← Outrage Overload: Rethinking politics, division, and media
Outrage Overload: Rethinking politics, division, and media
86. Why We Viscerally Resist Talking to the Other Side – Mónica Guzmán
00:41:54
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This podcast is part of the democracy group.
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Welcome to Outrage Overload, a science podcast about outrage and lowering the temperature. This is episode 86.
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This kind of conversation across this kind of difference is the new counterculture. What is expected is, you know, rhetorical grenade throwing on social media. Across these divides, what is unexpected and countercultural is conversation.
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It's easy to strawman an opponent. It's even easier to imagine the devil on the other side of the screen. We've reached a point where even making space for a disagreement is seen as a concession. And that and so much more is what we're going to talk about on this episode of the Outrage Overload podcast. I'm your host, David Beckmeier, and our guest today is at the front lines of this movement.
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Hi, this is Monica Guzman. I'm the author of I Never Thought of it that how to have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times. I'm also the host of A Braver Way podcast and, and an advisor to Braver Angels, Disagree Better and the Viewpoints Project. Basically obsessed with how we stay curious across divides for all our sakes.
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Monica Guzman is someone who has mastered the art of bridging without compromising her own convictions. And today she's helping us understand the complexities of American discourse. It's a deep dive, but a necessary one. So let's get to it right now. Monica Guzman, thank you so much and welcome to the show.
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Thank you so much for having me, David. It's good to be here.
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Yeah, I've really been looking forward to this. It's fantastic that you're able to come on our little program. And you know, I mean, you're just a icon in this space. And you know, for me, I. I want to strike a balance between, you know, first time listeners and longtime listeners. I know we could spend a lot of time sort of going over a lot of the basics of kind of bridge building and better dialogue and things like that. But I also feel like your work has really influenced a lot of those other guests and past guests we've had talking about those things. It's also influenced my own thinking on these things. So I feel like I kind of owe it to my longtime listeners to take advantage of this opportunity to speak to someone of your caliber and expertise in this to really dig into some of these kind of harder questions that people keep raising about this work. One thing I seem to see a lot is people kind of intellectually agree with kind of the bridge building and dialogue, but they kind of viscerally resist it. I mean, can you talk, speak to that a little bit?
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Yeah. I think it's rare for people not to agree with the idea or think that it's a nice and good idea. I think for some folks, they count themselves out of it because they feel like their personalities just clash with things. You know, I, I'm, I really care about these issues. Maybe those folks who can be nice just aren't committed enough or really, bridge building is honestly reaching just folks in the middle. I'm not in the middle. I'm on the wings of things and I believe where I am. So I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna water that down for anybody. So that's part of it. There are some folks who believe that bridge building tends to distract from things that really need to be fixed in the ways they need to be fixed. So when you've got all these folks going, let's understand each other, all you've really got is people who are taking attention away from the things that the world needs. So there's a lot of folks in that camp, for sure. And by the way, each of these things I have responses to, there's definitely more than meets the eye. There's a lot of folks who see a lot of danger, unconquerable fear and risk to these conversations. And they'll ask questions like, how am I supposed to engage with someone who thinks I shouldn't exist? For example, there's definitely folks who say, but they are intellectually dishonest, they are bad actors, they won't listen. Or I or my side are always the ones who are curious and they won't be curious about me. So there's no reciprocity. Therefore, it's a non starter for me. I also think of the many folks out there who have ended friendships or, you know, burned bridges or relationships with their own family, for example. And that's a painful decision. That's a really hard decision. And so, you know, it can come with some, some sense of sort of right and might and that that makes it difficult then to kind of reopen the idea of understanding someone who believes that thing that qualified someone for never coming back to Thanksgiving. So the boundaries we draw. And then, you know, let's also not forget that it, a lot of it is about the heat out there in the world. And I've heard a lot of folks, especially recently, feel like they kind of hit their bar, you know. Nope, things are now too real, stakes are too high. So those are among the things I hear.
