← TED Talks Daily
TED Talks Daily
Sunday Pick: How to have curious conversations in dangerously divided times (w/ Mónica Guzmán) | How to Be a Better Human
00:39:31
Loading summary
Transcript56 lines
- [00:00]
Hannah Burner
This is Hannah Burner from Giggly Squad. Opill is the first over the counter daily birth control pill available in the us. Let's be real. Getting a birth control prescription is not always easy. And it's so much admin. In fact, about a third of women face barriers to access prescription birth control. Between scheduling appointments, missing work class or just trying to exist, it's a lot. But now Opill is putting birth control in our control. Opill is a daily birth control that's FDA approved, full prescription, strength and estrogen free and 98 effective when used as directed. Grab it online or at most major retailers. No prescription or doctor's appointment needed. So if you're thinking about birth control, check out OPILL to see if it's right for you. Use code GIGGLY for 25 off your first month of opill at O-P-I-L-L.com that's code gigglY-P-I-L-L.com birth control in your control. We love to see it.
- [00:57]
Sponsor Announcer
This episode is sponsored by Grow Therapy. When life feels overwhelming, talking to the right person can create Prof. Shifts in how we navigate challenges. Therapy isn't just about crisis management. It's about building emotional intelligence and resilience. But finding a therapist shouldn't add to your stress. Grow Therapy makes this process actually manageable. They connect you with thousands of licensed therapists across the US offering both virtual and in person sessions. You can search by insurance, specialty and treatment approach to find someone who genuinely fits your needs. If it's not the right match, switching is straightforward. No subscriptions or long commitments. Whether you're dealing with work anxiety, relationship dynamics or life transitions, quality mental health care should be accessible on your schedule. Evenings, weekends, whatever works for you. Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow Therapy is here to help. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as zero depending on their plan. Visit GrowTherapy.com TED today to get started. That's GrowTherapy.com TED GrowTherapy.com TED availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. This episode is brought to you by on location events. The FIFA World Cup 26 is coming to North America next summer. It'll be the ultimate celebration of sports and culture. Get closer to the beautiful game with a hospitality package Closer to the action in the best seats and suites. Closer to match day elevated with world class food and entertainment closer to the exclusive experience of a lifetime. Book a hospitality package@fifaworldcup.com Hospitality Happy Sunday Ted Talks Daily Listeners. I'm Elise Hu Today we're bringing you another one of our Sunday picks where we share an episode of another podcast from the TED Audio Collective handpicked by us for you. When was the last time you really connected with someone who disagrees with you? Modern life places us in all kinds of echo chambers. So what happens when these divides stop us from seeing and understanding one another? In a time of deepening polarization, we reached into the archives of our Audio Collective podcast, How to Be a Better Human to share an episode featuring journalist Monica Guzman. Monika is the chief storyteller for Braver Angels, an organization dedicated to political depolarization. Monica shares the tools she uses to find common ground with her loved ones and talks about why interacting with and listening to different points of view is critical work. Especially now. How to Be a Better Human is a show that looks in unexpected places for new ways to improve and show up for one another. If you want to hear more insights like this, listen to how to Be a Better Human. Wherever you get your podcasts, learn about the TED audio collective@audiocollective.ted.com Coming up.
- [04:07]
Chris Duffy
You'Re listening to how to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. The episode of this podcast that has the very worst reviews that we've ever gotten in the two years we've been making this show is an episode that we did on how to talk to people across a political divide. And that was no fault at all of our guests. Our guest was fantastic. The negative reviews were basically because every single one of the questions that I asked was some version of how do I convince conservatives to realize that they're wrong and I'm right? And look, it's certainly not lost on me that there's a hilarious irony in me trying to host an episode about communicating across a political divide and then managing to alienate every single person who is on the other side of the political divide from me. So much so that they felt compelled to give us zero stars and tell me that I am a condescending jerk. And worse, they're not wrong. I was being a condescending jerk. So today, let's see if maybe I can do a little bit better this time. Today's guest, Monica Guzman, is an expert in curiosity. She's the author of the fantastic book I Never Thought of it that how to have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times. Here's a clip from her TEDx talk.
- [05:16]
Monica Guzman
After the election in 2016, I found a foolproof way to stop conversation. I would tell groups of my fellow Seattle liberals that my parents, who I love to death and see every weekend, are not just Mexican immigrants like me. They're Mexican immigrants who voted for Donald Trump. I would share this at networking events, random get togethers, whenever politics came up and people started giving voice to that sense that anyone who voted for someone they think is a monster must be monsters themselves. I did this so often, it became a kind of game. Not to make anyone uncomfortable, I realized, but to put my circle to the test. I've had umpteen conversations with my parents about politics. I know their reasons and they know mine. So after the beats of silence at these get togethers as people considered what they knew about the man in the White House, the rhetoric against Mexicans, and this crazy thing I just said about two Mexicans I know who voted for him, I'd wait. I'd wait to see if, instead of changing the subject or walking away, if someone would turn to me and ask why?
