306 - I Never Thought of it That Way - Mónica Guzmán (rebroadcast)
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Welcome to the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, episode 306. Welcome to the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, episode 306.

Precisely the types of tactics and distancing that a lot of people thought was the way to be a good person 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.

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. 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. You're really trying to save the world. They really are. But we have something like, man, it's 90, you know, 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 who,

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 truth.

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 the thing, like if you wanna make this more of a practice, if you wanna contribute to how this can change the world, check out Brave Ranges.

That organization, Braver Angels, is one of several organizations in what some are calling the bridging movement, bridging divides. Others include America Talks, Listen First, the Listen First Project, and the

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 Evergray, 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

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're 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 it. I can't say this enough. I love this book. Like I just love it. I kept really good 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 it was, I would have received it and just let them let it play out.

But you get some skills. I even briefly taught an interviewing class at my alma mater, which was in 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 and all that. So I'm just kind of gushing here as like, as a new fan of your stuff. Uh, I'm so happy that you did this book and I will proselytize it and promote it as much as possible. Yay. Oh, thank you. And it's, it's great to, 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, so many different paths and, uh,

Yeah, so 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. It doesn't matter who we are. It 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. So what got you obsessed with this early on? I know you detail it in the book a little bit. 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, um,

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 and

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 so unique in my circle that I

I had people in my circle who had Trump voters in their family, but they often didn't like them, or they brought them up 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 unbearable.

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. 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 certainly is not the way you change minds or bring people over to your side or if at a minimum work together on shared goals and problems. I love that you brought up the goal because the more that I reflect on these themes and these ideas and I see this point being made in a better and better, more articulate way from lots of corners.

That precisely the types of tactics and distancing that a lot of people thought was the way to be a good person 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 going to 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's the thing to me is just like a world that doesn't see each other. That's what we're stuck in. 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 go.

you know, rule. 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, this, 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

And I'll note that you say in the book there was a pastor who was asking people to reach out to people.

who disagree with you, they asked them, should we reach out to Satan? And he was like, maybe not start with Satan. Yeah, don't start there. 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? 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, 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 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, which is 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 and,

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, maybe you just want to learn and you're just curious. That's another reason to engage. I think for maybe the toughest part of this question is 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.

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. And it's 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. I'm not saying you bait and switched 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 and understand the value of curiosity?

And 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 that knocked you into this way of thinking? 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 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 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 shy. I just wanted to know. And so it felt almost like, yeah, 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.

Um, 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 want to, I want to mimic that accent back to them. And I have to like restrain myself because I want to try it. It's so cool. Like I want to try it. And like, no, that's weird. Don't do that. Um, 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, um,

you know, a lot of stories were 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, 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 yeah,

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 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.

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Check all of this out at kitted.shop or just click the link in the show notes. 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 the show or ever in like a public way. I'm wondering about, I'm saying this to set the open up a stage for you to tell me your inciting story. Cause here's how I got into the journalism. This is what I was like. This is what I will do this. This is the thing I want to do in my life.

I was in school to be a psychologist. I wrote an opinion piece for the paper. I liked 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, either they had fired or the actual reporter, they only had two reporters, had left. And they were like, hey, 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, meh, it's fine. And they gave me a beat. And it was Lamar County in Mississippi. And they said, uh...

The editor came up with this idea. Let's do a bunch of eccentrics in Lamar County, and each of you will get five. We'll 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? It's one of those things. For years and years and years, the highway can't be finished. So I go out there, and I...

uh, knock on the door and is a very elderly man. And he had this very sweet, like hollow, a train whistle kind of voice. And he, uh,

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, uh, it looks like it was trapped in Amber. It's still, it's still 1973 everywhere inside this house.

And I sit down and I start going through his life story. He's been a mailman for like 30 years and local. And I'm trying to get to like something. And I'm just deciding, 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 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 and the bowels of the ship that was being used as a transport that isn't always a transport. And he tiptoes through all these men and he goes to one of those doors that you have to turn and pry open and he slips out and he just looks, he tells me these watches the Panama Canal go by. And I'm taking notes on one of those old school flip book things. I'm feverishly trying to make sure I remember all this. And I asked him,

Why would you do that? Like it was, it was the first time this has happened in this experience is 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 readers, so that they would also find out that one person's humanity is a 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, and you feel that power of, 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... Oh, that's fantastic. No, there's elements I want to kind of point out about that. One is...

