← You Are Not So Smart
You Are Not So Smart
306 - I Never Thought of it That Way - Mónica Guzmán (rebroadcast)
00:52:11
This episode’s guest is Mónica Guzmán, the author of I Never Thought of It That Way – a book with very practical advice on how to have productive conversations in a polarized political environment via authentic curiosity about where people’s beliefs, opinions, attitudes, and values come from. It's also about how to learn from those with whom we disagree by establishing the sort of dynamic in which they will eagerly learn from us as well.
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- [00:00]
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Sponsor Representative (Kitted Shop)
You can go to kittedkitted shop and use the code Smart50Smart50 at checkout and you will get half off a set of thinking superpowers in a box.
- [00:46]
David McRaney
If you want to know more about what I'm talking about, check it out.
- [00:49]
Sponsor Representative (Kitted Shop)
Middle of the show.
- [01:14]
David McRaney
Welcome to the you are not so smart podcast, episode 306.
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Monica Guzman
Precisely the the types of tactics and distancing that a lot of people thought was the way to be a good person is is undermining our ability to persuade each other to be good people. You know, even if whoever we disagree with has the wrong idea, shaming them or distancing them or trying to be a deterrent by putting our relationship on the chopping block is not gonna work.
- [02:08]
David McRaney
That is the voice of Monica Guzman, our guest in this episode, who is the author of the book I Never Thought of it that Way. How to have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times. A wonderful book with very practical advice on how to have better conversations in a polarized political environment from both sides and how to have better conversations in general. In short, how to learn from those with whom we disagree and how to establish the sort of dynamic in which they will eagerly learn from us as well. And she should know because she is the senior fellow for public practice at Braver Angels. What is that? Here's Monica.
- [02:56]
Monica Guzman
So Braver Angels is the largest cross partisan organization working to depolarize America. So we're taking the biggest darn mission you can imagine and actually giving it a shot.
- [03:07]
David McRaney
You're really trying to save the world.
- [03:08]
Monica Guzman
You really are. But we have something like man, it's 90 chapters all across the country. Each chapter is led by equal groups of conservatives and liberals, which is hard, but, but possible. And it's it was actually founded by a marriage therapist. The idea being that there's a really good analogy between Republicans and Democrats sort of on the brink and couples on the brink of divorce. And so that's the methods in there's something like 50 offerings, workshops and skills trainings and live debates where the point isn't to win, but to do a collective search for truth across the divide. But all those programs are about finding a better way to actually see past the division and the animosity to who and what is really there, you know, who your neighbors really are, what these different beliefs really are, and then bringing that back into our communities so that we can get more done. So I'm extremely proud to be part of it. It's very easy to get involved. And yeah, there's tens of thousands of members all over the country and it's growing. So this is, this is the thing. Like, if you, if you want to make this, you know, more of a practice, if you want to contribute to how this can change the world, check out Braver Angels.
- [04:35]
David McRaney
That organization. Braver Angels is one of several organizations and what some are calling the bridging movement. Bridging divides. Others include America Talks, Listen first, the Listen First Project, the Millennial Action Project, and Intelligence Squared, which I just appeared on the Intelligence Squared podcast talking about these things. All of these organizations. We will discuss all of them in a future episode. But in this episode we sit down with Monica Guzman, who was a 2019 fellow at the Henry M. Jackson foundation where she studied social and political division, a 2016 fellow at the Nyman foundation for Journalism at Harvard where she studied how journalists can better meet the needs of a participatory public. She co founded the award winning Seattle newsletter the Evergrey, was named one of the 50 most influential women in Seattle, and has served twice as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize. Her latest book, I Never Thought of it that Way, outlines how to avoid dead end arguments and truly bridge divides through curiosity and conversation. The kind of conversation where you listen to, understand rather than wait to strike so you can prove you are right and they are wrong, even if you know they're wrong factually speaking. We'll get into it. Let's pick her brain. I absolutely. I can't get, I can't say this enough. I love this book. Like, I just love it. I kept reading it, thinking on several levels and it's so thorough and it's so from the heart. I also come from journalism world and worked in newspapers for a long time and yeah, right away I connected with you on what you get as a journalist is you get to talk to people and try to understand them without judgment. But then when you get their story, all you want to do is can I give that story to the audience in the way that I would received it and just let them let it play out, but you get some skills. I even briefly taught a interviewing class at my alma mater, which was. And some of the bullet points throughout your book where you're like, this is a good thing. Even when you talked about using pregnant pauses, like, just let it come out. I just totally connected on all that. So I'm just kind of gushing here as, like, as a new, like, fan of your stuff. I'm so happy that you did this book, and I will proselytize it and promote it as much as possible.
- [07:02]
Monica Guzman
Yay. Oh, thank you. And it's great to connect with a fellow journalist on this too. People who are interested in this type of thing, improving communication and the ways we understand each other come from so many different paths. And, uh, yeah. So I, I, I connect especially well, I think, just with. Oh, yeah. People for whom it has been a profession and a craft and something taken seriously. This idea that we are capable of understanding each other, doesn't matter who we are, doesn't matter how different we are, and that it's important to tell the stories that make our world go round and that the people who make up the world are the sources of those stories. And so therefore, we ought to be able to learn from each other and figure this stuff out. So. Yeah, that's, that's great. Yeah.
