role of connecting across differences for the health of democracy. Later, she welcomes journalist and author Catherine May, who offers practical advice for counteracting the overwhelm and unreality brought on by relentless news cycles and social media.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. Why Americans Don't Talk Across Differences Anymore

• Opening Discussion (03:00-06:59):
  • Sharon frames the episode around the increasing inability (or unwillingness) to engage with those we disagree with, describing it as an “ideological cold war.”
  • David McCullough offers a historical and psychological perspective:

    “We are grieving something. I think we are feeling like we're losing something...when there's a breakdown in any form of communication, we're almost defying the core evolutionary component of how our species has thrived and survived all these years.” (David, 03:25)

  • Both discuss how tribalism, amplified by social media, is now more consequential than ever.

2. The Evolution of Political and Social Tribalism

• Role of Media & Technology (06:17-10:20):
  • Sharon uses the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry as an allegory for benign tribal divides, then compares it to much more serious societal ruptures today.
  • David critiques how social media monetizes our addiction to outrage, contributing to the amplification and pervasiveness of tribalism:

    “All the time we're spending online and all the time we're spending on our phones is taking away from time we could be spending, exercising those muscles we need to be fully thriving citizens.” (David, 09:32)

  • Sharon recalls the famous Obama-McCain town hall exchange as a marker of lost civility in American public life (07:11).

3. Privilege and the Pitfalls of “Kumbaya” Solutions

• Confronting the Privileged Perspective (10:20-13:22):
  • Sharon challenges the idea that simply talking to those different from us is a catch-all solution, acknowledging this can be a position of privilege.

    “There was still a safety net that could catch you…What about this idea that, like, this is such a privileged take? Does that have merit in your eyes?” (Sharon, 11:06)

  • David agrees it's not about returning to a whitewashed past, but rather adopting applicable lessons:

    “If we look at it…as aspects of lessons from a time other than our own…it’s not something that's just confined to privilege.” (David, 11:43)

4. The American Exchange Project: A National “Domestic Study Abroad”

• Program Summary & Goals (16:46-22:30):
  • David describes the American Exchange Project (AEP): a free, two-week exchange for high school seniors, swapping students between radically different American communities.

    “You hang out with people who are really different from you, the person you learn the most about is yourself.” (David, 21:09)

  • The aim is to break young people out of homogeneous “bubbles” and create formative cross-cultural experiences. David hopes the concept could someday scale up to a million students a year.
  • Sharon and David highlight modern de facto segregation—by both race and life experience—emphasizing the inability to have critical thinking when only exposed to like-minded perspectives.

    "If we only hear information we agree with, that's actually just indoctrination. That's not critical thinking." (Sharon, 23:11)

  • To get involved: americanexchangeproject.org (24:26)

5. Catherine May on the Antidote to Doomscrolling and Anxious Modernity

• The Age of Unreality (26:16-30:42):

  • Sharon reads an excerpt from May’s Enchantment about the near-constant state of fear and unreality:

    “If there was a spirit of this age, it would look a lot like fear.” (Sharon reading Catherine, 27:11)

  • May expands on these feelings, pointing to disconnection, automated systems, and the impossibility of assimilating endless global bad news:

    “It's really hard to actually account for the amount of change we've lived through and the level of fear we're now feeling...about basic contact with each other.” (Catherine May, 27:59)

• The Social Media Spiral (30:42-33:15):

  • Sharon and Catherine discuss the numbing, looping behavior of switching between social media apps, news, and more, as a form of “surface relief” for deeper anxieties.
  • May reframes this behavior:

    “I began to try and see that as a symptom of anxiety in itself, as…a kind of sign sent to myself that I'm not okay.” (Catherine, 32:29)

  • Our brains, they agree, are not meant to process constant tragedy from across the globe.

6. Awakening Wonder As a Form of Resistance and Healing

• Accessing Wonder (35:00-37:55):

  • May suggests that regular, small acts of wonder—like looking at the stars, observing nature, or noticing beauty—offer real grounding and relief from anxiety.

    “Paying close attention to something that you find beautiful and interesting…if you practice it…that relationship will deepen. It's like building a muscle.” (Catherine, 36:38)

  • Sharon adds her takeaway:

    “When I understand how small I am, I realize how much the universe is actually not depending on me to be on Twitter.” (Sharon, 37:55)

• Scaling Our Impact (39:15-40:53):

  • Both women encourage listeners to focus their energies on their actual communities, “at the correct scale.” Small acts—smiling at a cashier, helping a neighbor—push back against helplessness.

