Mónica Guzmán Talks About Polarization and its Antidotes For Journalists and the Rest of Us

Heidi: Hi. This is Heidi Burgess, and I'm here today with my partner, Guy Burgess. We're with Beyond Intractability, and we're delighted to be talking to Mónica Guzmán, who has been working on efforts to get people to converse better and understand each other better for many years.

She's written a best-selling book called I Never Thought About It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Deeply Divided Times, and I want to talk about that notion of fearless conversations in a bit. She's also founder and CEO of an organization called Reclaim Curiosity, and part of what she does with that is a podcast — which she recently restarted — called A Braver Way, in which she tries to have fearless and curious conversations that are surprising. I gather you hope that viewers are surprised and encouraged to have similar conversations, but we'll talk about that more too.

Rather than asking if there's anything I missed, I guess my first question is to ask you to talk more about your background — what got you interested in doing this work, and how did you get to where you are?

Mónica: Thank you, and it's really great to be with you both today. This is just awesome. So I got to this work two ways — there was a professional path and a personal path.

The most powerful was the personal path. I'm in a politically divided family, like so many people are, of Mexican immigrants. I came to the country when I was about five, lived in Texas for a while, then moved to New England. My parents became citizens — they took the naturalization test and passed around the year 2000. I was 17, so I became a citizen then too. And as soon as they could vote, they went Republican. I went Democrat real fast.

So hilarity ensued in the Guzmán household growing up. We would go to restaurants and speak at full volume because we spoke Spanish and no one around us could understand us — small-town New Hampshire at the time, which gave us a kind of liberty of volume. The conversations we'd have for a while were tense and heated, but they didn't feel all that painful until the 2016 election came along.

Then it got really intense. Our ability to accept each other's beliefs was tested — and I'll be honest, it was mostly my ability to accept their beliefs. We got into some real, real heated conversations, but we were able to stay in them. I got to the point where I could really understand where they were coming from, and they could too, with me — it wasn't all one way.

I looked around the rest of the country and saw a lot of ruptures in families and communities, a lot of avoidance, which makes total sense — you either want to fight or flee. You want to get in it and maybe hurt each other sometimes, maybe unintentionally, or you want to get out, to not have the conflicts.

So comparing my experience with my family to so many of these ruptures — people hurting each other because of their disagreements, or deciding to avoid them altogether and therefore no longer knowing each other, or feeling like they're not connecting on things that matter to them — both felt not quite right. There's got to be something we can try, something we can do. So that was a big path. But the other really important path was professional.

I was a journalist my whole career, and I learned really quickly how easily I can get people wrong. I would go up to a source I was interviewing thinking I already knew the story and just needed a quote, but every time I asked questions and questioned my own assumptions about what somebody was all about, I would learn the truth of who they were — because you have to get close enough to understand someone to actually understand them. I learned that lesson over and over again.

Sometimes painfully. I had an editor in Michigan call me into the newsroom, as a pretty young journalist, and say, "You have a real problem with accuracy." I was a straight-A student — I did not want to be told that. But I knew it was because I didn't ask clarifying questions. I just assumed I understood, instead of checking with the person. I grew up kind of shy, so that came from somewhere — I didn't want to seem stupid, so I didn't want to interrupt to ask what someone meant.

I had to learn to ask what people meant, because otherwise I would hurt people by getting them wrong. And I think that's what we do when we get each other wrong about our politics.

So all of that led me to the book — it sort of poured out of me. And when I first discovered the organization Braver Angels, the nonprofit, I couldn't believe it. I thought, "I didn't think this could exist, and it exists." So I had to get involved.

Since then — some years ago now — wow, there's this whole universe of people, communities, and grassroots movements to help each other with this all across the political divide. We're so far from done with this work; we're just getting started. It gives me a lot of hope, and it gives me a ton of fuel. It helps me meet incredible people. It helps make sure I'm not stuck in silos, because it's very important for me to see the world as it is, not the way I imagine it to be.

So — how do we open our eyes wider when the world wants us to stay in our lane? That's what all this work is about.

Heidi: That's so cool. So I'll throw that question right back at you — many people aren't interested in opening their eyes wider, or they're scared to, because they're afraid of getting shut down, either from the person they're being curious about or from their peers who say, "Well, why would you want to listen to them?" You talk about fearless conversations, but these conversations are scary.