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Yeah, exactly. And one version of this that I've been hearing more lately is, you know, that, you know, I'm not going to stop using a word like, let's just take a label like fascism, Right? Okay. I'm not going to stop saying that because words have meaning. You can't make me not say it. You're taking away my power in some way. Or, you know, I've seen things like, well, sometimes you just can't equivocate. You have to call it what it is. You know, some people see that as, like, it's being reasonable as a way to help unreasonable people win. Let's talk about that a little bit.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it reminds me of the battles around truth. Right. If there's, there's many issues out there where, you know, one side or another is quite sure they've got the truth, and the truth is this. So if, if someone is disagreeing with that or would even question it, then if I engage with that person or that argument, I am betraying truth. And I, I have no interest in that because that leads us down so many dark holes. You know, whether that's like a, I don't know, a society in general that just decides to deprioritize truth or, or worse. So, yeah, that, that is a very, very deep and big barrier. And you also brought up this question of language, unfortunately, but also naturally, language is kind of the first battleground for all of this. And as different camps and different ideological groupings have become more familiar with each other and more aversive to everyone else, we have developed our own languages, each of these camps. And so, you know, for one person, calling something fascist is just, well, it's just what we call it these days, whereas for another person, it is loaded with so much that can, you know, feel so blind, blinded against something, or so condescending or so judgy or whatever that, that it's just. So language is the best technology we have to try to convey meaning between us. It's a very imperfect technology because what one word means to me is different from what one word means to somebody else. Even if it means the same thing in the dictionary. Doesn't matter. That doesn't matter politically and socially. It's the, it's the meaning that it's charged with in our discourse that matters. So. Yeah, but coming back to your, to your point, I mean, is the answer to simply abandon the language, that that means what it means to me? I don't think so. I don't think that's the answer. And so for people who think I will not Betray my. My sense of what's true. I guess what I would say broadly is you don't have to. You don't have to in order to achieve what bridge building writ large ultimately promises.
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Hmm. And I guess it's something that you mentioned, too, in the sort of list of things that you had a counterpoint. You said you had a counterpoint for all of them. You know, I don't know if everyone
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will accept it, but I have one.
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Right. Yeah. Well, that's. I know, because I think some of them, they've heard before, you know, and something you specifically talked about, too. Like, you know, it's kind of like, why would I want to build a bridge to someone who wants to hurt me or take away. Take away my rights? And I think one thing that I see a lot that I try to talk to people about is sometimes we hear about bridge building and we think in our mind. Someone talks about this idea of bridge building, and then our mind jumps to this. Who's the most extreme person I know?
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Yeah.
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And that's not going to work with that person. Maybe we should start somewhere else. Like start someone that's a little more adjacent to us. But anyway.
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Exactly.
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Maybe you have some thoughts on that general idea that I like. Why would I want to build a bridge with this person anyway?