    “We've become almost dysmorphic in our understanding of our size related to everything else. We need to find ways to step back into scale again.” (Catherine, 38:46)

  • Even the humblest form of connection can help us “function again”—we can dig ourselves out together.

7. Closing Reflections

• Wonder in Everyday Life (41:56-44:36):
  • Catherine shares personal moments of wonder found in daily life, especially her connection to the sea and the sky.

    “Anyone that's sitting there thinking, well, isn't she lucky that she got to see the sea? Take a little breath and think about the thing you could do…” (Catherine, 44:12)

  • Final reminder that meaningful, restorative moments are free, mundane, and available to all.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Communication and Democracy:

  “When there's a breakdown in any form of communication, we're almost defying the core evolutionary component of how our species has thrived and survived all these years.” (David, 03:38)

• On Critical Thinking:

  "If we only hear information we agree with, that's actually just indoctrination. That's not critical thinking." (Sharon, 23:11)

• On Wonder as Healing:

  “We need to train ourselves to be attracted to the free, mundane, everyday thing that makes stuff a little bit better. And that's enough.” (Catherine, 44:23)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:00 – Sharon introduces the polarization problem; David on historical context
• 06:17 – Social media, addiction to outrage, and modern tribalism
• 10:20 – The privilege question and limits of “just talking”
• 16:46 – Introduction to the American Exchange Project
• 22:30 – U.S. school re-segregation and its consequences
• 24:26 – How to get involved with the American Exchange Project
• 26:16 – Introduction to Catherine May; the sense of unreality in modern times
• 30:42 – The doomscrolling cycle and mental health
• 35:00 – Wonder as antidote to anxiety; practical examples
• 39:15 – Applying “scale” to our sense of personal responsibility
• 41:56 – Catherine’s personal practices for wonder and grounding

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Final Takeaway

This episode urges us to fight the pull of tribalism and digital anxiety by seeking out human connection and rediscovering a sense of wonder—starting not with grand gestures, but by reaching across divisions, embracing unfamiliarity, and taking joy in the everyday. Democracy, resilience, and healing, the episode argues, all begin with these simple acts.

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Resources Mentioned

• The American Exchange Project
• Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age by Catherine May

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For more: Visit thepreamble.com to subscribe to the newsletter.
Host: Sharon McMahon
Guests: David McCullough III, Catherine May

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Well, Sharon, first off, thank you for having me, and thank you for that question. I've never quite thought of it framed in that way, but you're really right. I think we are grieving something. I think we are feeling like we're losing something. You know, we've always been a secular country, but I do believe there are some core moral tenets at the center of not just our society, but of many thriving civilizations. And it's the sentiment that says, we're all in this together. Love thy neighbor as thyself. See yourself in somebody else. Even the Lakota had the notion of K, that which is in the stars is on earth, and that which is on earth is in the stars. In other words, we're all made of the same stuff. We're all connected to the same thing. And any idea, any time or period that brings us away from that, that has us too focused on our own individuality. What Robert Putnam might say, a more of an I society and less of a we society is antithetical to e pluribus unum. Is antithetical to who we're supposed to be.

[A]

Yeah. Every major religious tradition and every major moral tradition, even if somebody is not religious, teaches some version of love your neighbor as yourself.

[B]

Yes. And it's also core to our species. As a species, we evolved to live in community. It's how we survive. We don't run very fast. We don't fly at all. Our nails aren't particularly tough. Our teeth aren't particularly sharp. We do well because we work together. And we work together by communicating with one another verbally. And so when there's a breakdown in any form of communication, we're almost defying the core evolutionary component of how our species has thrived and survived all these years. But you're right. The flip side of our psychology is one that can be very tribal and one that can be very prone to prejudice as a way to justify the tightness of our tribes. I'm a Red Sox fan. And, man, not only am I a Red Sox fan, but Yankees fan. So they're evil and they're out of control.

[A]

Oh, my husband hates the Yankees. Oh, he hates them so much.

[B]

Me too.

[A]

Yeah. But it's also, you know, it's of little actual consequence. But what we're talking about is the same concept just extrapolated to a system in which we have actual, real societal consequences from doing the equivalent of Boo Yankees. And now on social media, that sentiment can happen hundreds or thousands of times a day and be amplified in extraordinary ways that were never possible in the past. It used to be this, like, the significant effort to communicate your ideas. And there's a wonderful democratization of information that has come about because of the Internet. But that also has a significant downside, which is that it has created such a sense of tribalism that we don't even identify with people who might even live on our street.