- [06:53]
Chris Duffy
Obviously you want to know why. We all want to know why. But you're going to have to stick around until after the break to find out. We've got more with Monica Guzman right after this.
- [07:10]
Monica Guzman
Only Boost Mobile Boost Mobile will give you a free year of.
- [07:13]
Chris Duffy
Service Free year when you buy a.
- [07:14]
Monica Guzman
New 5G phone new 5G phone?
- [07:16]
Chris Duffy
Enough, but I'm your hype man. When you purchase an eligible device, you get $25 off every month for 12 months, with credits totaling one year of free service. Tax is extra for the device and service plan online only.
- [07:25]
Rocket Money Announcer
With prices going up on just about everything lately, dealing with money can be stressful. Trying to manage subscriptions, track spending, and cut costs can feel overwhelming. Luckily, Rocket Money can relieve some of that stress and help you feel confident in the financial decisions you make. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Their dashboard lays out your total financial picture, including bill due dates and paydays, in a way that's easy to digest. You can even automatically create custom budgets based on your past spending. Rocket Money's 5 million members have saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, with members saving up to $740 a they use all of the app's premium features. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com Cancelsubs today. That's RocketMoney.com Cancelsubs RocketMoney.com Cancelsubs.
- [08:29]
Chris Duffy
Okay, and we're back. We're talking about how to have Better Political Conversations in Divided Times with journalist and authority Monica Guzman.
- [08:37]
Monica Guzman
I'm Monica Guzman. I'm the author of I Never Thought of it that how to have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times and the Senior Fellow for Public Practice at Braver Angels, the nation's largest cross partisan grassroots organization dedicated to depolarizing America.
- [08:56]
Chris Duffy
Monica, thank you so much for being here. And maybe let's get started by talking about how you got into this work. Can you think of a particular conversation or people who you were trying to have conversations with? Who inspired you to start thinking about polarization and difficult conversations?
- [09:13]
Monica Guzman
The one that always comes to mind is my parents. I'm part of a politically divided family and my parents and I are Mexican immigrants. They voted for Trump both times fairly enthusiastically, and I voted for Clinton and Biden even before that. We've just had a lifetime of dinner table conversations that have thrown out Glenn Beck quotes and all kinds of debates about whatever was going on even back in the Clinton days, all kinds of yelling and trying to understand each other. The kind of conversation that really tipped it for me was when I was in Seattle in 2015, 2016 and 2017, as those conversations about politics got more and more tense in a very blue city. And what I'm hearing is a lot of people have a lot of judgments when there haven't actually been that many conversations with the people they're judging. And as a journalist who tries to help people understand each other, that just felt like, hang on, gotta pull back and figure out what's going on here.
- [10:20]
Chris Duffy
In your book, what comes across so clearly and I think is relatable to so many people, certainly I relate to this is this complex feeling of absolutely loving these people, caring about them so deeply and being infuriated because it feels like you cannot understand where they're coming from. It feels like a lot of us tend to just avoid these topics instead. And I know I'm guilty of that. So what would your pitch be for why we should actually have these difficult conversations?
- [10:49]
Monica Guzman
I think there's lots of reasons, but the one that comes to mind is we're so divided, we're blinded. When you look at the research, it shows that when people are asked to look across the divide and guess at the views on that side, we are constantly exaggerating and this happens from both sides and we're constantly over vilifying. We're seeing a lot of malevolence when it isn't quite there. We're stretching it beyond reality and we really care about getting things right. We care about facts. We care about truth. But we're not seeing the truth of other people. And that's because of the depth and complexity and layers of polarization and toxic polarization in our society. It's the kinds of signals and narratives that we receive. It's the animosity and the high volume of these things. And it's also, I think, very importantly, how much our relationships across difference have frayed very naturally and organically. One burned bridge and one burned relationship at a time. Every time we decide we can't talk about politics, that's one more place of friction between difference that goes away. But when we don't do it, we're seeing the world as a projection instead of what it really is. We're seeing people's perspectives as something they're not.