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Yeah, yeah. I do want to highlight the dynamic that you just brought up, because I've spoken with so many folks, you know, churches, living rooms, community groups, governments. I mean, boy. And this is another version of Straw Manning to me. And you know, that Straw Manning is this idea of you take the. You take sort of the weakest argument on the other side and you attack that and say, I've won. Right. And this is a different kind of. Of this. Of the same thing of. Of Straw Manning. So our imagination is very strong in times like these because our anxiety is very high and our fear is very high. So especially at a time when we are more siloed into our different ideological camps than ever, with red zip codes becoming redder and blue zip codes becoming bluer, it means that we have far more. Fewer opportunities to check the rhetoric and sometimes hyperbole that we hear about those ideas or those people with actual real people, flesh and blood people. So we tend to imagine a caricature of the person who would believe the thing or of the belief itself. And that's based on all kinds of signals that we get, you know, and it's just kind of naturally part of our media ecosystem, but we don't have anything to check it With. So I would say that's another version of straw manning. And so the same way that straw manning an argument is a dishonest way of evaluating that argument, then straw manning each other is a dishonest way of evaluating each other and each other's arguments and each other's sort of qualifications for having discussions about what's important to us as a society. I love this anecdote that a bridge builder that you've probably run into, John Powell of the Othering and Belonging Institute, talks about how he, you know, he's a bridge builder, he talks about these things. And one day a pastor brought up the same objection by saying, john, are you asking me to bridge with the devil? And John said, maybe. Don't start there. Don't start with whoever the devil is in your mind. The, the. The. The most extreme person. Now, those people do exist, of course, you know, there are people so consumed by hate that they are worth fearing. But what all the research shows us is that there's far fewer of them than we think. So we have to compensate for that somehow. And what John says is, don't. Don't think that the job is to build the longest bridge you can imagine to the most hateful person. I mean, not only is that kind of not very pragmatic, like, how often are you actually going to run it? I mean, some of. Some of us will, sure, but not only is that not very pragmatic, it's also just not very useful and it will scare us and therefore keep us away from conversations that might otherwise be quite nuanced and quite moderating. Which also makes me think of the research that's come out about how people keep underestimating how much they will actually sometimes enjoy conversations across difference. We think of the worst case, and we think that's what we're talking about, and we say, no, never, not me. But. But is that real? Is that. Is. Is that thing in your imagination representative of the folks that you are actually likely to run into? And, and if not, then how might your reticence to even approach folks who might be different be contributing to the misperceptions of who's. Who's out there and what they actually believe?
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Exactly. Well, and it gets. Well, and it makes it even harder when you don't have any experience with it, and then you sort of get thrown into that. And I think that's what happens for a lot of us, that we're so used to being a bubble when we go kind of outside it and we say the thing that always has been super popular in our bubble, and we wonder why it's not popular in this mixed company. And so having more experience with that, you know, I think does make that a little bit less of a shock. Like, it literally can. Like, what. How is this not. How do you not see this? Right.
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No, you're absolutely right. Because these repeated habits of sameness that we're in condition us to not be ready for even sometimes the most minimal challenge or the most minimal surprise or pushback from someone who doesn't see it your way. And boy, so. So, yes, I think our capacity for dealing with that and staying in the room is lower in many of these. These places where the siloing has. Has gotten really strong. So I think we should have a lot of understanding of ourselves and a lot of grace for that. I think of my friend Manu Meal. I don't know if you've run into his work, Bridge usa, They're sort of the braver angels for college. Maybe we'll. We'll get to some of that. But he has been saying something I think is really true, which is that this kind of conversation across this kind of difference is the new counterculture. What is expected is, you know, rhetorical grenade throwing on social media across these divides. What is unexpected and countercultural is conversation. And that, you know, and so in other words, it sort of flipped it on its head because the idea that this is what sort of the nice, weak people do. No, this is what people with some guts often are the ones doing. So. Yeah, let's. Let's take a look at that. You know, if it seems sort of tepid and conceding, it's like, is it because. Because when you're able to withstand a lot of disagreement and still stand firm on your convictions, that's amazing. Like, how was that week? How was that nice? That's. That's something else. And that. That is really hard. I mean, it's been hard for me, and I wrote a book on it. It's still hard.
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Yeah, I've been trained and I've gone to course after course, and it's still hard.
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There's no amount of training that makes this comfortable, Let that clear to everybody. But courage is not about scary things suddenly becoming comfortable. Right. Courage is about the choice to do something that's really scary and carries risk and just doing it anyway because you think it's the right thing to do.
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Well, we've talked a little bit, like, sort of. It's like, it's. It's like a radic. It's a new radical, you know, position or, you know, it's a, it's a way to be radical. Like you say you called it counterculture or like, it's a way to be kind of doing the thing that not everybody's doing instead of the easy thing, which is just kind of staying in your bubble.