[B]

And it's especially bad, too, when keeping us so addicted to that stream of information is a very profitable endeavor for organizations. And so, you know, just like tribalism touches parts of our inherent psychology, so too does the dopamine hit of that news cycle. All of those opinions. And I heard from the psychologist Jonathan Haidt in a talk not long ago that young people are laughing together half as often as they used to before social media. And the difference between typing ha or hitting the little ha icon on a text and actually sharing a good, hearty laugh together, I think characterizes the difference between where we are and where we ought to be.

[A]

So many people today in this ideological cold war that I think that we're in feel like maybe 30 years ago, 20 years ago, maybe we could have defined the differences between Democrats and Republicans. Maybe there were some culture war differences. That's probably true. But most people, at least in hindsight, think that many of the differences were policy related. And they harken back to, say, the Obama McCain debate, where a woman got up at this town hall meeting that they were both at, and, you know, she's talking to John McCain and she was like, I don't know about that guy. She's pointing to Obama and she's like, he's an Arab. And McCain, who was listening very intently, reaches over and like, takes the microphone back from her and he's like, no, ma', am. No, ma'. Am. This is a good American, Christian American, with whom I have policy differences. You know, that very famous moment that I think many Americans would look at that today with their mouths hanging open and be like, I don't like, where have we gone? What has changed? People today would say something Entirely different, they would say. Gone are the days of policy disagreements and present are the days of foundational moral difference. A schism that makes it so that I can't even imagine sharing the same moral values with somebody that is on the other side of the political aisle. Like, of course we wouldn't get married. We don't have the same morals.

[B]

Well, I think, in short, politics is about a lot more than politics today. The phrase that was very popular when I was in college and was spoken of somewhat critically, but was defining the political moment was the notion of identity politics. In other words, how you vote wasn't just what you believe, but it's who you are. And therefore, if someone votes differently from you, it's perfectly okay to distance yourself from them as a friend, to cancel them on social media, to remove them from your life. And I think at a very deep level is coming from a few places. The first is that societies have always been tribal and we now have tribalized along political lines, Democrats and Republicans. And for that reason, our country is ground to a halt because those are also the parties that are meant to decide how we are running our democracy. If we as a people are sufficiently socialized with people who are different with us, if we can see where people are coming from because of their religion or because of their personal relationships. Part of the political world you were talking about was a political world where they spent time together. Ronald Reagan used to host Joke Night at the White House for Republican and Democrat leadership. No politics allowed, just bourbon and laughter. And think about all that laughing together and what it did when it came time to go to work in the morning with those individuals. We don't do that anymore. And all the time we're spending online and all the time we're spending on our phones is taking away from time we could be spending, exercising those muscles we need to be fully thriving citizens and really bringing our country back to a place that isn't going to keep so many of us up at night.

[A]

What about the argument that is easy for white, able bodied, well educated, you know, heterosexual Americans of some level of financial privilege to be like, we just need to talk more. We just, like, stop the hate. And I'm not, I'm not reducing what you're saying to that.

[B]

No, no, no.

[A]

But to some ears, that's what this sounds like. It seems like the most privileged people in society, arguably me and you, telling

[B]

us to hold hands and sing Kumbaya around campfires.

[A]

The idea that, like, we used to be so much better, that actually was not the Lived experience.

[C]

Right.

[B]

When societies run by white else. Yeah, right.

[A]

That was not the lived experience of women or communities of color in the past. So I also really hesitate to be like, well, we used to be able to do this, and now we can't. Some of us used to be able to do that because having relationships with people with whom we disagreed still came with a very low personal risk. There was still a safety net that could catch you in, in the form of your church or your parents who had money or you went to college and whatever. What about this idea that, like, this is such a privileged take? Does that have merit in your eyes?

[B]

Yes and no. I certainly think if we look at what we're saying as a need to revert to the past, then I absolutely think we are having a literally whitewashed, naive view of what happened before. If we look at it, though, as aspects of lessons from a time other than our own that can be applicable to a new and modern problem that we're dealing with today. And I actually don't think it's a piece of privilege, for example. I don't think any great issue has been solved from a distance. I don't think our democracy is designed in a way to say, hey, our group, whatever it might be, has a terrible problem that we are being subjugated to, are going to huddle together, only together, work on it on our own, and take every person who disagrees with us and keep them at an arm's distance. That's never gone well. In fact, everything that I'm saying today is rooted in a theory that was devised in the 1950s around the civil rights movement, Contact Theory, which actually looked at groups of Americans from different races who, when they spent time together under certain conditions, we try to abide by in our program, American Exchange Project. Their prejudices for one another went away, though their beliefs may not have been in total agreement with each other afterward. So whether we're talking about race or class issues or political issues of any kind, I think the theme of coming together to put our beliefs in conversation with each other in a way that is civil and productive is a must and is not something that's just confined to privilege. And it's certainly something. It's certainly a skill we need to teach our children, which is exactly what we're trying to do at American Exchange Project.