- [12:12]
Chris Duffy
It was very interesting to me in your book because you talk a lot about how difficult it is to maintain curiosity and how important that is. Because when you start to actually talk to another person, it's easy. And I think we all. I certainly fall into this, to want to just put them in this category, which is this idea I have in my head, which is predetermined. And the more that we get curious about people's specific situations, rather than the, like, blanket that we think maybe they should fall into, it's harder to actually pin people down in these simple ways that make it easier to feel like we're very, very different from them.
- [12:48]
Monica Guzman
Yeah, exactly. I make the distinction between puzzles and mysteries, which I borrow from author Ian Leslie, who did this really well. But puzzles are something that feels like you have the shape. You just need to look for the missing pieces. That's what understanding a puzzle is all about. You can solve it. And then a mystery just doesn't work that way at all. You have no idea if you have the right shape, the right box, the right size. And it's not a matter of finding pieces. It's a matter of everything you learn sort of opens up new questions. And when we stereotype or when we flatten or when we become too certain about other people, we're treating people like puzzles. Oh, I already know, because they are X, Y and Z. They hold this identity and this ideology. I already know why they believe these things. You know, all I need to understand is this part. And I'm going to come up and demand that answer from them. But that's not how human beings work. In fact, that's one of the most beautiful things about us, is we are extraordinarily deep mysteries. So to try to understand a mystery from a distance is sort of the tragedy of the moment. Right. Where we think, well, it's a lot more comfortable to read a thought piece with some statistics and then make some conclusions about a group of people. And we want to do that because it is so stressful to stay in some kinds of uncertainty. It's stressful not to know. We have that need for closure. We want certainty, but certainty is the arch villain of curiosity. And the conclusions kill all these questions. We end up too rigid and so divided.
- [14:16]
Chris Duffy
One of the big things in your book is you're actually not about convincing people of anything.
- [14:21]
Monica Guzman
That's right.
- [14:22]
Chris Duffy
So how do I not do that? Because I get so in the mode of I am right. And this is morally imperative to convince people.
- [14:28]
Monica Guzman
Yeah, yeah.
- [14:29]
Chris Duffy
So how do you. And that's get past that?
- [14:31]
Monica Guzman
Right. I mean, that's a big piece of what's going on now. Politics a few decades ago didn't feel quite so morally imperative. Right. It felt a little more like, oh, these are disagreements about policy and ideology. And yes, there are some really high stakes issues here and there nowadays, in part because our identities have stacked so neatly into these large two piles. There's others, right? There's people in the middles, libertarians, yes. But there's big two piles where you can kind of predict just by people's traits where they're likely to fall on that divide. It's made it so much more personal. Politics is so personal, right. Where your candidate loses, it's not just that candidate, it's not just that race you lose, you're losing your country, it feels horrible. And that makes all of this so much harder. So the reason that persuasion is not something that I recommend leaning into when you're having these conversations across disagreement, it's for a few things. One, it doesn't work. We're living at a time that's very on demand. And one of the ways that that's infected our conversations is we tend to think, all right, I'm gonna have this conversation with my uncle and I expect to change his mind. Why? Well, because here's this glittering, beautiful reason that I'm holding in my hand for why I believe what I believe, and it's awesome. And when I understood it, it did everything to me. And all I need to do is hand it over to him. If I just hand it to him, it will have the same impact on him. And then when it doesn't have the same impact on him, we're infuriated and we begin to repeat ourselves, except louder and louder and louder. Right? We forget that people have these roots that go down through the years of their lives, that their opinions are not just something they put on like a shirt. It's something they've kind of grown into. Right. And so it's really, really hard to talk somebody out of something in the course of a conversation. If you do influence their perspective, more than likely it will be at a moment when they feel heard by you, where they feel connected to you, where they feel understood by you, or like you're making the effort. In order for that to work, you can't be trying to change them, because changing people, trying to change people is a way of saying that we don't accept them the way they are. And it's really hard to feel heard if that's what you're being confronted with.
- [16:52]
Chris Duffy
I've also heard you say that we put so much emphasis on truth and right journalism is this truth finding organization or institution. But we really kind of ignore the other piece, which is trust. And we think that just by throwing enough truth at them, that will change things or change things for the society. But we don't really have this emphasis on trust, which I think is really at the core of your book is how do you build trust amongst communities, even if we disagree?