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Yeah, yeah. And this is not, by the way, to discount. There are people who are pushing the things they, they believe with the toolkits of activism. And there's a lot of courage that comes into play there too. So that, that's not to discount that different people play different roles because they have different strengths and different passions at any given moment. Um, you know, and I am very good friends with folks who don't have a whole lot of interest in spending as much time as I do reaching across political divides. They're spending that amount of time mobilizing and raising awareness about this or that issue. And that's, that's exactly what we need. We need all these things in balance, though. And so I'm afraid that we're living at a time when, boy, we've got, we've got a lot of mobilization on certain issues, but it's not balanced out by others making sure that there's an osmosis, that there's a, again, a way of checking our assumptions and our projections with some people that we know who are actually talking amongst themselves across difference. And because we have so little of that, it's like our immunity to rhetoric that could really inflame us with lies is gone. And we need to be really careful, you know, because at that point we become tools of someone's partisan game and we forget how to think for ourselves. Like, that's the nightmare, you know, as a society, if we lose that, a bit of that resilience.
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Yeah. We sort of get outrage overload.
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There you go. Why am I even telling you, you know, exactly where this leads you?
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Yeah, and I have a. So, yeah, there's a whole lot of stuff I'd love to talk about there, but I wanted to get one thing in that's kind of. This is kind of selfish. Although again, it is something. It's kind of a mirroring a little bit of some of the kind of sentiment I hear from listeners too. But it's something that, you know, I'm struggling with right now. We've been struggling with in the bridge building community. Many of us are kind of having these conversations in the back channels about. And this, it's a good example of this idea of checking yourself because when you have a lot of support for a position that's, you know, a lot of experts, you know, seem to say this. Theoretically, these are non partisan experts. This is a non partisan expert view. And, and you get this view, and in the end it kind of points towards one partisan side or the other. Like, at what point? As a bridge builder, I mean, I, if we're transparent about it and say, hey, this is what all these experts say, it seems like we can do that. It's like sometimes people feel like, though, that has to be taken off the table if it lands in a partisan way at the end, like it points towards partisan direction. Now we're not allowed to talk to it. And I'm curious just to get your take on that.
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I struggle with the same thing and I see that exact same reflex. Absolutely. And I share that reflex. As a bridge builder, I think I've been kind of trained to always suspect. If the truth keeps leading, one keeps pointing, one of two sides, then what does checking yourself mean? And at what point do you say, I guess I've checked myself and that side is right, and the fact that those experts all seem to line up on one side should not be a reason to doubt what's going on. This is really tricky. I have my answer to this, and it's come from a lot of my conversations with folks who hold the opposite political view from me. I've come to see that the divides are not just red and blue. They're not just liberal, conservative, they're also establishment, anti establishment. They're also folks who come with the professional conditioning of believing things that come in certain formats, you know, and, and from certain places. And folks who come with a stronger tradition of skepticism of those places, because there's been distrust that's been sown, and they feel that they are entitled to that distrust and to exploring it all the way down. When I, when I look at it from that perspective, then I just see another divide. Right. So, yes, there are experts, and for me, many of those experts are a heck of a lot better than most people I know at pointing to the right things. But I don't know, I talk to people whose experience has told them that those experts don't speak for them very well. And then I go, all right, where's my loyalty to the experts or to the people around me and to what they're seeing and knowing in their gut? And, I mean, I don't have an answer to that. Of course I believe experts. That's just. Yes, it depends. You know, obviously we're speaking in huge generalities. But I guess I've just met enough people and heard enough stories about where the experts have been really, really wrong in ways that really were true for them. And that I can see where I'm like, I get it. I get that skepticism and we need to solve that skepticism, not try to browbeat people into believing all the experts that they distrust, if that makes any sense.