- [07:50]
David McRaney
So what got you obsessed with this early on? I know you, you detail it in the book a little.
- [07:54]
Monica Guzman
Yeah. I mean, you use the word obsessed, and it was an obsession. And at first it was something I was ashamed is the wrong word. But I was feeling very alone. So there were moments where in Seattle media and Seattle journalism, I had created this newsletter for the city and put a lot of passion into it, had a great team. And I kept feeling this pressure from so many corners of the city to, you know, not just to take a stand, but to be an advocate politically on one side of everything. And I could sense all the narratives that were building up and were grabbing hold of Everybody after the 2016 election. That came from a lot of political fear and angst and sense of tension. That's really understandable. But I just sort of watched what I thought was, I mean, a city that I still see and love as one that's very compassionate and very smart, I think kind of lose itself in those narratives. So. Yeah. But at first I was like, is something wrong with me? Am I a bad person? Because I don't like this. It doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem complete and kind of like you, I did feel that my relationship with my parents, you know, who, unlike me, supported Trump, almost felt like it was. It was so unique in my circle that, you know, I had people in my family, in my circle who had Trump voters in their family, but they often didn't like them, you know, or they brought them up, you know, with a sense of derision or distancing, whereas I would do the opposite. I felt obligated to not deny the close relationship I have with my parents merely because it was cool to do so at a time when these political views seemed totally worth trashing. And that's just the end of it. And I just felt like that wasn't complete. That's not the whole story. So, yeah, there was a lot there. And even though I did detail it in the book, it feels like there's even more to mine.
- [10:03]
David McRaney
You get there at some point where you talk about how the scope of polarization can be summed up a little bit or summed up a lot in Unfollow me if you disagree. I have people who moved away from MAGA world on social media who are like, slowly clipping away everybody, and I'm watching you very carefully, and I'm going to make sure if you say something, I know that you can't be on my social media anymore. It's reached the point now where, like, yeah, I'm not going home for Thanksgiving. I'm not going home for this. Because at this point, I mean, why would I. And I, I'm. I feel that same crunchy awfulness inside of me of, this is not. This certainly is not the way you change minds or bring people over to your side or, or if at the meta minimum, work together on shared goals and problems.
- [10:52]
Monica Guzman
I love that you brought up the goal because the, the more that I, the more that I reflect on. On these themes and these ideas and, and I see this point being made in a better and better, more articulate way from lots of corners that, that precisely the. The types of tactics and distancing that a lot of people thought was the way to be a good person is. Is undermining our ability to persuade each other to be good people. You know, even if whoever we disagree with has the wrong idea, shaming them or distancing them or trying to be a deterrent by putting our relationship on the chopping block is not gonna work. Especially if their political view, you know, comes from a sense of resonance with their own concerns or their own experiences. And maybe those concerns just haven't been well addressed. Other places, who knows? But that, that's the thing to me is just like a world that doesn't see each other. That's what we're stuck in. And. And that's what I want to help us all. You know, that's what we all ought to try to do, is make a world that sees itself. That's a curious world to me. A world that has its eyes wide open and can see itself and doesn't just let the imagination and projections, you know, rule.
- [12:12]
David McRaney
Yeah. Here's something that I get asked all the time when I go, when I'm around promoting how minds change. And this is something that I still wrestle with. What's the right way to respond to this? And I want to hear what you have to say about it, is why should I reach out to people who are. Who I feel are putting harm in the world? Or even more so if you're in a marginalized community, why should I reach out to someone who is actively helping me be more marginalized? Like, why should I extend anything to that? Why should I build a bridge to that world that seems counter to my interests? And I'll note that you say in the book, there's a. A pastor who is asking people to reach out to people who disagree with you. They asked him, should we reach out to Satan? And he was like, maybe not start with Satan.
- [12:52]
Monica Guzman
Yeah, don't start there.
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David McRaney
What about that? That's a concern that comes up a lot. People ask me about this a lot, and my thinking on it is slowly evolving. And basically I'm just trying to ask people who are in the same space, what do you think about this?