[A]

I think in many ways, the best purveyors of democratic ideals in this country, the people to whom we owe the largest debt for a multicultural, representative democracy, are leaders from communities of color, people who believed in the promise of America when most other people had given up.

[B]

That's it right there. The promise of America. That's it. It's an ideal to strive for. And the act of striving, I think, is one of coming together and being in communication with each other.

[A]

More of my interview with David next. This episode is sponsored by Better Help. This month as we celebrate women, I'm reflecting on the women who've shaped me. One friend in particular inspires me with how she balances motherhood, partnership and career goals while still being the emot emotional anchor for so many people. But being strong doesn't mean carrying everything alone. Therapy can be a place to process stress, celebrate growth, and prioritize your own needs. BetterHelp makes it easy to get started. Their therapists are fully licensed in the US and follow a strict code of conduct. You complete a short questionnaire and with more than 30,000 therapists and over 12 years of experience, they'll match you to someone who fits your needs, usually right away. And if you need a different fit, you can switch anytime. They've served more than 6 million people worldwide and have a 4.9 out of 5 session rating from over 1.7 million reviews. Your emotional well being matters. Find support and feel lighter in therapy. Sign up and get 10% [e-mail] Sharon that's betterhelp.com Sharon this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. This month as we celebrate women, I'm reflecting on the women who've shaped me. One friend in particular inspires me with how she balances motherhood, partnership and career goals while still being the emotional anchor for so many people. But being strong doesn't mean carrying everything alone. Therapy can be a place to process stress, celebrate growth, and prioritize your own needs. Better Help makes it easy to get started. Their therapists are fully licensed in the US and follow a strict code of of conduct. You complete a short questionnaire and with more than 30,000 therapists and over 12 years of experience, they'll match you to someone who fits your needs, usually right away. And if you need a different fit, you can switch anytime. They've served more than 6 million people worldwide and have a 4.9 out of 5 session rating from over 1.7 million reviews. Your emotional well being matters. Find support and feel lighter in therapy. Sign up and get 10% [e-mail] Sharon that's betterhelp.com Sharon I'm back now with David McCullough. We've accurately diagnosed at least one of America's problems. There's more than one, David, but here's one of them.

[B]

Are there enough hours in the daily share?

[A]

Yeah, if we've accurately diagnosed the one problem. And there are many different ways that we could begin to address this one problem. But you've had this idea about one possible way that we might begin to address this problem, and I would love to hear more about that.

[B]

Sure. Well, the idea, very simply is that in a country as large as ours and as diverse as ours, and in a country where getting to know each other and literally physically coming together is so important, we ought to have, within the United States, study abroad just the way we have going outside the states. So seven years ago, I, along with Paul Solomon of the PBS NewsHour and Bob Clover, a professor at Harvard, co founded an organization called the American Exchange Project. And our organization facilitates for high school seniors a free two week coming of age adventure where our students travel to an American hometown that is radically different from the one that they grew up culturally, socioeconomically, politically, all of it. And then in the second week, they tag along when kids from a similarly different community come to their own hometown. And we've been running this program for five summers now. We've sent 1500 students on exchanges from places like the suburbs of Boston to Dodge City, Kansas, from Muskogee, Oklahoma, to Palo Alto, California, from Sheridan, Wyoming, to Portland, Maine. And it's been an expose in the life changing experience that travel with people who are very different from you to a place that is unlike any you've ever been to before can be. And what's so interesting about our program that's a little bit different from study abroad programs in foreign countries is that there is among our students a sense that we share something together. This is so different. I've never seen the ocean before. I've never seen a mountain before. I've never seen a building taller than two stories before. The folks around me come from different religions, races, ethnicities. They come from different political viewpoints. They come from different socioeconomic classes. One of us is off to college. One of us is off to the military. One of us is off to trade school. And yet here we all sit around the campfire together, friends and realizing that we share a common project, the project of not just our democracy, but taking care of our country, taking care of the, you know, the great big block covered in snow that we all live on together. And that's what we do.

[A]

What made you feel like if we could just take these 17, 18 year olds and drop them in A different city in America, that this would really move the needle and is dropping 1500 kids in a different city for a couple weeks. What do you hope that is going to do to transform the landscape of American discourse?