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Oh, yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. We've had experts, researchers that have looked into these things. Yeah, It's a challenging problem. You know, something else you mentioned there, I think it's important and I'm, you know, I don't necessarily have the answer, but maybe you have some ideas too. Is one of the problems, I think the paradigm of this right left, you know, left right, conservative, liberal Democrat, Republican. I mean, just framing everything in that paradigm also is, just makes everything harder because like you said many things, it's not the right. It's not really the right dimensions we should be looking at. And as you said earlier that, you know, we talked about the misperception idea is when we frame everything in that, you know, it's usually a misperception because, you know, I mean, the more and more I learned about this, the more I learned there sort of is no such thing as somebody on a place on that spectrum because all of us are actually individuals with all kinds of views and we don't. We never align with these caricatures we hear about on social media and on the TV and so on. And. But none of us really internalize that like as a reality that most of us don't fit that caricature in some way because it's such a strong pull. It just sucks us back in that we frame everything in that model. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that because I don't know what the right paradigm is. I've seen lots of different attempts at sort of doing three and four dimensions and so on, but I don't really know what the right paradigm is. But I do know the left right paradigm sort of hurting us.
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It's clearly failing. I think I saw a statistic or something from the Associated Press. Might be worth double checking everyone, but I think it was something like 45% of Americans identify as independent. Yeah, I mean, talk about the failure of the right left. And it seems like every other person I talk to tells me that they are politically homeless.
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Right.
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So I'm not. I think it's clear that our labels have ceased to be very useful. But there is so much, there is so much in those labels and they have built up so much identity for so many people who are now so hooked on those identities. It is very difficult for people to come back and reevaluate all of that. I, I, There is really good research coming out that I think is going to help us. I don't know if you've seen incredible research from more in common. It came out January 20th, but just remarkable, like I think really insightful on the American right. And they're going to follow up with similar research on the American left and they just ask the kinds of questions that, you know, push back on some of these conventional ways of grouping people. And I think it's going to be really useful for us, you know, not, not to say anything of what you were saying about just the eternal truth that any grouping, any label is ultimately a failure. Right. When you talk to an individual, if you, if you believe the label, you hear the label and you go, aha. You've downloaded everything about that person and clearly you're missing a lot. And yeah, I mean I never, you know, when I sit back and I think, well, if somebody who has, you know, a little punch list of my labels thinks that they know me, I mean that's obviously crap. You know, so we, we do this to each other all the time. So we have to get behind them anyway. Well, let's get behind them. The thing is, I think that as anxious and as afraid as we are, those labels are more than just, you know, useful ways of grasping other people. They've also become shields. You know, we make our boundaries and we hear that somebody is this and we go stay away. So that reifies the labels all the more.
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Yeah, and it's powerful. Like even when, like I said, even when you tell people 45% are independent or you say people have these cross cutting things and the data shows this and the data shows that. Yeah, it's like it's just so powerful, people just still believe. You know, I've talked to people about that more uncommon study and point out some of the things there and they're just go, that I don't, that doesn't sound right. Yeah, it's not intuitively right.
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It's not. At the end of the day, any social science that tries to explain people is never going to succeed, but it is going to succeed in a partial way. Right. It's going to help us look at it at a different, it's going to add nuance and that's all we can do. Um, yeah, but when it comes to. But that, that's to me, the sickness. The sickness is any, anything that gets in the way of. I am now I am person A and I'm talking to person B and I want to talk to person B as person A. I want them to figure out who I am and I want to figure out who they are. And anything we bring that's a shortcut to that, you know, is, is going to hurt our, our ability to do that. So yeah, that, that sickness has always been there. It will always be there to some degree, to some extent. It's. There's no way around it. We can't be, you know, spending our entire lives in explanation. Obviously we need some levers, we need some handles on each other. We do. And, and that's useful in lots of ways. But, but at this point it's like there's so up and down the whole vertical, you know, from the political parties all the way down to like the person next door. These labels are not even accurate anymore. What do they even mean? We don't know. Like it's time to revisit what, what this all even is. And not to mention the last couple of years politically, I've seen so much acceleration of change that I think we owe ourselves nothing less than to ask a whole lot of questions about things we thought were established.