- [13:03]
Monica Guzman
Yeah. Oh, I love that you asked that. Because it's also a question dancing in my brain, and it's one of those that doesn't have a final answer. It feels like an open bowl in my mind. And it just continues to put stuff in and it's a little soup and it's simmering, you know, and there's just more and more ingredients to it. So the moment in the book, that was John Powell, the head of the Othering and Belonging Institute, who gives that anecdote that a pastor asked him, John, are you saying I should bridge with the devil? And John says, maybe don't start there. And then he. Yeah, and then he talks about short bridges that you don't have to start by going to, you know, the Nazi. The person who's way at the other end, the person who is clearly oppressing you in your mind. There's no other way to think about it, that it often feels like in this work, that's what's being asked, that we have to wake up like Zen masters of this stuff and then go to the hardest possible conversation. To me, what it says that that's the question we get, is how afraid people are of each other, Just how afraid we are. Because I see this with my kids, I see this with everyone. When someone is really resistant to something, they'll think of the worst possible scenario and draw out that case study to argue about. So it's very telling to me that we think about the worst possible scenario. There's a lot of research out there that I'm sure you know about, too, that shows that we tend to exaggerate the level of extremism on the other side and how many people are truly that bad. So that's one thing is you pick up the signals from your world without checking it with the reality of a real living human being. And you're likely to think that there's a lot more evil out there than there really is. And sometimes the only way to know is to approach and see, oh, they're just a human like me most of the time. Like, so there's that. The other thing is when John says, go for the short bridges, not those long bridges, he says, and after a while, where you're doing a lot of those short bridges, you may ask yourself who you're calling the devil. So that part is the trickiest because I think some, you know, sometimes it's. It's. People speak with a lot of certainty about, you know, the beliefs they see around them. And if someone holds that belief, they are obviously terrible people. And that's it. That's it. There's not a lot of room for nuance there or. Well, but let me check my assumptions, you know, a little bit. And so I also talk about how, and I think this is really true, that whoever is underrepresented in your life will be overrepresented in your imagination. So we're not robots walking around that can very logically say, well, I don't really know this, so I'm just going to leave a blank space in my head about this particular belief or this particular kind of person. That's not how we work. We fill in those blanks and with stuff we make up or, like, hints or assumptions or guesses. So that's the game, I think, if we want to see the world as it is instead of, you know, what a divided world makes it out to be, we have to engage and Then the other thing, I think more directly to your question is because you asked, you know, why. Why would you talk to someone who seems just harmful, holds these harmful ideas? And it kind of depends. So, like, if you want to make, if you want those ideas to go away, then you want to be able to persuade people that they're bad ideas. And if you want to do that, the best way to do that is to engage folks who hold those ideas and get to know them a little bit. And again, I'm not talking about go to the hardest possible situation you can think of, but just little by little, try to understand what connects. You may learn that those ideas aren't as bad as you thought in every single instance. Who knows? You may, you may learn that there's like, oh, there's a variable I hadn't considered. There's a reason somebody might hold this belief that is not that evil. Interesting. Let me think about that. Who knows? So you'll learn and you'll go back so that you can, you can persuade that way. If you are coming in, coming into it as an activist, and you really want to, you know, you, yeah, you really want to change minds, and you're out there, you know, protesting and sloganizing, that's great. But if you don't understand the people who don't agree with you, then your activism is not going to be very smart. It's going to be reactionary. And then there's, you know, maybe you just want to learn and you're just curious. That's another reason to engage. I think for the. Maybe the toughest part of this question is if, if, like, if it's not just a political disagreement, but it's. They think that I. There's something wrong with me. Right. They think that gay people are bad and I'm gay. They seem apparently racist, and I am this other race, that one is really, really tough. And at the end of the day, I really think it's true that nobody can force anybody to have any of these conversations. You have to know that you're ready. But what I keep getting asked is people want a firm red line. They want me to say, if you are this identity, don't ever talk to that identity. Don't ever do it. It's always going to be harmful. And I won't say it because it's not true. We have so many examples of people who have crossed long bridges, who've been able to do it and have changed the world, done incredible things that I don't want to say that. That's something people ought never to consider. I think it's up to you. But yeah, I'm just not going to say that there's a hard red line for everybody. There just isn't.
- [18:37]
David McRaney
You say, I have a quote pulled here, which is the curiosity is big. It is badass. I'm sure many interviewers have repeated this back to you, but the second sentence is what kills me. At its weakest, it keeps our minds open so they don't shrink. At its strongest, it whipped us into a frenzy of unstoppable learning. This is such an unexpected part of what this book was actually about. Like, I'm not saying you bait and switch me, but I was pleasantly surprised. Like, oh, we're moving into this whole other territory. This isn't really about persuasion. This is about having good conversations. But then it starts turning into how do you become a curious person, understand the value of curiosity? And you do. You do your due diligence and go into polarization and everything in your thoughts on what's driving a lot of that and a lot of research too. But this eagerness to hold it as a high value, to hold it as your code, Curiosity first and come what may after. Was this always part of you as a person? Was this you as a child? Or did something happen to you at an experience? Experience that knocked you into this way of thinking?