Mónica: Yeah, they are. They are.

Heidi: How do we help people get over the fear?

Mónica: That's the million-dollar question — that's exactly the question I've been most focused on since the book came out. I don't think my book actually did enough about that, because you started that question by saying "some people don't want to open their eyes wider." And I'd say, if asked, everyone would say they want to know the truth.

What happens is two things. One, we think we already know the truth — that's certainty. That's what I think my first book ended up emphasizing: when we think we know, we won't think to ask. And boy, do the assumptions we make cover up questions we could ask frequently these days. That's one of the reasons someone will tell you, "What do you mean? My eyes are open very wide. Thank you very much, I've seen everything I need to see. Now I need to act, I need to do these things, and I don't want to talk anymore, I don't want to learn anymore, because there's nothing to learn over there anymore" — that kind of thing.

The fear, though, is really the biggest thing. Back to your question — how do you help people get over the fear? My first response, as I think about it, is that it really starts by aiming curiosity within. I think there's a lot about our culture today that is about interiority. It's almost been therapized, our contemporary culture — even our movies. Now the hero is always crying and thinking about themselves. It didn't use to be that way. But I think there's a reason for that. And I think it's because of all kinds of things about our communication landscapes and technologies, and how we've revolutionized how many people we can connect with. It's also given us this opportunity to see reflections of ourselves in our conversations with others, to wonder if we'll be judged for something we believe.

And then our divisions come in and make that so much more consequential. We all need to belong, we all need to be understood. But it's a scary, turbulent world. All of that, I think, has conspired to create this landscape where one of the biggest mistakes we can make is not wondering about our own emotions, our own nervous system — what is triggering us, and why.

Because if you don't question that, and something triggers you, now you are on an autopilot you didn't set up. You lose your agency, and you'll end up saying or doing something you'll probably regret. I can't tell you how many people tell me that kind of thing — "When I look at what I posted on Facebook, I can't believe it. I don't know what came over me." So that's one side of it. 

But on the other side, we're going from fight to flight — there's avoidance. People go, "Well, I can't say anything of what I really think. Because if I ask that question to this group, they're going to suspect me. They're going to think I'm betraying something important. Look at the way people get punished for being honest in these big discursive spaces. Look at the point-scoring going on — it's all black and white. Nobody wants my gray. Nobody wants my truth."

So sometimes it's easier just to keep your mouth shut, which gives more ground to the vocal edges of things, raising the stakes and the temperature for everybody. It's a vicious cycle wherever you go. So one thing is, yes, you have to explore that. But the only way through it — you can't avoid the fear, you have to learn from it. You really have to ask, "What makes me afraid? Can I look at that fear deeply to understand what's really going on?"

If I do that, I might be able to find some tools or skills. And I think the most important thing to do is this: if you try to have a curious conversation with someone you're really afraid of, or on a topic that really triggers you, and you go too far beyond your capacity, it's going to be really hard to be curious — because you can't be curious when you're too afraid. You will go to the trauma responses. That's just biology. It just is — your body freezes you up one way or another. 

So what you need to do is find your edge, the edge of your capacity, because that's the place where you can grow, that's the place where you can build resilience. A lot of times, the way you build resilience is to find low-risk exposures. Don't go talk to the Nazi — go talk to the friend of yours who agrees on everything except this one thing. Find something for you that's just uncomfortable enough. That's the way you start to combat your fear. But to even know how to do that, you have to know what makes you really, truly scared. And you have to know that answer for yourself — you can't borrow it from other people.

Guy: It seems there are two sides to this fear. On the one hand, there's fear of the person you want to talk to, who has different beliefs and is on at least some part of the other side. But there's also — and I think this scares people even more — fear of what your own group will say about you. It's very easy to run afoul of either the formal or informal cancel culture, where you use words that are seen as microaggressions. And part of that, I think, is even harder. If it's somebody on the other side that you don't have much contact with, it's one thing. If it's somebody where you're risking your place in your community, that's scarier.

Mónica: Yeah. Yeah, 100%. You mentioned, in the first instance, being scared of the person with whom you disagree. Where I see that be the most intense is with a moral disagreement — there's a sense that you'll be tainted in the exchange. Or that by talking to them you'll validate their harmful ideas, things like that. And if it's in public, you'll be judged just for engaging. 