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Yeah. Getting back a little bit to some of the kind of. We've actually addressed a lot of the kind of list of things that people that I often hear from folks, we've kind of covered it, even if a little obliquely. But I wanted to get back to one that I've heard that I know you kind of mentioned this as well that you know, a lot of people feel like the burden is always on, you know, the sane people to, you know, to do all the acquiescing or whatever. Right. You know. You know, some people would say so I'm bend over backwards to, to be empathetic and this kind of stuff yet, you know, meanwhile there's kind of these semi bad actors, it's media or politicians or somebody else, you know, that, that aren't, aren't, aren't doing that at all. You know, I mean, having some resilience to just not getting so nihilistic about as a result.
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I see. Yeah, I got you. Yeah. I mean, for that, man, I used to love being in social media. I used to love doing all the comments, I used to love the debates and it's just not what it used to be, man. There are some spaces and some Platforms where it's become such a game and it's become so conditioned and so many channels have been dug in these particular directions that given that I find the world a wondrous place, even in those places where it's anxiety inducing, that there's still so much to learn. I try to pick and choose the places where I go to do that. And I do think that there are some places that twist our behaviors in really bad ways. I can't tell you the number of people who I've met in person. Incredible, wonderful people. And they'll tell me, I can't believe what I wrote on Facebook the other day. You know, like, man, I was hurtful. I don't know what happened to me. It's like, well, I know what happened to you. You know that that's what these spaces can do. So I. I think we just have to be judicious about where we spend our time. Now, when it comes to politicians, here's. Because this is different. You're talking about politicians who seem to indulge in really contemptible behavior.
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Well, I mean, open the most recent, you know, campaign email, right? And what's it begin with? These guys are terrible. We have to vote them out. And here's. Here's why they're so evil and why we have to get rid of them.
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God. Well, I mean, look, everybody's got their ways, right? The way I. The way I cope with that is to understand it, understand where it comes from. I know the world I'm in. I know the political games that need to be played. I know the water out there. And, yeah, I know that there are so many kind of cheap ways to mobilize people. Get their money, get their support for your campaign by getting them mad. I know that and you know that. So I don't know to what extent do I. This is. This is an open question, right. It's going to sound really weird, but to what extent can I blame. Really, to what extent can I blame one individual politician for making a choice that puts them at an advantage toward their goals of getting reelected, of getting elected at all, of raising money when they themselves did not build the system that stacked the incentives in those ways? And I do blame them. I do. But I think I can only blame them so far because it is a system. It is a network effect. It's not just the one. So what I do also is I really elevate and celebrate the politicians who do not do that and who stand out for that. You know, Governor, Governor Spencer Cox is well known The Republican governor of Utah has made a whole thing out of standing up for this. And on. On Disagree Better his organization's website. They actually have these wonderful tips and they're really good for elected officials to replace this language with that language. This language. Why not try that? But it still remains true that if you don't play the dirty, you won't get the money. So what are we supposed to do about that? And I think it's a bigger question. I think it's a question that involves far more than politicians behavior. It involves the roots, the soil in which politicians behavior grew. And that's the same soil that we're getting into the compost of. You know, like we're part of that soil. So it's all one system. So I try to. It's going to sound crazy but like I try to empathize with that. I see it as a symptom. You know, of course it's also contributing, but it's also a symptom. That's the same way that I see, you know, Uncle Bob saying that horrible thing. Again, it's a symptom. So I don't know. I think. I think we're all part of this. We're all implicated. None of us is blameless and none of us is entirely.
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B
Yeah. And we talk about Uncle Bob a lot on this show.
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Do you guys also just resort to Uncle Bob? I'm so sorry for all the Bobs out there. It's just the thing that comes to mind. Talk about conditioning. I should change it to like Uncle Jim. I don't know. Even that seems a little vanilla. I gotta figure it out.
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B
And you know something else you said there, like we were talking earlier about sort of the bravery thing. I mean, for Spencer Cox to do a lot of the stuff that he's doing and the people that cooperate with him and do that with him, that's a lot of bravery because again, that's challenging in this, in these times.