[B]

Well, second question first. I'm hoping that by dropping 1500 kids into different communities all over the country, it'll slowly but surely get every American to say, man, wouldn't it be great if my kid could be that kid or my student or our community could be that community. Periods of progress, I believe, are marked by the establishment of great big social innovations that help turn the tide. Think about what public schools and public libraries accomplish for our society at the turn of the 20th century. Believe it or not, those were novel ideas once. I'm very hopeful that what 1500 students will really do is inspire America to say, you know, a million kids a year should do this. Every kid should do this. I think we are missing in our society a civic coming of age ritual that we can all share together. Something that is instilled with the core values of, as a society, who we are and what we stand for, which ought to be fundamentally that in the end, we're all in this together and that we are all connected with each other and that we all have the ability to communicate civilly and productively about the ideas we share and the ideas we might not share. The project really began seven years ago as a research project into what great big idea could scale up right now and bring our country together. And as our group, which consisted of academics and leaders in the military and business sectors and government. I was the kid right out of grad school who was willing to live in his parents attic and do the free research for the project. As we got into it, we realized that teenagers all over the United States were voicing a common complaint to a single question. When we would ask them, what's your least favorite thing about where you're growing up? They would say over and over again and again, I feel like I'm growing up in a bubble. And I've never seen life outside the bubble. And that actually touches aspects of our developmental psychology that are ready to leave the place in which we grew up, leave the nest and establish our own sense of individuality. Who we are, what we stand for, what makes me. And part of that process is bumping into people who are different from you. My grandfather used to say, when you travel to a different country, the one you learn the most about is your own. I believe when you travel to a really different town, the town you learn the Most about is your hometown. And when you hang out with people who are really different from you, the person you learn the most about is yourself. And when you're going through that phase of life where you're really constructing your own identity, it's important that you hang out with people who are different from you. In addition to that, two kids, they are growing up in bubbles. Demographically speaking. American communities are getting more and more politically and socioeconomically homogeneous. Birds of a feather in this country are flocking together to a degree that presents some really challenging social circumstances for our society. And they're social circumstances that frankly explain the polarization that we see today.

[A]

Yeah, we just published an article not long ago that demonstrates that American schools have not been this segregated since the 1960s and that we are in a period of profound segregation.

[B]

Along what lines?

[A]

By race?

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah. Forgive me if I said it earlier. I mean, three quarters of white Americans don't have a friend who's not white. Today, 40% of Americans have never even met a farmer. I mean, think about that. We don't know each other.

[A]

Right. And even though this is de facto segregation and not segregation by law, it has many of the similar facts that you grow up with a stunted and stilted view of what this country is and what it is meant to be and what the promise is of America actually means. And then the other thing that I think is important is that we cannot learn to think critically if we are never presented information with which we disagree.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

If we only hear information we agree with, that's actually just indoctrination. That's not critical thinking. Just thinking critically about somebody you disagree with. Like, oh, I don't like that idea. That's not critical thinking. No.

[B]

And it doesn't breed resilience. I mean, you can go to the weight room with a forklift, but you're not going to get any stronger. You have to break your muscles, just like you have to break your intellectual muscles to be stronger as an intellect, as a person. And look, isn't that the democratic project? That's why I personally believe democracy is the way that people can flourish to the greatest of their human capacity. And if birds of a feather are flocking together as you just described, then we are neglecting that aspect of our way of life that will lead to our own flourishing. And so neglecting young people opportunities to bump into people who are different from them is stunting their own growth. Think about that earliest comment. I feel like I'm growing up in a bubble. You can grow up in a bubble, but you won't grow very tall and you won't travel very far.

[A]

Where can somebody learn more? If they want, let's say they have a rising senior and they want them to participate in the project or they maybe want to be a host family, or they want to be a teacher that refers students or they want to donate money to this program. Where can people learn more?

[B]

So it's a great time to want to learn more because our organization is starting to rapidly scale all over the country. In fact, within a few months, we could very well have towns in all 50 states. So if you have a student who wants to participate in this, if you have a school that you'd like to bring into the network, if you feel compelled to make a contribution, if you want to volunteer or host, or if you just generally believe in a more connected America, take a look at www.americanexchangeproject.org where we have laid out all different ways folks can engage. We'd love to hear from you.

[A]

Thanks for being here today. It's good to see you. And I know so many people are going to go to americanexchangeproject.org and I know there's a lot of educators listening to this and they would agree with your assessment that students need the opportunity to leave their bubble in a way that fosters development and is not just like a six week road trip bender with their buddies. You know, that would be fun.