- [19:34]
Monica Guzman
Yeah, there's some scenes that come up for me. I was pretty shy for a while as a kid, so I really didn't want to approach people. I would get really nervous and kind of scared and freaked out about it. I, I do remember very clearly when I started journalism internships in college, freshman year, and it became really clear that I was going to have to pick up that phone and call somebody. And I just, I just kind of pushed through that heart pounding anxiety because I really, really wanted to know. I wanted to know what people thought. I wanted to hear from them, I wanted to tell their stories. And then almost without noticing, you know, after a little while of that, I became kind of the opposite of, of shy. I was just, I just wanted to know. And so it felt almost like, yeah, my, my apprehension, you know, went up against my curiosity and my curiosity won. And so I sensed my personality sort of go through this shift from when I was a kid onward. I also, yeah, I think I've observed myself getting interested in things fairly easily. And the main vehicle for me to get interested in something is if someone else is interested in it. It's like a chameleon type of thing. I've Caught myself. This is an aside, but I've. I've caught myself for years. If I talk to somebody and they have a really unique accent, I wanna. I wanna mimic that accent back to them. And I have to, like, restrain myself because I wanna try it. It's so cool. Like, I wanna try it. And like, no, that's weird. Don't do that. But. But yeah. When. In fact, that's my. The thing that I think got me into journalism and kept me there so much is a lot of stories or just about learning about why people do what they do. And when you understand what drives somebody, it's so infectious. And then I just want to ask question after question after question. Like, it's so much better than, like, reading a book about this topic. It's like I'm talking to a person who loves this and has dedicated themselves to something about it. Wow. And the. You know, the sparks are firing in my brain and I sort of disappear into it. And that's really it. I disappear into some of those conversations. So. One thing that was tough in the book to just come out and say because it's sort of fraught when you consider political polarization and everything, is that this is fun, you guys. Like, this is delightful, believe it or not. Even. Even in conversations across, like, huge divides that are really, really tough, you'll be surprised. There will be moments of delight and discovery. And you can't, like, come out and say that because people go, you're crazy. Like, no, no, no, no, no. It's hard. It'll be tough. And there will be. There, you know, you'll yell and scream and then things will be triggered in both of you, probably. But. But there also be moments where you're like, huh? No way. Wait, say more about that. What's that about? Dad, you know, or whoever. So that I've. I've always been lost in those kinds of conversations. That's. I live for those. There was a story in the book that I think didn't make it in. Or did it? Maybe it did, actually, but it was. Yeah. When I was studying in England, and I remember this long conversation with friends that I had met there. And we watched the sun come up outside our flat. And we were still talking, and we just watched the sun come up. It was all night. Talking about everything. Life, you know, the meaning of life, politics and religion, all that stuff you're not supposed to talk about. We went there and it felt so. We felt so connected. And to this day, that's one of the most amazing experiences of my life.
- [23:07]
David McRaney
And now we take a break from our program for a word from our sponsors.
- [23:16]
Monica Guzman
When work gets crazy, I like to.
- [23:18]
Sponsor Representative (Justworks)
Stop by the bar after have a few cold ones.
- [23:21]
Monica Guzman
I don't drink at all until 4 o'.
- [23:24]
David McRaney
Clock.
- [23:24]
Monica Guzman
We limit ourselves to one bottle of wine a night.
- [23:28]
David McRaney
Excessive drinking has a way of sneaking up on us. A few drinks, a few nights a week, it can add up. And suddenly we're at greater risk for long term problems like heart disease, cancer and depression. Reason enough to rethink the Drink more@rethinktodrink.com NoHE Initiative what makes a leader?
- [23:46]
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- [24:49]
David McRaney
Okay, here's the.
- [24:49]
Sponsor Representative (Kitted Shop)
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- [25:33]
David McRaney
Out the kit that you want, there's tons of them.
- [25:36]
Sponsor Representative (Kitted Shop)
And the School of Thought will send you a kit of very nice, beautifully designed, well curated, high quality. Each one about double the size of a playing card, matte cello 400 GSM.
- [25:47]
David McRaney
Stock prompt cards and a nice magnetically.
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Sponsor Representative (Kitted Shop)
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- [26:25]
David McRaney
Here's some ideas.
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- [26:54]
David McRaney
So if you're the kind of person.