It doesn't sound like this was a 15 minute interview. No, no, no. Do you remember how long it was? Yeah, yeah. And the whole time was like, I don't know why you're doing this. Like, but okay, but okay. Yeah. Yeah. So it makes me think of the difference between 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 going to, I'm going to sit here. I'm going to stay. And we're going to talk about something else.

And you got your answer, but you got your answer through the person's story and 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 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 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, it's,

Our minds shift instead of hearing ideas that we should validate, which is all we do on Twitter or on social media, which is what I will judge this idea. No, this one, not that one, not 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 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 just great. And there's research, too, that shows that when we share our experiences 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. So I love that story because that is one of the things that I fell in love with in journalism as well. It's 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 is 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 responsibly represent that to the community so that you can send a message that goes far beyond that.

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. I it's, I carried that with me and it's,

It's why I'm still doing this. It's why this podcast came out of whatever I was up to. I was very happy to get a chance to return to that way of telling stories when books became open. I said, hey, will you write books?

I, uh, I'm wondering, do you have an inciting, uh, journalism story? If you don't have one or you don't want to share this by then, but 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, uh, at New Hampshire public radio. So I drove every day, an hour to the station, uh,

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 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...

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. But I had this moment of sort of being outside my own body and looking where I

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,

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, 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 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 gift of your interest in somebody else.

It's unexpected. We're all running around. We're very busy. I'll even meet friends and we have a thing we got to plan or whatever. And I'm so touched when they actually care enough to ask more than two or three questions about my day. I go, oh my gosh, let me give short answers. And then they really, really care. Wow. So curiosity is a gift. It's not just 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. Yeah. And I, 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. 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 by the book, you'll get to understand all this is about why we're polarized and.

There are so many 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 then you go through the science and everything. But when you get to bridging and then you start in the shifts, when you get to the curiosity section and I realize, oh, wow, I've been this is not a 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 don't know if, I've worked with plenty of journalists who I think get burnt out and they get on some bad beat where they're always talking about tech velorums and stuff and they lose the magic. But I've never met anyone who 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 this person. And then they'll tell you that story and they feel like,

Like once 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 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. Exactly. Or why would you think that 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, uh,

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 it remains just as reckless and irresponsible today.

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, 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 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, what 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.

I mean, you know, and being at Braver Angels where there's lots of people who've gotten to know each other across the political divide, 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 like a hundred on emotional labor just every day because you're living in a world of pure assumption you talk about this too but you're living in a world of you're so many 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 yeah it's not great and not to mention fear itself right uh

Fear is so crippling to creativity and to possibility. So if we accept fear of other people and their perspectives, you know, too widely and too readily, then we are...

And 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 can see complication around us. We can accept that. But those institutions, 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 found the source, but I love it. It's in my head. Don't waste your fears on anything but danger. You know, if you're over afraid and you see danger everywhere, you're kind of only hurting yourself. Like, you know, be careful.

My favorite part of the whole book is, for me, it was beyond your kin. I don't know why that hit me so hard, but 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 that comes to mind when it comes to this. I love this so much. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Oh, man, I love that. Yeah, so I kind of obsessed with this. I learned about the phrase beyond your ken, which is still used. 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 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 Ken. So that's what you can see.

Because it's close to you, because it's within your eyesight. 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 it's powerful. And I remember it was difficult for me to articulate in the book 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, 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,

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 ken. And you could sit and read books all day, and that's helpful. 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 write down. But I just think 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'm going to learn more than 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 eyeopening, right? We talk about eyeopening, right? These it's in our language. It clicks. All of it. Perspective. Bonds on me. Right. All these things about eyes and sight and the dawn and light, um, 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, right?

And 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. No, I love it. And I have, I have this quote pulled out. If you'll, if you'll 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 a certainty. Yeah.

You'll convince 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. 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. You have your traction model. There's definitely 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. Thank you so much, David. I really enjoyed this. This was the way to cap off my workday. I really enjoyed it. ♪♪♪

Monica Guzman's book is I Never Thought of It That Way. You can find all of her stuff at her website, moni.com.

G-U-Z-M-A-N.com. You can also find my stuff at davidmcraney.com or youarenotsosmart.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're Not So Smart podcast. For links to everything that we talked about,

head to youarenotso smart.com. There's also a link in the show notes inside your podcast player to stuff we talked about and youarenotso smart.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

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