[B]

No, this is fun with a purpose.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

Adventure with a purpose, as we say. Sharon, thanks for having me. I feel like we could talk all day.

[A]

Yeah. Appreciate you. Yes. Thanks to David McCullough III for joining us today. And when we come back, an antidote to the endless rage scrolling online. Catherine May tells us the simple things we can do to help counter the anxiety we feel from being so connected to our devices and every little news story that's next. Joining me now, Catherine May, author of Enchantment Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age. I absolutely loved Enchantment and could not wait to have this conversation. And thanks for being here.

[C]

Absolutely, my pleasure. Thank you so much. That's so kind of you to say.

[A]

When I started reading Enchantment, I got to, I want to say it was like page five and I was like, this is absolutely the way almost everyone I know feels. And I just want to read this little section and I want to hear your comments on it. You say the last decade has filled so many of us with a growing sense of unreality. We seem trapped in A grind of constant change without ever getting the chance to integrate it. Those rolling news cycles, the chatter on social media, the way that our families have split along partisan lines. It feels as though we've undergone a halving, then a quartering, and now we are some kind of social rubble. If there was a spirit of this age, it would look a lot like fear. For years now we've been running like rabbits. We glimpse a flash of white tail, read the danger signal and run, flashing our own white tail behind us. It's a chain reaction, a river of terror surging incoherently onwards. And I could, I just, could just keep reading. I could just be like, and now an audiobook.

[C]

I love the way you read that.

[A]

An audiobook by Catherine. May I?

[C]

Please do. You made it sound like beat poetry,

[A]

but I was like, if there were a spirit of this age, it would look a lot like fear. And I totally relate to this growing sense of unreality. And I hear from literally thousands of people you've just articulated exactly how so many people, not just in the United States, but around the world, feel. And I want to hear you talk a little bit more about your experience with this sort of growing sense of unreality.

[C]

Yeah, the word unreality is so key there, isn't it? It's hard to pin down where that unreality resides. I mean, I've just had the experience today of being on a, you know, one of those eternal customer service calls where you get shunted between a real human being and then a machine and then back again and then you have to call somewhere else and nobody's got any decision making power and there's no contact in that system. And, you know, that's just one of many experiences across our days, I think, that don't feel real anymore. They don't feel like real life. It doesn't feel like you're making any contact with actual human beings. And it also does weird things to your perception of who you are in this world and what you do with your time. It's so pointless and purposeless, and yet we are constantly engaged in conversations like that. And that's just one dimension of this explosion that has happened in the course of your. My lifetimes that really has gone from everything being face to face to living in a society that we all felt like we understood its values even if we didn't agree with them. We felt like we got the parameters of what was happening. It's really hard to actually account for the amount of change we've lived through and the level of fear we're now feeling not just about pandemics, not just about the risk of global wars breaking out, but of basic contact with each other. Because we've drifted so far away from that being an everyday experience that it's become frightening to us. And we spend so much time in speculation about how terrible other people might be that it's fed this very different reality for us.

[A]

That is so true, Katherine. We devote a lot of our energy to thinking about how terrible a different group is. A group that we're not a part of. Right. Like, whatever group that is.

[C]

Yeah. But what's really interesting is that these are groups that maybe we're not that far away from necessarily. You know, these are groups that are people in our own family who 10 years ago, we'd have comfortably sat around a dinner table with and been fairly relaxed about our differences. And I think because of social media and because of the way that we see people now, you know, we get to see people's opinions rather than. And their humanity, that has escalated into this sense that we cannot tolerate each other, you know, on every side of the political spectrum, wherever you sit on it. And there's a real tragedy to that. There's a real loss that we're enduring.

[A]

You say in your book, I sit at my desk to work, but instead I fidget between Twitter and Instagram and the news and Twitter and the news and Instagram and the news and Twitter and Instagram and Twitter and Instagram and the endless terrible news and Twitter again, where everyone is outraged at the news and everyone seems certain about what ought to be done. And I am very familiar. I'm very familiar with that state.

[C]

You've been on Twitter once or twice a couple times.

[A]

And I know so many people who feel like, do I have adult onset adhd? I can't even sit down to read a book anymore. I just feel like things have changed, Changed so much for me mentally. It requires so much work to focus on anything. And so I distract myself from these uncomfortable feelings by creating constant senses of newness and constant new stimuli of, like, I'll look at this, and now this, and now this, and now this and now this. So I don't actually have to do the work of sitting down and focusing on something. And I feel a slight sense of temporary stress relief by not forcing myself to feel the uncomfortable feelings of, like, you actually need to do your job or clean the house or cook some food for your children or even just do something that I know is better for me. We all know that this endless cycle of, like, the news and the Twitter and the Instagram and the news and the Twitter, we all know that's bad for us, but yet we almost feel like. But I can't stop myself. I need to, like, install apps on my phones to control my own behavior, truly.