- [26:56]
Sponsor Representative (Kitted Shop)
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- [27:54]
David McRaney
And now we return to our program. Can I share something with you? I've never had an opportunity. I've never shared this story on this show or ever in like a public way. I'm wondering, I'm saying this set to open up a stage for you to you to tell me your inciting story because here's how I got into the journalism. This is how I was like this is. I will do this. This is the thing I want to do in my life. I would took it. I was, I was in school to be a psychologist. I took a, I was, I wrote a opinion piece for the paper. I liked it. The validation that came from that. That's a whole story. But I was like, I'll do an internship for a little newspaper to see if I would like to do this for a living. And when I got there, they had either they had fired or the. Or the actual reporter. They only had two reporters had left. And they're like, hey, would you just. Would you just take over the job while you're here? Like, here's a camera, here's a desk, here's a computer. We'll give you assignments. Like, I've never done this. And they were like, man, it's fine. And they gave me a beat. And it was Lamar county in Mississippi. And they said, hey, the editor came up with this idea. Let's do a five. Let's do. Let's do a bunch of exceptions centrics in Lamar county. And each of you will get five. It would do a nice special section. And they assigned me. One of the people they assigned me was. They were building a highway, and they couldn't finish it because this guy wouldn't sell his house. And it was in the way. And they were like, you just go out there and ask him why? Like, it's one of those things. Like, it's for years and years and years. The highway can't be finished. So I go out there and I knock on the door, and it's a very elderly man. And he had this very sweet, like, hollow train whistle kind of voice. And he. He was. Right off the bat, he's like, I don't know why you'd want to interview me. He's like, I'm not an interesting person. I was like, well, it's the house thing I'm interested in, you know, why you're doing this. He goes, well, I don't even know if I know why I'm doing it. And it's like, well, let's just sit down and talk. I go in. His house is. It looks like it was trapped in amber. It's still. Still 1973. Everywhere inside this house. And. And I sit down and. And I just start going through his life story. He's been a mailman for, like 30 years and local and the only. I'm trying to get to like something. And I'm just decided, you know, there may not be an answer to this. I think maybe I'll just tell his life story if I can get some small version of it. And in the telling of his life story, he talks about how he was in World War II. He was coming home from the theater, from the war, and he was on a ship, and it was going through the Panama Canal, and he woke up in the middle of the night, and everybody was in their underwear on those green cots in the bowels of the ship that was being used as a transport that isn't always a transport. And he tiptoed, toes through all these men, and he goes to one of those doors you have to turn and pry open, and he slips out. And he just looks. He tells me these. He watches the Panama Canal go by. And I'm taking notes on one of those old school flip book things, and I'm feverishly trying to make sure I remember all this. And I asked, why would you do that? Like, it was. This was the first time this had happened in this experience, in this possible profession. I was just like, why would you do that? And he soberly said to me, I knew I should pay a close attention to this because when I got home, I was never leaving again. So this would be the only time I ever get to see anything like this. And then I felt it right then. I know why you're not selling this house. I know exactly what this is all about. And I know why you were a mailman here for 20 years or 30 years. I know why this house is trapped in amber. Because when your wife passed away, you didn't want to change it. Home means something to you that it doesn't mean to me. And maybe I should think about that. And your book reminded me of this very much so. In that that conversation opened up a whole world to me that I was unaware. That I was unaware of. And I felt charged with so much responsibility to tell that story to some audience, some reader, so that they would also find out that one person's humanity is part of the secret to all of our humanity. And that no matter who they are or what it's about, this is just about some house this guy wouldn't sell. But that's not what it's about. And that's how I got started into this whole thing. And I feel like you feel that power of that. I feel like there's. It wasn't until I read your book that I was like, oh, that's why I'm obsessed with this other thing now. Because I feel like all y' all need to understand that there's a power in having conversations with people who have completely different viewpoints, different perspectives, different lives, different values, different motivations, even if you disagree, maybe especially if you disagree. So I just wanted to tell you that story. I've never.
- [32:46]
Monica Guzman
Oh, that's fantastic. No, there's elements I want to. I want to kind of point out about. That one is it doesn't sound like this was a 15 minute interview.
- [32:54]
David McRaney
No.
- [32:55]
Monica Guzman
Do you remember how long it was?
- [32:56]
David McRaney
Yeah, yeah. And the whole time was like, I don't know why you're doing this, like, but okay. But okay.
- [33:02]
Monica Guzman
Yeah, yeah. So it makes me think of the difference between we. We. We want everything to be a result of, you know, reason and logic. Why did you do this? I demand an answer. Give me an answer. And when the person's answer doesn't satisfy or doesn't complete things, we just kind of get mad, you know, and we insist and we go, well, clearly you're wrong or whatever, but just sitting and hearing about somebody because you had made that choice, like, well, the answer is not forthcoming, but I can still. There's a story still for me to get. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna sit here, I'm gonna stay, and we're gonna talk about something else. And you got your answer, but you got your answer through the person's story and through. Through learning more about who they are. And that's so important and so endangered. You know, even the kind of journalism that you and I might have come up in is endangered. We know this. You know, local journalism is in a bad, bad shape right now. The kind of journalism that takes time is in a bad shape right now. You know, the national outlets have all the resources and they're doing a great job and all of that, but it's just less and less reason to get past reason to hear people's stories, even just. I. I don't know. I mean, it's interesting. You said you haven't told that story, you know, much, but you told it so vividly. Like, I was there. I was there with you. And that's beautiful, too, because when people get the opportunity to do that for each other, our minds shift. Instead of hearing ideas that we should validate, which is all we do, you know, on Twitter or on social media, which is. I will judge this idea now this one, now that one, now that one. Our brain shifts into a completely different mode when what we're doing is visualizing someone else's experience. And when insights come from that, it's awesome. It's completely different. And you. You can relate or you can connect without being able to articulate how or why. It doesn't need to have a reason. It just happens. And it's. It's Just great. And we've. We. There's research, too, that shows that when we share our experiences and we. And we tell stories, our moral reasoning becomes a lot more understandable by other people. So even if we could articulate the logic of every single thing that we believe, if that's the only language we used with each other, we wouldn't get very far, you know? So I love that story because that, that is one of the things that I fell in love with in journalism as well, is like, there's nothing but surprises here, folks. Nothing but surprises. If I made the stupid mistake of thinking, like, oh, this is going to be easy, I know exactly what this person's going to give me, which unconsciously I would do all the time, right. Even if I didn't want to, and then I would just sit there, like, in awe. Well, you did what? Oh, and then you're somewhere else. And then. I love what you said about you felt this obligation once you had discovered that to. To responsibly represent that to the community so that you can send a message that goes far beyond, this is why this person isn't selling his house or whatever for the highway. It's more about. This is. This is humanity. Let me give you a. A, A taste. You know, this is great. That's. Oh, that's cool.