- [17:19]
Monica Guzman
Exactly. I always think back to a friend of mine a while ago, sent me, forwarded me this text thread that he had with an old high school friend. And they were on two political sides. And he's like, monica, I tried so hard. Why did nothing get across here? What's going on? And I looked at the thread and all they were doing was sending articles to each other. One of them would send the other. Here's the thing from the Blaze. Just read this. Here's the thing for the New York Times. Just read this. And they're sending each other information, but from sources that the other doesn't trust. As if it's homework. As if. Read that article and then you're qualified to talk to me again. Read that article and then I'll believe that you're worth listening to. Right. So I'll borrow a framework from a friend of mine, Buster Benson. He talks about how there's three conversations across disagreement that we have the conversation about what is true, the conversation about what is meaningful, and the conversation about what is useful. We all want to have the conversation about what is true across disagreement, as if it's the only one we can have. So I get asked a lot, what happens if you're talking to someone and they say something that you know is blatantly untrue. And people think, well, that's when I hit the abort button. That's when we're done. Or it's my moral imperative to correct them until they accept it. But that's not going to happen, most likely. So instead what you do is you switch to the conversation about what's meaningful. You don't talk about that thing that you feel is wrong. You get behind that and you ask about the concerns behind that. You ask how that person came to believe and really connect with that idea. Even when there's no truth in people's conclusions, there's always truth in their stories. And the last thing I'll say, because I'm so glad that you brought up this difference between truth and trust is the conversation about what is true is not effective across our society when there is no trust. And the only conversation that builds trust is the one about where people find meaning and where their concerns and fears and hopes are.
- [19:13]
Chris Duffy
Your book is full of, like, try these. Try this kind of question. There's so many pieces of that, and I think that one of the ones that stood out to me the most, and it's obviously the title of your book as well, but you talk about trying to get to these I never thought of it that way moments. You call them intuit moments in the book. What is an intuit moment? And what are some steps that people can take to try and get there?
- [19:34]
Monica Guzman
Yeah, so I think of. I never thought of it that way moments, Intuit moments for short, as the rewards of a curious conversation. When you think or say, ah, I never thought of it that way, it's proof that some perspective has crossed that chasm between someone else's mind and your own. You don't know what impact it will have, but you have noticed it. And that's saying something, right? Like, our brains have a bajillion thoughts every day, but to be able to have the thought, oh, that's new, that's interesting, that's made a mark on my brain. Maybe it's planted a seed. Maybe it will change something that I think of, like in 15 years, and I'll be a completely different person. Unlikely, but possible. Maybe it'll be dug out of the ground tomorrow, who knows? But one way or the other, it's the result of having interacted with difference. And something now looks richer. Something has had an added dimension to it. Some idea has gotten complicated for you because of that. I never thought of it that way. Moment. So the way to get those moments is to have more curious conversations. Which means Ted Lasso popularized that quote about be curious, not judgmental. Really famous scene with darts. Anyway, it's a great episode. But the cool thing is that when you are curious, you cannot also be judgmental. In that moment when you are judgmental, you cannot also be curious. But you can switch between the two by default. We'll often switch from a place of curiosity and then hear something that triggers us, and then we'll come back to judgment. But then once we're in judgment, what you gotta do is turn it back to curiosity. As soon as you have the thought, oh, they're just saying that because they're X, you can go, well, are they saying that because they're ex. Why are they saying that? Let me figure it out. Let me ask some questions generously and try to hear for the answer.
- [21:23]
Chris Duffy
It's such a challenging idea to me. Right. I am definitely in that place where I feel like my political beliefs are correct. And so even the idea of asking people who disagree with me and not trying to convince them, it kind of feels wild. And it feels like. It feels sometimes to me like I'm in a house that is burning down and someone is like, why don't you just learn a little bit more about fire? And, you know, it's like, okay, but the house is on fire. It's not the time. I need to start spraying water. At a certain point. You actually address all of that head on in the book with. As a comedian, I always love, like, the funny moments. And you had a very funny story about a pastor in one of these workshops who says to the organizer, like, are you trying to tell me that I should be building bridges with the devil? And John Powell, the head of the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, says, well, maybe don't start there. And I feel like maybe that is the answer to some of my concerns. It's like I can imagine the worst person, the most dangerous, violent person. And I'm like, you're trying to tell me to try and understand and be curious about them.