But the second category I do think a lot about.  It is not so much the other side you're scared of, so much as what your own side will think, because of the whatever the nature is of your interaction with the other side — anything from "Why are you even talking to them?" to all the way to "WOW, you said THAT?  or You associate with them? It can go in all directions. What part of this should we explore?

Guy:  Part of it is the whole problem of what happens when the other side says something you agree with — "We're wrong about this, folks." And that gets to be an even scarier thing.

Mónica: Yes, it is. That is very scary. I was just talking to somebody about this yesterday about this. The psychology of that can be really unsettling. Some folks have said that realizing you've been wrong about something can feel almost like a kind of death. So you push it back, you resist it, 

Heidi: You try not to admit it.

Mónica:  Right, right. You'll absolutely try not to admit it. So if you agree with something the other side says, that agreement lives inside you — only you know about it. You have to decide how much of it to disclose. Because it might be dangerous to disclose that you see the point, or that you understand it. But that, to me, is what we can do and we ought to be able to do, because we have to push back against this idea that engagement is endorsement. I should be able to say I understand that point without needing to agree with it.

And if I do agree with it, I have to find a way to say it. I have to!!  Because otherwise I'm not being honest with myself or with anybody else. I'm not allowing other people to know me as I am. But I understand it has to go through that filter: how safe is it for me to be really open about how I'm receiving these other ideas? 

Usually, I think what people do is — if they get that little glint of agreement, it's usually not that obvious to them at first. There's an affinity toward the idea they just heard. So they may not recognize it as agreement necessarily; it's just affinity. It might begin with saying something like, "I see your point," and then you ask more questions. Or you can just express that you relate — "I relate to that because of so-and-so." That happens a lot with values across divides, and you realize we actually share a lot of the same values. But you are right. Admitting that you agree in a public environment where you might be judged, that's really hard, and we probably shouldn't expect that of each other. 

But call them up later and have a one-on-one conversation — a lot easier to admit agreement. 

Heidi: But I would argue at the same time that our groups need to become more open to thinking about the possibility that they might be wrong. 

Mónica: Yeah.

Heidi: Because I think one of the biggest problems we have societally in the United States right now is that both the left and the right are sure they have the answers, and they're absolutely certain the other side is wrong. And if neither side is willing to consider the possibility that there's any legitimacy to the other argument, we're going to stay trapped in this hyperpolarization forever. 

Mónica: Yeah.

Heidi: We've got to personally develop the guts to point out to our peers that a) they might have the other side wrong. This is where I think organizations like More in Common and All Sides are doing a really important job — because they're pointing out, and you said yourself, that our differences aren't as big as we think they are. We need to find that out.

Mónica: Yep. 

Heidi: And when we flat-out did something wrong, we need to be willing to admit it and change.  And I know it's super hard for an individual, but I still think we should point out the importance of urging your peer group to consider that they might be wrong in instances where you have knowledge they don't have.

Mónica: Absolutely.

I think you pointed out something really critical, which is the guts to tell someone on your own side that they've got the other side wrong. That takes so much courage. Just the other day, I was in a moment where I could have done that, and I chose not to. I didn't feel safe enough in the moment. 

And then later, I wondered if I should have. There were a bunch of reasons why it was probably the right decision not to do it at that moment. But I'm still wondering how to reach that person differently, because I know it's important, and I hate that I haven't found the right way to do it — why, what am I afraid of, what do I think is at stake? There's actually quite a few things at stake in this particular circumstance.

But that's the thing — if you asked everybody, they'd all say, "Oh yeah, totally, we should all be able to do that." But what matters is where you are in the moment — the moment of most heat — where sometimes it's not even that you'll be judged by your side or your sense of belonging. You might just come off really mean in that moment, or someone else was holding court for a while and this is going to seem kind of hostile, kind of beside the point. It's also just the rules of tact and respect when we hang out with each other.

You have to find the way to respectfully do that, and it's actually kind of a maze. It sounds easy conceptually, but in the actual situation, it gets really tough. Sometimes I don't do it because I don't have time to explain — it's literally that easy. I know they're going to say, "What do you mean?" And I'm thinking, "Oh God, how do I download to this person everything I've learned from my parents and all my conservative friends in the two minutes we have?" I don't have the time. So instead of dropping a bomb on them, I just go on my merry way. These are difficult things — they're really tough. But even as I say that — you can always say something like, "I'd love to talk to you more about that later. I know we're out of time, but I'm putting a pin in that for now." Something. I think it's really important.