- [36:09]
David McRaney
I. It's. I carried that with me. And it's. It's what, it's what. It's why I'm still doing this. That's why this podcast is. This is something you came out of. Whatever I was up to. And, like, I was very happy to get a chance to return to that way of telling stories. When books became opa, said, hey, will you write books? I. I'm wondering, do you have an inciting journalism story? If you don't have one or you don't want to share, that's fine.
- [36:32]
Monica Guzman
But no, I mean, I remember the moment where I was like, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life. And that was. Yeah. So freshman year of college, I did an unpaid summer internship at New Hampshire Public Radio. So I drove every day an hour to the station. And it was super hard for me just because I was, again, a little bit shy and always afraid of being judged poorly for what I was doing and all of that, and kind of an overachiever at heart and trying to just do the best work I could. And anyway, they. They said, well, you know, Monica, you've been doing all these little spots. Why don't you try to do like a Longer feature, you know, like seven minutes. Like a nice seven minute feature. It takes a lot of reporting. And I ended up doing it on the rise of independent movie theaters. This was when a movie called My Big Fat Greek Wedding had just come out. Do you remember that movie? And there was. There was like independent movies. It was this whole thing. So I learned about this tiny theater. Where was it called? Oh, my gosh, the Wilton Town Hall Theater, I think it was called, in Wilton, New Hampshire. And it was built in like a former church or something, and it was independently owned and operated. And so there I went with my recorder and it was a showing of my big frat Greek Wedding at night. And I was going to interview the owner after the movie and I thought, I'll get some tape, you know, of people talking about the movie and why they like the theater because it's apparently beloved. And then I'll talk with the owner and then I'll go home. And it was. I don't know how long into talking with the owner. It felt like hours. We were out on the stone steps in front of this old building that housed this one screen theater. And I remember the moment, the moment was, I'm sitting there next to him. Time has disappeared. It has been a while since I thought about what time it is or whatever, but I had this moment of sort of being outside my own body and looking where I noticed I was looking up, I think it was fairly tall. I was looking up at him and he was looking up kind of at the sky. And he was kind of lost in his own story. He was lost in his own story. It was. Now that I think back on it, I'm like, no one had ever asked him this many questions about why he started this movie theater and why, you know, I. I was curious and I was like, oh, my gosh, you know, at first it was like, oh, you know, tell me about this theater. And then I could see his passion and his love and how much he loved his community and how the theater was partly like a love letter to them and, you know, how hard it is to keep this kind of business going, but how much fulfillment he gets into it. But it was the moment when I saw that he was lit, that he had discovered pieces of his story that he hadn't realized were there just because I was asking him questions. And it was so. He was so joyful and there was so much delight in that. And meanwhile, I'm over here hypnotized, you know, taking notes and recording, being like, this is. And. And I Just thought, that's it. I can't do anything else. Like whatever I do, it has to involve this. And it's made me think of somebody the other day called curiosity selfish to me. And they didn't, they didn't mean it as like a derogatory thing, like, oh, curiosity selfish, you know, it means that you're learning, you know, you want to make yourself better. And I was like, no, dude, it bothered me. And now I know why it bothers me. Actually, now I have realized why it bothers me. Because curiosity is a gift. The, the gift of your interest in somebody else. It's unexpected. We're all, we're all running around, we're very busy. You know, I, I'll even meet friends and like, we have a thing we gotta plan or whatever. And I'm so touched when they actually care enough to ask like more than two or three questions about my day. I go, oh my gosh, let me give short answers because. And then they really, really care. Wow. You know, so curiosity is a gift. You know, it's not just self selfish. I just want to improve myself or whatever. It's. I want to connect, I want to, I want to learn about this other person and then that person learns about themselves. So journalism also revealed all that to me.