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Yeah. And I gotta say too that I've been to Utah a bunch and there's something about Utah, the Utah culture. There's something. There's some things going on over there that I think have just made it a little more of a fertile ground for these kinds of things to emerge and survive. And there's other places where they want. So we're grateful for the sprouts that can.
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B
Right. Well, that's what I was going to ask. So we've talked a little bit about some of the challenges in this space and I'm hoping we've inspired people to sort of stick with it and maybe put some of the effort in. But what are some of the things that you really see working out there? Like, what are some institutions that are getting it right? You mentioned Spencer Cox. You know what, what else are you sort of optimistic about? And you see, this is. This is really working. I know Braver Angels has revised a little bit and is going in some new directions, if I understand it right. So curious just to hear who's getting some of this right. And what do you see that that's working out there?
- [32:44]
A
Yeah. Braver Angels has what we call our North Star since last year is courageous citizenship, which, which means something really beautiful and really specific and very shared. And we've got, as you know, chapters all over the country and everyone's sinking their teeth into this in new ways. The debate program at Braver Angels has really blossomed in amazing ways. So for anyone who hasn't checked out a Brave Rangels debate, which is not actually a competitive debate where someone is crowned a winner, but is a collective search for truth with a structure that really works. And, and I'm a debate chair at Braver Angels, so I have run Braver Angels debates on, you know, things as controversial as trans care for minors and boy, the things that. It just will knock your socks off. So I'm, I'm a huge proponent of those sorts of organized, structured dialogues and getting more folks into the room for those. Brave Rangels convention is coming up in summer of 2026. That's going to be a big deal. Look that up. Bridge USA has grown like gangbusters since the horrible tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk. They are, they are on in college campuses and they have been there for some time now, and they're working to make sure that students and young people who really do crave. A lot of. A lot of times us older generations look at young people as fragile. I mean, that's one narrative. It's not. It's not true. A lot of young people are coming up going, what the heck is the big deal? Why are all these teachers trying to protect us? From what? Talking. You know, so, yeah, these students are awesome. And yeah, in Bridge USA chapters all across the country, just showing how it's done. It's really, really cool to watch. And they're growing really well. So I think they're doing the right thing. Disagree. Better. We mentioned and I don't know of a more promising organization, at least that's as visible as they are, that's working directly on trying to build that shelter that elected officials can stand under to do these things in a better, braver way. Like, they, they've got it. They're, they're focusing a lot on kind of the air game because there, there's this narrative that needs to take hold, right, that all politicians are not these backstabbing, polarizing, you know, figures that get so much of the attention out there. They're, they're different and they're, they, they, they bring up a lot of stories from the local elected official world and the state level and all of that where some, some really wonderful things are happening across the aisle and have been. They just, just nobody seems to care. Right. But if you knew what happening, you would care. And so they're, they're bringing it up and they're, they're. Yeah, they're just inspiring, I think that generation of, of leaders and making sure that it's something that you don't get killed for, which is unfortunately still the case in a lot of places. So they're doing great work. I'm, I'm an advisor for an organization called the Viewpoints Project started by Shira Hoffer. It, Shira, when she was in, at an undergraduate at Harvard and she stood at a protest in Harvard over Gaza and the war in, you know, Israel and Gaza with this sign that had a hotline and it was between the protesters and the counter protesters and the hotline was, you know, your questions about what's going on, like send them here. And she got on the map for that. I think she's brilliant. That's just one example of a young person who is starting new organizations. She's, she's helping places in education cultivate more curious and courageous ways to disagree and make it more natural. So I'm also really interested in what's going on in the education space. There is a lot of energy coming into the education space. One way that I've kind of had a bit of a front row seat on that is my book just happened to be a popular choice for freshman college reading programs over the last couple years. So I'm seeing all these new centers for civic dialogue and civil discourse and democracy and democratic republic and whatever, whatever it is. So lots of energy into that right now. I'm really optimistic about that. Although coming back a little full circle, I also know that institutions are not the be all, end all for everything. Just because you open a center for so and so and it's got a lot of money doesn't mean you're necessarily going to solve the problem. Right. So all Those things are encouraging to me, and I've missed a million because I know. So. I know. I know of a lot, and I don't want to bore you. So where do you want. Where do you want to send me from here?