- [22:25]
Monica Guzman
No. And you're spot on about this. And in fact, I mean, I've been having lots of conversations about the book and talking with a lot of folks, and this is a very, very common and completely valid sort of barrier to all this. But I try to stay curious about these barriers. And what I ask is, why do we keep going to the worst case scenario? I mean, oftentimes when we hear advice or suggestions about how to Tackle something we don't. We don't think of the worst possible person that we could talk to and then argue about that. But that's what we're doing. And I think it's because we're so afraid. We're so afraid of each other. We're afraid of the monster hiding behind our neighbor. We're afraid of the monster that seems to be motivating all the wacky, horrible things going on in the world. We're afraid of encountering that person. The only ask here is for all of us to be one step more curious. And that can be as little as not even having a conversation with another person. You could have a more curious conversation with yourself when you're reading an opinion article about the other side spoken with the voice of the other side. And as you're reading that article that you would normally doom. Scroll through and hate tweet, you go, what is the deep down honest human concern being expressed here? Or what is the strongest argument on this other side? What can I learn from reading this piece that in and of itself is being more curious? The last part of John Powell's anecdote there, you talked about how, yeah, there's a pastor who said, john, are you asking me to bridge with the devil? And then he says, well, maybe don't start there. He says, do the short bridges. Don't go for the long bridges. Right off the bat, do the short bridges. Someone who agrees with you on everything except this one thing. Someone who doesn't seem to threaten your identity. Go into a house that's not on fire. It's just warm. And he says, and after crossing a lot of short bridges, you may ask yourself who you're calling the devil. And that's the really radical idea. It's possible that, as I say in my talk, whoever is underrepresented in your life is overrepresented in your imagination. And if you're not checking that imagination with reality every now and then, you run the risk of living in a higher state of anxiety and with more fear than might actually be justified by the actual hearts and minds of people who disagree with you. So what if beginning to have those exchanges, doing the small bridges actually reduces your daily emotional labor and turns the volume down on all of this madness so that we could all get more creative. Because one of the first casualties of fear is creativity and seeing how we can work together and actually solve problems. So, yeah, that's the reframe I'd offer.
- [25:19]
Chris Duffy
We're gonna take a quick break, and then we will Be right back after this.
- [25:32]
Trimble Announcer
Trimble knows that for the work we all depend on where speed counts, there's no room for mistakes. Every turn matters. Trimble is the technology company that connects your physical and digital worlds across industries like construction, transportation, geospatial and beyond, so you can get hard work done faster than you ever thought possible. You can check them out@trimble.com with Trimble on your team, you're in command of connected solutions to overcome unknowns and keep work flowing. See what's coming, Take intelligent action. Stay on time and budget time after time with confidence at every step, every decision, every turn. Because work doesn't move in a straight line, keeping it going requires the agility to adjust in the field, at the office, on the road, everywhere. When you're ready to turn data into decisions, turn deadlines into finish lines, and turn possibilities into profits, it's time to turn to Trimble. Trimble Contract confidence at every turn this.
- [26:32]
Chris Duffy
Podcast is brought to you by Wise, the app for international people using money around the globe. With Wise, you can send, spend and receive up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps and save up to 55% compared to major banks. Plus, wise won't add hidden fees to your transfer. Whether you're buying souvenirs with pesos in Puerto Vallarta or sending Euros to a loved one in Paris, you know you're getting a fair exchange rate with no extra markups. Be Smart join the 15 million customers who choose Wise. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com learn more by visiting wise.com us compare Ts and Cs apply what's up.
- [27:08]
Monica Guzman
Grace from the Working Hard podcast here. And I want to tell you about something exciting. You're watching EveryDollar and Walmart Business helps you stretch each one from office supplies to snacks and cleaning gear. You'll get everyday low prices plus easy bulk ordering and fast delivery. And with tools like spend tracking and multi user accounts, staying organized is simple. Save time, money and hassle. @business.walmart.com it's free to sign up.
- [27:35]
Chris Duffy
In Monica's work as a journalist, she's spent a lot of time with people who she doesn't necessarily agree with, trying her best to accurately represent their viewpoints and their stories. That's her job. But wow, that feels so hard to do when it is not your profession. To me, it feels scary, it feels overwhelming. It often just feels impossible. But maybe. Maybe the idea of the other side that we have in our head isn't quite as accurate as we think it is. Here's another clip from Monica's TED Talk.
- [28:03]
Monica Guzman
We assume people oppose what we support because they hate what we love. That doesn't just keep us from seeing what we're missing. It keeps us from staying informed about the one thing that scares us most. Each other. In one CBS YouGov poll this year, most Americans said that the biggest threat to the American way of life is other Americans. Now, it's true. There are people at our political extremes who are so consumed by hate that they are worth fearing. But researchers at the University of Pennsylvania looked into the hostility each side sends the other, and they found something fascinating. They found that people on either side of America's political divide assume the other side despises them twice as much as they actually do. This fear, it's a problem because you can't wonder about something you think is out to get you. But certainty, that's much worse talking.