[C]

I know. But you'll learn to circumvent those apps really quickly, because I did.

[A]

Totally.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Let's take a break.

[C]

They're not foolproof. Yeah. You know what? I really began to get somewhere with that when I came to see that. That looping behavior in particular. I began to try and see that as a symptom of anxiety in itself, as, like, a signal rather than as a bad behavior. Like, it was a kind of sign sent to myself that I'm not okay. And to go towards the not okayness rather than the apt behavior, which is kind of the surface presentation of actually a much deeper anxiety. And I genuinely don't think how brains are built to deal with this level of globalized understanding. It's almost godlike. The overview we have now of all the terrible things in the world at once. And of course, we are totally helpless in the face of it most of the time.

[A]

I think you're absolutely right that the human mind is not built to assimilate and react to every piece of tragedy that is happening around the world all at one time.

[C]

This really gets to the heart of why I sat down to write Enchantment. Because I think one of the first sentences I wrote in my notebook was, I'm so tired of dystopias. And to kind of unpack that. I was just through with hearing this endless discourse about how terrible the world is, how unimprovable it is, how we are in a sort of downward spiral. And anyone who speaks against that is either naive or a villain. And I'm just weary of that. I'm weary of our giving up on our shared humanity. And I'm weary of the idea that there's any kind of ideological purity in us just giving up on humanity as, like, a project. And I wanted to make a case for how we need these moments of connection and pleasure and rest and all of these softer emotions in order to survive this world. Like they. They are not in opposition to each other. It's not an either or. It's not like we can either have pleasure or people are suffering. We have to take pleasure where we can because there is so much suffering in the world. And if we are rested and if we are grounded and if we've been allowed to settle ourselves. We can help the world better. We can go in and be better citizens, and we can go in and be better friends and neighbors than if we are only obsessing all the time about the terrible things in the world.

[A]

The subtitle of your book is Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age. And I would love to hear you talk about what wonder means to you and how we can all go about awakening it in ourselves.

[C]

For me, wonder is a really fundamental component of our understanding of the world, actually. And it's this way of seeing that I think we can all access, but I think we almost train ourselves out of it after childhood. Like wonder comes so easily to children, they're drawn to things that they find fascinating. And it's this encounter with the world in a way that feels magical, in a way that makes you radically shift your perspective and suddenly come into contact with the vastness of the universe around us and the vastness of time and the impossibility of the life that we live. And most of us will experience it at least once in our lives, but we often don't go looking for it. The more I've kind of engaged with that topic, the more I've realized that you can find these little doses of it in everyday life. But you. You have to train yourself to pick up some signals that maybe feel quite distant and quite faint to you now, but which you probably had a training for looking for in your childhood.

[A]

How do we practice finding wonder so that we can begin to potentially experience less anxiety?

[C]

I mean, the question I ask myself quite often is how can I ground myself in this moment? You know, I don't have to achieve something that's going to solve all my problems forever, but I can make a connection with something that I find wonderful that's going to settle me for long enough to survive this moment, which is sometimes the bit that feels challenging. I think one of the things that we can all do is begin to gradually, slowly coax back an engagement with our own fascination. And for some of us, that's going to feel really far away, right, because we've deliberately put it aside as we've grown up and we've been told that it's immature, mature to do that. We mustn't do that. So we do have to show this impatience. Go and look at the moon, go and look at the stars, Go and watch birds in flight, you know, go and watch the clouds change above you. I mean, that can be like a really incredible experience if you give it a moment paying close attention to something that you find beautiful and interesting. And it doesn't have to be grand, but if you practice it, if you show it some patience and go back to it repeatedly every time you need it, that relationship will only deepen. And it's like building a muscle. That wonder will come to you so much more easily, quite quickly.

[A]

What I take away from that when I am, you know, confronted with the vastness of the universe, is that the weight of the world is not on my shoulders. And it doesn't mean, again, turn a blind eye to suffering, don't care about your neighbors, don't seek to improve the world doesn't mean any of those things. But the idea that when I understand how small I am, I realize how much the universe is actually not depending on me to be on Twitter. The universe isn't to scold people on Twitter. Yeah, to tell them they're. They're exhibiting grief incorrectly. That the universe in its vastness and ancientness is actually not at all depending on me to post five tips for marketing on Instagram. You know what I mean?