Guy: I think one of the things that is desperately needed — and I'd be interested if you have any stories about people doing this — is setting up interactions where people really do have the time to go into some of these tough issues and are psychologically ready to do that. To drop something like this into a casual conversation during a baseball game is one thing.

Mónica: Yeah. 

Guy: It's another thing to have a dinner where you decide, "We're going to really try to grapple with some tough things."

Mónica: I just launched an episode on the podcast, A Braver Way, that I'd been nervous about for months. I initially didn't want to do it. It's me openly disagreeing about current-event issues that really bother me with my friend Travis Tripodi, who's way on the other side of me politically, and him bringing the issues and headlines that bother him most to me.

We've been testing this for months, since Trump took office again, actually. One thing he and I absolutely agree on is that the world needs more models of this — good-faith conflict. What does it look like? It's possible. People can be fully honest, say it all fully and freely, without fear. I say in that episode, "I'm so mad right now" — because of something he believed, that he wouldn't come with me on something. But I was able to name it. I said, "I'm so mad right now," and we actually laughed about it. He said, "I think that was our biggest fight yet." And I said, "Yeah, you're right — and I kind of loved it."

We forget something my friend Sam Rechek said on the podcast once: "disagreement can be fun." It actually can. I think the more we're stuck in this place of either screaming bloody murder at each other or avoiding each other — and those two things are the things that get elevated — we just don't have faith anymore that there's a middle ground where people just hash it out. And if it doesn't go well, you forgive each other, you apologize, if you hurt each other, you say "sorry about that," you come back later. There are all these little ruptures you can quickly stitch up. That's most of it, actually — most of it is not a nightmare at all. If you just bother to try, find the right person, find the trusting relationship, and give it a shot. It's a lot more difficult when you're afraid that person is really out to get you. Travis and I are not out to get each other. We really do try to learn from each other, so we're very honest with each other.

Heidi: That makes me think about something you said earlier — something Guy and I have talked about a lot, too — whether you should, and if so how, have this kind of conversation with your family. You started out describing how you often did.

This becomes a conversation for us come Thanksgiving and Christmas. We have a very small family, but we've been invited into our children's in-laws' family, and it's wonderful — we've both all of a sudden developed these two big families, when neither of us had big families before. But each family had people on the other side politically, and the rule in both families was: don't talk politics. Just avoid it. Talk about the weather, the kids, the grandkids — don't talk politics.

We've been writing on our blog about how to have healthy conversations at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then we go, and we're mum.  So, how do you know when it is safe to open up? it strikes me that family has the potential to be the safest place for this, because if you have a good relationship with someone otherwise, you've got some trust already. So it seems like it's that person you're describing — they're a little over the edge, but not far, so it should be safe. But then again, the chances of doing damage feel huge. How do you balance that?

Mónica: Exactly. There's a weird paradox with families. On the one hand, these are people who know you, so they care the most about you — you'd think that's a nice container for a riskier conversation. On the other hand, within families, people have expectations, and those can get in the way. When expectations are violated, people can get more emotionally activated about what somebody believes — "How could you believe that?" We feel freer to be more angry at each other, because we know each other.

So, how you balance that? You mentioned an interesting scenario I've heard before, where a family has put up a boundary: we don't talk politics. I find that the most respectful way to knock on that door is to ask about the rule. Don't try to violate the boundary — ask about the boundary, get curious about it. "I'm just wondering, do you all remember where this came from?" Probably best to have that one-to-one, not at the dinner table. Just ask someone, "By the way, I'm wondering — do you remember when this started? Did something happen? I don't need to know the details, I just wonder what's behind this boundary." Once you hear that story, maybe you're able to say something like, "For what it's worth, I've seen a lot of ways these kinds of conversations can happen and feel comfortable enough, and can actually be productive." So, I'm just raising my hand — if anybody ever wants to try that with me, I'm so game. It would be something like that. Wspecially because you're stepping into another family's culture — you'd have to get curious about it, ask people about it, have the conversation about it. Don't try to violate the boundary.

Heidi: Great advice. 

Guy: We did an article for our newsletter emphasizing the importance of relationships — that if one's going to have such conversations, part of the underlying belief, not really a ground rule, is that my relationship with you is vastly more important than any disagreement we might have. It's important to understand that and have that kind of commitment to start with.