- [29:14]
Chris Duffy
One of the other things that comes to mind for me is the idea of, like, if you're building these smaller bridges, it also clarifies what you actually believe, right? Like, you don't want to have to defend your right to exist, but a little bit of friction on. So why do you think that? I don't actually naturally think that. I know that I care about this, but why? What's my argument for it? I love what you said about the house that's warm, that's not yet on fire. Like, is this a way of maybe taking down the temperature a little bit so that we don't get to the place where things burst into flames?
- [29:40]
Monica Guzman
Honestly, I think it's the only way. It's the only way to turn out the temperature meaningfully is to go and check these assumptions, because it's in the rawness of how we think about things and it's witnessing where people themselves are torn. Because that's another sort of harmful assumption we make is that the people who disagree with us are quite certain, they're quite sure. But then you go and talk to them and you talk in this generous way where you're open and candid and you see that things are more complex than you might have realized. Just yesterday, I was at a university and hearing the story from a woman who is very, very pro choice on the abortion debate and went out in the streets and protested after the reversal of Roe vs Wade, but has managed to maintain a very good friendship with someone who is very pro life. But one of the ways it feels that they've maintained that friendship is by never talking about abortion and After Roe was reversed, a door opened just to crack and she discovered that her pro life friend believes in exceptions to abortion bans in the case of rape and incest. And she was shocked because she always assumed that her friend was so pro life that she would want to ban abortion in absolutely all cases. It blew her mind. Right. And so it just, it was a reminder of when, when we're so certain of each other's views that we don't ask, we actually keep ourselves from knowing the truth about other people, even the people close to us, even the perspectives of the people who are close to us. And so how much are we missing when we don't get curious?
- [31:20]
Chris Duffy
All of this to me brings up when I think about my own life. How do I even start finding someone to have these depolarizing conversations with? Because it feels like I am definitely in a self selected bubble of I try to not because I've put such moral judgments on my politics. I have felt like, well, I don't want to associate with someone who is immoral. So how do you start to find someone who is that? Shorter bridge, what would you recommend as a step to take?
- [31:50]
Monica Guzman
I think it's really unlikely that everyone in your circle or in anyone's circle really fully agrees with them on everything. It's extremely unlikely. Now, on these more sort of high stakes moral issues, you might think, well, no, there's going to be very little to say, but check it out. How might we be assuming agreement and could we invite nuance into that presumed agreement? Right, so something happens in the headlines, it sort of comes up in conversation and you can ask about that. Yeah. What about this issue of having folks in schools with guns? What do you all think about that? And you might discover that your friends have more nuanced ideas than you thought. There's some interesting kind of values put into tension there for a lot of people and it may not fall on the red blue divide. And in fact, again, I think that's one of the harmful things about our climate, is that we assume that everything does really neatly. So the people close to you may actually be a good starting point if you bring it up and actually ask the question instead of walk through under the presumption that you all mostly agree. The other thing is that while the Internet is in a lot of ways in its design, great for dividing us, it's also fantastic how easily you can find conversations within groups that are generous and that share a certain perspective. There's all kinds of beautiful communities of libertarians and conservatives and liberals where people are not trying to troll the other side or anything like that, but they're really just connecting with each other. And there's ways to kind of listen in on that and every now and then kind of pipe up if it's appropriate. But I find that really interesting that we're actually expressing ourselves so much that a generous, curious mind can treat the Internet very differently from how we tend to treat it. Not chasing dopamine lollipops, like chasing moments where we're just activated and sort of engaged in this sort of, ah, like tribal way, but chasing. I never thought of it that way. Moments.
- [33:42]
Chris Duffy
You talk about this hypothetical conversation meter that has five dials that you can turn up or down and that you should think about when you're having conversations. So can you tell us what those dials on your conversation meter are and how to think about which ones we want to be turned up and down when we're having a conversation across a divide?