- [40:30]
David McRaney
Yeah. And I felt this in the telling of your book. I don't know if you know this or this was intentional or I'm just saying something. Yeah, yeah, dude. Like that's what the point of the book is. This is like you wanting to give that gift to all of us and giving some guidelines to kind of bootstrap people in. You do all sorts of things. You give us all sorts of nice words like the SOS model and like everyone buy the book, you'll get. You understand what all this is about, why we're polarized. There's so many incredible, incredible turns of phrase in there. I've got these notes like political. I began to see political polarization as the problem that eats other problems. The monster who convinces us that the monsters are us. And you go through the science and everything, but when you get to bridging and then you start and the shifts when you get to the curiosity section, and I realize, oh, wow, I've been. This is not the pill in the pie. This is the whole pie. This is what she was going for. And it's like a secret that people who work in journalism get to know. And I, I don't know if, if I, I've worked with plenty of journalists who I think like get burnt out in some. They get on some bad beat where they're always talking about tech valorums and you know, stuff and they, they lose the magic. But I've never met anyone who wasn't. Doesn't have a couple stories that they'll sit and tell you. They always start with, well, I met this guy or I met this lady, or I met the first person. And then they'll tell you that story and they feel like, like one, they had that story, they have to keep sharing it. And I feel like you're advocating in this book for you can do this, everyone can do this. And we can walk around with this, a duffel bag full of each other's perspectives and experiences. And each person is a piece of the puzzle. Each person is another jigsaw to slot in place. And why would you not share that with everybody? It's a very big puzzle.
- [42:11]
Monica Guzman
Exactly. Or why would you think that you're, you're done knowing anything? And in particular right now we are, you know, justifiably and understandably obsessed with the truth of facts of events and their interpretations. But we are not anywhere near as concerned as we ought to be with the truth of people's perspectives. We failed at that. Journalists have failed at that, you know, gauge gate, like looking at the research people are so. It's like a funhouse mirror. Right. For some reason we are extraordinarily misinformed about other people's true perspectives. And I remember when I was a younger journalist, there were sessions at journalism conferences about fear mongering and how dangerous it is and how careful we ought to be. All those sessions have disappeared. It's become cool to fear monger in certain ways and, and it remains just as, as reckless and irresponsible. Yeah, it's just, it seems really cool these days to know who, who you are going to have nothing to do with. And it's so tragic. It's so tragic because. Because it, it. In order to think, in order to believe that that's a good thing to do, you have to believe that you already know everything you need to know about other people. But actually you're extraordinarily deceived. We all are. We all are so wrong about other people. And I don't know if you get this question, but I often get asked about how exhausting it is to cross divides. You know, the emotional labor of some of these conversations, which. Good point. The expectation of emotional labor is so interesting to me because I think that the assumption people make when they say it's going to be too emotionally laborious for me to have these conversations at all. I think that, that they forget that we're already doing emotional labor all the time when we live with so much anxiety based on projections of people's beliefs and where they come from based on unreality about it, that by not correcting it with reality, by not approaching each other so that that correction is possible, we end up living every single day with more anxiety than is warranted. So does that to me is the thing is like, yeah, okay, sure, I can see that it's emotionally laborious, of course, to have certain conversations and again, you have to decide which ones you have and don't cool. But what I'm telling you is.
- [44:32]
David McRaney
What.
- [44:32]
Monica Guzman
If it's just the opposite? What if by having the conversations, and this has been the case for me, the volume gets turned down in your head on a lot of this stuff that, I mean, you know, and, and being at Braver Angels, where there's lots of people who've gotten to know each other across the political divide, that's, that's the overwhelming experience is that once we get to know each other, we're like, you're not even that evil. Well. Huh. And so once you get to know one person who you thought was going to be terrible and wasn't, or their belief malevolent and well, it's a little more complicated than that. Then you look around and you go, huh, well, all these other things that I'm saying, I don't have to believe them either. Maybe I'm missing a lot there too. Your anxiety level lowers. So that's the thing about emotional labor is like, actually maybe it's just the opposite. And by trying some of this, you will end up doing a lot less emotional labor than you're doing right now. Your emotional labor right now is not zero, you know, depending on where you are on this. And some people are woof, like a hundred on emotional labor just every day.
- [45:33]
David McRaney
Because you're living in a world of pure assumption. You talk about this too, but you're living in a world of. You have so many assumptions of how the world is, and you're living in this false certainty that can only come out of living, having no information about what's actually happening around you.
- [45:47]
Monica Guzman
Yeah, it's not great. And not to mention fear it's self. Right. Fear is so crippling to creativity and to possibility. So if we accept fear of other people and their perspectives, you know, too, too widely and too readily, then we are sabotaging our own ability to get creative and to work together and to give our politicians signals that they can do the same. Or our media signals that yes, we, we can under, we can, we can see complication around us. We, we can accept. But those institutions have, they're mirrors of us. They have a really hard time behaving in a way that we can't. And so that's why I just think all this sort of starts at the baseline level. But, but fear makes us stupid. We don't think straight. It really does. It really does. And fear keeps us safe. Right. But if we are miscalculating that in our heads, it really hurts us. There's a quote on another podcast. I never, I never found the source, but I love it. It's in my head. Don't waste your fears on anything but danger. You know, if, if you're over afraid and you see danger everywhere, you're kind of only hurting yourself. Like, you know, be careful.