There are also cases where it's one thing when you have one person who's an outlier and everybody else agrees — that creates a fairly uncomfortable circumstance. There are other cases with more evenly divided differences, which is also uncomfortable.

Mónica: Definitely. There are so many different universes of challenges here. I've definitely heard about scenarios where it's the one person who becomes the black sheep. I just heard about this the other day — a family that's local here, one brother who's basically separated himself from the family, just gone. Somebody in the family recently invited that branch to a reunion, which caused some friction — other people in the family learned he was coming and said, "Well, we're not coming." So now the person trying to be the bridge-builder is trying to figure out how to hold that tension. That can be really tough. She's doing a great job, though — sometimes you can take those steps. Remind me the first scenario, because it was really interesting — you were saying relationships should be a commitment. Is that what I heard you say?

Guy: Yes. Our son was explaining the agony of some of his friends — that families are just estranged based on political beliefs. I saw a Pew poll this morning that the United States leads the world in the percentage of its citizens who view their fellow citizens as not morally good — either morally bad or really morally bad. This conflating political disagreement with moral failure is a step too far. Somehow we need to have something of a hierarchy of what things really matter — and this is part of emphasizing that relationships are more important. We need to conduct ourselves in a way that makes clear, "I really care about you, and that's most important."

Mónica: Yeah, that always helps. When that comes out, and people remember to remind each other of that in the languages they'll understand, it makes such a difference. We do forget, in the heat of the moment, to make that clear. And I think sometimes when those moral triggers come up, that can be super scary — the moral stuff feels really important. 

Definitely, a lot of people feel belonging in their family, but when something moral is triggered, they're also wondering, "Am I a good person?" That, I think, is the number-one tension to pay attention to. For a lot of folks, especially on the right, who I talk to, the disbelief is that anyone could put anything ahead of family, ahead of the relationship — "How could anybody do that?" I'll tell you how: when they're afraid they're a bad person because of that association, or afraid they're taking on something that denies something important about themselves.

So I think it's actually a two-way thing. On the one hand, we need to remember to tell each other we care, and put everything underneath that — not take it for granted that those signals are necessary, especially when the moral stuff is getting triggered. If instead you're saying, "You're triggering the moral stuff, stop doing that," that's not going to address where the fear is coming from for them.

On the other hand, it's also important to always get curious about what somebody's afraid of. Anger is easier — you see somebody pulling away, violating what you just said should be a hierarchy, and you might get mad, tell them, "That's not the right way to do this! STOP IT!."

But the more effective thing would be to ask, "What are you afraid of? What are you really afraid of? What are you trying to protect?" And give that time and space to see what comes out. A lot of times what comes out is something like, "I just don't feel like you're listening. I don't feel respected here. I feel like I can't say this or that," or "You're all not accepting this or that— this is horrible and horrifying and leads to a terrible world." You'll hear all this cosmic stuff come out.

That can be the opportunity, once you're really listening to each other, to start correcting the misperceptions. Because a lot of the moral divides come from some exaggerations, some misperceptions about what the beliefs are actually based on. And when people are really afraid, they don't want to be curious. They don't want to ask where the beliefs came from. So instead, you have to try to understand their fear so it can soften and they can feel received. Then maybe they'll be able to ask, "Wait, what might I be missing?" But until they ask that, they're not going to get there.

Heidi: I think you need to understand your own fear, too.

Mónica: Yes. Yes.

Heidi: Because I'm afraid to ask questions in certain situations, because I'm afraid of the answer I'm going to get.

Mónica: Ah, interesting.

Heidi: I think anger is natural. Curiosity isn't. So I think that's one of the things that's so important to overcome, in ourselves and in others — but it's hard.

Mónica: Yeah, it's really hard. You two are clearly very insightful on this — I can tell you're speaking from a lot of awareness of how these dynamics play out in everyday life. Absolutely.

Heidi: We've been around a while.

Mónica: Oh yeah, no, it's really cool — we're speaking the same language here. Very cool.