- [34:00]
Monica Guzman
Yeah. So the first one is time. A lot of times we start conversations when there just isn't any time. Someone's on their way out the door, someone's really busy and has something to do with. And you don't want to bring up a tough topic when there isn't time to really sit with it because people's impatience will play a role. The second one is attention. So how much of the other person's attention do you really have and how much of, you know, your attention do they have? A lot of times we're online and people have a million tabs open and their mind is splintered into a bunch of things. You don't know if they're waiting for the bus or if they're having a conversation. If you're on the phone and texting, they're having two other conversations that you're not even privy to. So only about 20% of their brain is with you every minute and a half. So is that a time when you want to be talking about tough things? You'd rather have them all there? Then there's parity, which is P A R I T Y, which is about sort of the balance of power. And I mean this in a platform sense, a sort of technological sense. If someone's on stage and someone's asking a question with a microphone, the person on stage has the power. If someone is posting on Facebook and someone is commenting, the person posting on Facebook can erase that comment, block that person, hide it. You know, you don't have that parody, which is why you often go on social media sites and you see someone post something controversial, right? And then, and then you're like peering into the comments going, man, I wonder if people kind of disagreed. And then, well, they never do because. Because we're so used to being filtered out right. Of our friends pages in a lot of ways. Then there's containment, which is so important. Containment is the degree to which your conversation is actually contained to the people participating in it. Very often on social media and other platforms, we have this huge mass of invisible listeners and we don't get to witness their listening. We don't get any feedback from them whatsoever. They didn't like the post or not like it, but for all we know, they're reading what we have to say with a silence scowl on their face or they're making judgments about who we are. They're going, oh wow, Monica's not who I thought she was. And so we have those projections in our head when we have uncontained conversations. And so what happens is that we perform our perspectives instead of explore our perspectives. It's very hard to be candid in an uncontained conversation and then finally embodiment. And that's just how much of the full toolbox of human communication are you actually using? Are you gonna go into a really, really hard job with the tiniest little kit? Why would you do that? Why would you leave all your tools at home? Don't do that. That's silly. This is a very hard job. Bring it all. Bring your gestures, bring your tone. Things like goodwill don't easily get communicated in words. When you're having an argument. They get communicated in people's faces, how they smile, the tension, releasing giggles in the middle of things. This is important.
- [36:52]
Chris Duffy
I think containment is such an interesting one because these days it does feel like even non public figures have a real fear about what will other people think when they hear this conversation. Obviously on social media it is hard to have a nuanced conversation because other people keep jumping in and you know they're trying to come in and dunk on someone. So how do you make it feel safer for a person to talk to you about an idea? That's different.
- [37:21]
Monica Guzman
It is more difficult on social media, but it is not impossible. To quote a friend of mine, social media is the boss level of discourse. You have to put into words the things that you normally just communicate automatically, like goodwill, like good intent and wanting to build trust and this sort of welcoming that we have in our faces when we ask a question with compassion. And so it's about bringing all of that into the limited tool set and platform that you have. And it absolutely is possible. I think a big, big, and maybe the most important tool is modeling. So if you want to have a context of intellectual humility, of openness and of candor, you model it. So I try to do that as soon as I can in a conversation. Get us past any kind of pretense, get us past the talking points, right? Because most of the time what people will do when they don't feel very secure to actually explore their real perspectives is they will just grab the talking point that they've seen other people take shelter under. And so when we do that, when it's just talking point versus talking point, we're basically having proxy battles, proxy conversations. They're not real. You mentioned earlier in this conversation how awesome it is actually when a curious conversation helps us understand what we think. When somebody asks us that, what a gift it is to actually be like, oh, do my ideas cohere? And to see some of the contradictions and dissonance in our own narratives. I was going to call one of my chapters early on by a phrase that somebody said that gave me an I never thought of it that way moment. And the phrase was meaning is in people, not words. And it really struck me because we, I think, can become very legalistic with each other about words and about language and about what is meant by them. Because we, we so often spend time in communities that are like minded, we develop our own language and then we begin to think this is the only right language. And in fact, when people use different language, it's clear, clearly, because they oppose what our language encodes and embodies and supports. They oppose these things. But there's other places where the words themselves encode certain values. And some people's political perspective doesn't feel well reflected in a certain term. So, you know, for example, there's sort of voter rights, voter suppression, voting integrity, trustworthy elections. What is the best name for what's going on with elections right now? And depending on what your biggest concern is, you might think voter suppression is by far the best name. Or you might think that voter security, voting security, and election security is by far the best name. So how can you have the same conversation? How do you make sure that you don't take the fact that someone's using a different name as all of a sudden, that's it, it's over. I can be certain that they believe these things that would oppose me. What I've found is that the opposite is almost always the case. There's a lot of nuance there. And by bringing your name and your concerns, mixing it in with theirs, you both get wiser and richer and realize that, oh, this is complicated. This is. I mean, I'm still. I feel really strongly about voter suppression. I feel really strongly about election security. But now I've talked to someone who's telling me that there's this other piece that's really big for them that I'm probably not thinking hard enough about.
- [40:56]
Chris Duffy
You know, we've talked a lot about your book and about these conversations, but we haven't talked a ton about the fact that you are a journalist and that you use this in your work. So I wonder how you think about your role as a journalist in effects, the ideas about supporting, trying to have better conversations and how you implement that.