- [37:09]
B
Yeah. Well, I know we're kind of. We need to wrap up here, but I wanted one. One last question I wanted to ask is. You've been working in this space for a while, like you say, you know everyone, you know all. Everything that's happening out there, pretty much. And I'm curious, you know, kind of in what ways has your thinking on this kind of. Or what are some main highlights of how some. Some ways you're thinking on this have kind of evolved? Is. Is there anything you would say I. I was wrong about, you know, whatever number of years ago?
- [37:35]
A
Yeah. Oh, probably. I mean, a lot. In my. My book that I wrote in 2020, if I could write it again, I would say a lot more about fear. I focused on certainty as an arch villain to curiosity. Because when you think, you know, you won't think to ask. Right? But. But the. The impact that fear has on our ability to be judicious and reflective and responsive rather than reactive is tremendous. And so if I write another book, I think I'm gonna go right into that. I think that's kind of the plan, actually, is just jumping in. Also the relationship between truth and trust. I think that the barrier we just kind of glanced on a little bit around truth. But what happens if I know that this is true? You still want me to. What? Like, what does that mean for the sanctity of this truth? If I just go in and let somebody entertain something false, how do I do that? What does that mean? And. And also my background as a journalist makes me super interested in this. And I think it's insanely critical right now, these questions around truth. But I don't think that you can unlock truth usefully across our society without trust. So this is where I feel like. I don't know. I feel like I might be very wrong. But I do think that we have to build trust in order to meaningfully circulate truth. And you can't build trust if you think you already have truth so much that you won't entertain what the other person is saying. So that's a real dilemma. But I don't know. So far, every time I've had a conversation with someone who believes something that I know to be false, I have learned something that is true that I didn't see before.
- [39:22]
B
Well, yeah, and I think you have to, you know, you have to earn trust too. Right. So I think that's an aspect of it that we think we should just have trust because we're the ones with the. Right, there's a little bit of the certainty thing again.
- [39:33]
A
Exactly.
- [39:34]
B
But yeah, the other thing there on the fear side, I think that one thing that, you know, I think we also forget is that a lot of us wouldn't want to admit it's fear. Like, we're strong. I'm a tough guy. I can't be afraid. It must not be fear. Something else. Right? It's anger. It's something else. Especially. I think maybe that's more true for men that these other kind of emotions come out because, you know, we're not allowed. Fear is not allowed. Right.
- [39:56]
A
And you know who is the scariest person to confront? Yourself.
- [40:02]
B
Well, it's also almost impossible.
- [40:04]
A
Well, that's the thing. It's like, it's, it's therapy speak and people go, oh, that's woo, woo. It's also true, yo. Like, yeah, I've seen it. It's true. The, the, the, the scariest person to confront, especially if your identity is really, you know, firm on this or that or that thing is yourself. That's, that's where the rubber meets the road. And it'll, you'll, you'll justify it. You'll say that it's actually that person or it's actually what's going on over here. But those may be rationalizations. Fear is so sneaky. Yeah, it's, it's really, really tricky to even get to talking about it and understanding.
- [40:40]
B
Yeah. 100. Well, I mean, this is great. I could, I could talk to you for hours. I know you don't have that kind of time for little old me, but I really appreciate you making time for a show.
- [40:48]
A
Monica Guzman, thank you so much. This was a great conversation. Thank you.
- [41:03]
B
That is it for this episode of the Outrage Overload podcast. For links to everything we talked about on this episode, go to outrage overload.net outrage overload is a Connors Institute podcast. The Connors Institute for Non Partisan Research and Civic Engagement at Shippensburg University works to disseminate high quality, non partisan information to the American public around issues of societal well being, democracy promotion and news literacy. If you found this episode valuable, please share it or leave a review. It really helps. Thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time.
- [41:42]
A
Sam.