[C]

Yeah, that's absolutely right. And what's really interesting about that is when you start seeing yourself at scale, what you do realize is that you could knock on the door of your neighbor down the road and make a genuine, tangible difference at the correct scale of things. And that that would matter. That would genuinely matter. We've become almost dysmorphic in our understanding of our size related to everything else. We need to find ways to step back into scale again.

[A]

I think that's a great way to say that, that when we put ourselves in scale, we absolutely can make a difference. My ability to affect the happenings of a different galaxy is zero. And so I will feel nothing but angst if that is my mission. But if when I put myself back into the correct scale, as you say, my ability to impact the world, the scale of my world, my next door neighbor who had a house fire, or the child at my child's school who doesn't have any school supplies because their parent is in jail, that's a problem that I can remedy. And I can alleviate that child's humiliation at not having the right school items. When I put myself back into scale, I can make an enormous difference. But if I'm always trying to make a difference in a galaxy beyond my own, I will never feel anything but angst.

[C]

And you know what? I'd go even smaller than that. I can make eye contact and smile at the person serving me at the checkout at the supermarket and say, hi, how are you? Rather than staring at my phone, arguing with someone on Twitter that doesn't care what I say anyway. I'm not even helping them. I'm just being human with them. I'm just interacting. I'm just making contact on a basic level. Like that has a real impact on not just someone's day, but on how we start to function again. We've dug ourselves into a hole, but we can for sure dig ourselves out of it. We have to bring it back to us and not how everybody else needs to change.

[A]

You say in your book, we, who so often think we're cultureless, can unpack a galaxy of stories from one garden weed. But the time has come for us to understand what these stories mean to us and to reconnect with the other stories too, which are all waiting for us in our gardens and surging up from the cracks in the pavement. And we must tell them to our children so that they can't imagine, imagine living without them. Telling them is an act of belonging, a way of pushing taproots deep into the ground. And you say, in a world full of restless and displaced people, it's an act of welcome, too. And your book felt very comforting to me. And I love what you have to say about putting ourselves in scale in the universe. And I wonder if we can wrap this up by you sharing a few things that you find particularly wonderful.

[C]

Oh, my goodness. Don't wind me up and let me go, because I'll go for a couple of hours. I'm a water baby and I didn't grow up by the sea, but in my 20s, I realized I really had to, because for me, the sea is like a magical being. I can't see it as inanimate. I can't possibly think of it as that way. It feels to me like this creature that I go and walk down to every day and watch its mood and think about how vast it is again. Like, it does that scale stuff in my head again. Like just watching the tide come in every day, in and out twice a day, and thinking about the volume of water that that represents. I can't fathom it. And yet it unfolds in front of my eyes twice a day. And I. I feel wonder every time I go and see the sea. And this morning I noticed out of my window that the moon was setting over the sea. I'm kind of about three blocks down. So I pulled on my clothes and went running down to watch it finally set over the horizon. And it was magical. It took me 10 minutes. It was not a problem. I know I live near the sea, but I also took the time to notice it. And I really think that, you know, anyone that's sitting there thinking, well, isn't she lucky that she got to see the sea? Take a little breath and think about the thing that you could do. I mean, I quite often just step outside at night and look up at the moon and the stars. It's so simple. I'm not trying to interpret anything from them. It's just a lovely thing. It's a lovely point of contact with my scale in the universe and with my feet on the ground. And it takes a minute. And the sky is definitely free and definitely something that I am allowed to go and see. And I can, and I do, because I make that decision and I get it. That we are bombarded in this world with expensive fixes that on one hand are so costly that we don't know how we can afford them, but at the same time, completely over promise what they can do for us and claim they're going to solve everything. We need to train ourselves to be attracted to the opposite, which is the free, mundane, everyday thing that makes stuff a little bit better. And that's enough. That's often all we can have and it still moves the needle a really significant amount.

[A]

I love this. I loved being able to chat with you. I really loved reading Enchantment, and I'm just really grateful for your work and grateful for your time today. Thank you for being here, Catherine.

[C]

Oh, thank you. It's been such a lovely conversation.

[A]

Our thanks to Catherine May. You can get her book [e-mail] or wherever you get your books. And be sure to read our newsletter, the preamble.com, it's free. Join hundreds of thousands of readers who still believe understanding is an act of hope. I'm your host and executive producer, Sharon McMahon. Our supervising producer is Melanie Buck Parks and our audio producer is Craig Thompson. Thank you for listening.