- [41:12]
Monica Guzman
So it's in my years of journalism that I've learned some of the most powerful ways to really understand people. And I've taken seriously that. That's my job. My job as a journalist is understand this person, where they're coming from, why they support what they support, what have you, and then hope, hope, hope that I can do a good enough job representing that to their community so that the community can make better decisions. That's my job. So you come into this conversation seeking to understand. And one of the most effective ways to do that is to help people become storytellers. Not just, what do you think? Why do you think it? But instead, okay, I understand. This is your position. What led you to this? Tell me about that. Oh, give me an example of when that happened. And so getting people to weave their story is amazing because a really cool thing happens to your mind, too. Your mind gets out of the mode of just evaluating the goodness or badness of ideas or even the logic of them. And it goes into a mode of sort of playing someone else's movie in your head. And it goes such a long way toward that person feeling heard and you actually hearing them and actually kind of stepping into their shoes a little bit. And that unlocks so much. So that's a wonderful. A wonderful thing. And then the other is, honestly, the most powerful question that I've asked as a journalist is just simply, what are your concerns? And then you can ask the flip side of that. The brighter side of the same exact question is, what do you hope for if this happens? What do you hope to see? Either way, that gets you a sense of where people put meaning onto events and policies and ideas. It's where their meaning comes from, what their values are, what Their value hierarchies are. And man, that just brings to life a person.
- [43:00]
Chris Duffy
The show's called how to be a Better Human. What is one thing that you are personally working on to be a better human right now?
- [43:07]
Monica Guzman
Oh, my gosh, what a fun question. I am trying to be much more present with my children. The times when I have my phone and my attention is divided and they're around or my daughter comes up to show me her latest drawing. She draws and draws and draws all day long. And then I snap at her a little bit, even just a little bit, because I'm trying to finish this email. It's. Oh, it just kills me inside. And it's every time it does that, a little piece of me dies. And so I recently took all my social media and my email and took it off my phone and I put it in like a secondary old phone that's just glued to my desk and doesn't leave. And when I come upstairs from my downstairs office, I'm with my family.
- [43:51]
Chris Duffy
Well, Monica Guzman, thank you so much for being here. It has been a pleasure to talk to you and your book. I never thought of it that way. I absolutely love it. Thank you so much, Monica. It was really a pleasure.
- [44:01]
Monica Guzman
Totally thank you for having me. This was fun.
- [44:07]
Chris Duffy
That is our show for today. Thank you so much for listening to how to be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. A very big thank you to today's guest, Monica Guzman. Her book is called I Never Thought of It that how to have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times. Monica is the senior fellow for public practice. This at Braver Angels. You can find out more about their work online@braverangels.org From Ted, our show is brought to you by Jimmy Gutierrez and Anna Phelan, who disagree. Ritu Jagannath and Erica Yoon, who are trying their best to get curious about each other's positions. And Julia Dickerson, who sticks to the facts and refuses to give an opinion of any kind. And from prx, Jocelyn Gonzalez and Sandra Lopez Monsalve, who both took my number out of their cell phones and put it into an old phone that is glued to their desks. Thanks most of all to you for listening. I hope that wherever you sit on the political spectrum, you got something out of this conversation and did not once again, feel like I had infuriated you on every level. If you did enjoy the show, please leave us a positive rating and review. We would love to hear from you. And if you hated this episode, please close this app immediately and go outside until you forget that all of this has ever happened. We will be back with with more episodes for you next week. Until then, stay curious.
- [45:31]
Monica Guzman
At Chubb, we set the gold standard in insurance. We deliver tailored solutions that help protect what matters most to you backed by bold innovation and forward thinking coverage.
- [45:42]
Sponsor Announcer
That's excellence in action.
- [45:44]
Monica Guzman
Learn more@chubb.com Pura is the smart way.
- [45:47]
Rocket Money Announcer
To fragrance your home. Customize your scents with app control, schedule them to fit your life and enjoy premium fragrances that last. And here's something to celebrate when you start today, your first fragrance is free. It's the perfect time to discover why everyone's switching to Pura. But hurry, this offer is for a limited time only. Go now to pura.com and claim your free set before it's gone.
- [46:09]
Monica Guzman
Hey, I'm Trisha Hershberger, gamer, streamer and Amazon Live host. I stream about tech, gaming and the stuff I actually buy right here with my community. And Amazon Live makes it easy. Streaming, gameplay, scouting, new gear, chatting and shopping all at the same time. That's my kind of multitasking. And it all happens on Amazon Live. Shop on Amazon Live by searching Amazon Live in the Amazon Shopping app and follow your favorite creators Today.