- [47:13]
David McRaney
My favorite part of the whole book is, for me, it was beyond you'd get. I don't know why that hit me so hard, but I, I really like it. I took a separate notebook out and wrote a little note to myself that you have to follow this down some rabbit hole. Please just say anything comes to mind when it comes to this. I love this so much. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
- [47:30]
Monica Guzman
Oh, man, I love that. Yeah. So I kind of obsessed with this. I, I learned about the phrase beyond, beyond your ken, which is still used. It's. It's Scottish, but it's pretty endangered. You know, it's not going to probably last that much longer. But it comes from a nautical term. Ken is the, the distance you can see if you're out on the water, on a boat or whatever. The distance you can see out to the horizon. That's. That's ken. So that's what you can see, right, because it's close to you, because it's within your, your eyesight. Beyond. Beyond my ken became a phrase that was not about physical sight, but the sight of your knowledge. Meaning if it's beyond my ken, it's beyond my experience, it's beyond my knowledge. I can't have any expertise in it. I'm not very competent in it. It's just beyond my ken. What I love is that it started as that nautical term about physical sight based on proximity to you. And, and it's powerful. And I remember it was difficult for me to articulate in the book, like, why this is so cool, because normally we think of knowledge as Sort of unbounded. We don't, we don't combine kind of our experience and our eyeball and where it is with the reach of our knowledge, with, with the. But it does. All of our knowledge has abound, you know, beyond which it's difficult to go unless you make the journey, unless you really get out there and you chart a course and you go. And so that, that's what I think it is with, with people is like, you know, we're millions and millions of people who all have completely different paths through this world. And if we want to get closer to the truth of the world, it really helps to go and learn from other people's perspectives because your own. There's so much beyond your ken. There's so much beyond your can. And you could sit and read books all day and that's, that's helpful. You know, you get a lot of perspectives that way too. But you miss the connection, you miss the relationship that can deliver so much more of the knowledge that people may not be able to, like, write down. Right. But I, Yeah, I just think that that, that version of knowledge that, that it's like, here's where I am and here's what is proximate to me, and if I am going to learn more, that I have to travel and even then it's, it's limiting. But if I can light up, even, even step into somebody else's point of view for a moment in a conversation, just an instant of that insight crossing over into my mind. Like, it's so eye opening, right? We talk about eye opening. Like these. It's in our language. It clears, clicks, all of it. Perspective on me, right? All these things about eyes and sight and the dawn and light, the light bulb, you know, we keep making it about sight because that's what it's about. It's what you can see and what you can't see. And, and wisdom comes from being aware of what you can't see. A lot of times we're not aware of it, so we don't even know that. Maybe it'd be good to go and turn on a light over there. We just go, we already know. No, you don't. No, you don't. Like, be humble. You know, there's so much we don't know. That's really where it all begins.
- [50:40]
David McRaney
No, I love it. And I have, I have this quote pulled out. If you'll. If you'll please entertain me. It's weird to do this. These are your words. It's weird to do anything drastic when you can barely make out the thing that's scaring you. So you'll do something to resolve that. You'll manufacture certainty. You'll convince yourself yourself that the shape you see beyond your kin fits the description of that sea monster everyone in your silo has been buzzing about. And you will fight, flee or rage accordingly. So good. It's so good. And where that is in the book, like you really build up to that and then you then you take the momentum of that forward. I haven't even gone into like I took all these notes and didn't use any of them about mining the gap and you have your attraction model. There's that finally made social media make total sense to me about having time, attention, parity, containment and embodiment. And your typical social media interaction has very low levels of all those things. Just a phone call has higher levels than those assumption spirals wanting to win in online debates. It's everything you could ever want. It's a fantastic kitchen sink full of stuff that I hope everybody reads.
- [51:43]
Monica Guzman
Thank you so much David. I really enjoyed this. This was this is the way to cap off my workday that I really enjoyed.
- [52:04]
David McRaney
Monica Guzman's book is I never thought of it that way. You can find all of her stuff at her website M O N I G U Z M A N. You can also find my stuff@davidmcraney.com or you are not so smart.com my book is how minds change and you can get it on audiobook everywhere now read by me. And I really did read this book in sort of a performative way because I wanted you to really be there with me on the ground as I relived the adventures of writing that book while reading it out loud into a microphone in New Orleans, Louisiana. That is it for this episode of the you are not so Smart podcast. For links to everything that we talked about, head to you are not so smart dot com. There's also a link in the show Notes inside your podcast player to stuff we talked about and you are not so smart dot com. You'll also find a link to the homepage for how minds change and a link to my newsletter disambiguation and a link to an article I just wrote. For big think about intellectual humility for all the past episodes, go to Stitchers, SoundCloud, Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, Audible, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or you are not so smart.com follow me on Twitter avidmcraney. Follow the ShowtsmartBlog. We're also on Facebook at you are not so smart. You are not so smart if you'd like to support this opportunity operation, help make it better, pay for things, pay for features, go to patreon.com you are not so smart. Pitching in any amount will get you the show ad free, but the higher amounts get your posters, T shirts, signed books and more. The opening music is Clash by Caravan palace and the best way to support this podcast is to just tell everyone you know about it. Help people get on board and get subscribed and check back in about two weeks for a fresh new episode.
- [54:14]
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