Guy: One of the lines I've been using a lot over the years, which I think applies, is that "we need a more diverse diversity." If we're going to build a pluralistic society where we encourage people to hang on to their original cultures and beliefs, rather than homogenize everything into the great melting pot, we're going to have a lot of different beliefs. Somehow we've got learn to accept that — that it's okay for there to be people in our society who believe there are only two genders and sexes, and others who don't. These are consequential issues, worth debating, worth fighting over. But it's also important that we tolerate one another.

We have an exercise we call the common-ground exercise, where we ask people — and this is one of those situations where you're willing to sit down and work through something for a while, I do this with my students — first, pick an issue: on what points do we agree, and on what points do we disagree? Of the things we disagree about, what's attributable to differences over objective facts — are there ways we might resolve those differences? And what part of the disagreement is attributable to differing moral values? And how might we constructively confront one another with respect to those differences?

Mónica: Yes. Beautiful. That's absolutely beautiful. It would be really cool if we could withstand our differences long enough to analyze them at that level of constructiveness. That's why I'm so grateful for people who generate structures and then invite others into those structures, like the workshops you just mentioned — that's often what it takes. People go through it and think, "Oh, this works, this works, it's just a couple of steps. W e can do this, we should be able to do this."

I really like what you said — I wrote it down — "we need a more diverse diversity." I do think the actual first step to disagreeing well isn't listening, and it isn't even being curious — it's accepting that the other person holds a different belief at all. Actually accepting it. This comes back to what I was saying about aiming curiosity within. A lot of times, at the very beginning of a disagreement, people already come in rejecting the other person because of the difference. "Something is Wrong. With. You. And that's what you believe." And so they condescend to the other person, want to dominate them, don't really accept them, because the belief in them defines them so utterly that they can't accept them. That, I think, is the absolute hardest, most radical thing you can do.

To use your example — there are a lot of people I know who'd say that if somebody believes there are only two genders, there's something wrong with them, and vice versa; I know a lot of people who'd say if somebody believes you can change genders and there are a million genders, something is absolutely wrong with them. Bring those two groups together — even one member from each group in a room — and they'll feel so activated, alarmed, and threatened. 

We need a more diverse diversity. Is it possible to just accept that the difference is there and may stay there — that I will be okay if that person still disagrees with me. Because what often happens. It's me and this other person in a room, we have different ideas — this is from my friend Luis Mojica, I love this — and I start to believe that until that person changes, I cannot be okay. And that is an illusion. That is a delusion. It is not true.

Heidi: A heterogeneous place like the United States can't survive that illusion, because we are made up of different people. We always have been — our entire history has been a history of bringing different people together. If we can't maintain our differences, then we're done.

Mónica: But let's bring in a challenging example, because I was just thinking about this.  Some people believed slavery was okay, and some didn't. Was that just okay, that we maintain that difference? 

Not only did we not maintain that difference, but there's a very good case to be made that it was an absolutely unacceptable difference — that something was wrong was going on, and something needed to happen to fix it. So what do we do about that? That gets back to the question of where these moral differences are — because for some people, an issue is not moral, and for others it is. Who's right? That becomes a disagreement in itself.

Guy: There's a story we tell frequently that sheds a lot of light on this. When we first got our big grant from the Hewlett Foundation, from their Conflict Resolution Program, that set us off on our career — we set up a center at the University of Colorado and had seminars on conflict resolution topics. All of our activist friends thought we were traitors — they thought they'd get forced into some sort of unrealistic or unwanted compromise, and they'd have nothing to do with us. We'd issue invitations and get a 95% rejection rate. 

Then one day we got the bright idea to reframe it. Instead of talking about resolution and compromise, we started from the assumption that people really have deep differences over things they care about, that they think are critically important — race, climate, gender, a whole range of issues — and they want to fight over it, but they know these fights are terribly destructive. So we started using a phrase we call "constructive confrontation." We reframed it and asked people to come — "We know we're going to have these fights, we want to talk about how to have them more constructively." We went from a 95% rejection rate to a 95% acceptance rate.

That was the way people were willing to talk. So when you get to issues like slavery, or its various successors, what you end up talking about is: whose approach really works best — Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or the Black Panthers? You start talking about how to really address these issues and slowly persuade people. That, I think, is a much more positive way of looking at differences. What we need are constructive fights, driven by the true believers who really want to fight for things they care about — not the people who don't.

Mónica: Completely. I think the language of compromise sometimes makes people feel like their job is to change what they believe as quickly as possible, to accept something different. But it's not going to work unless people can first pour out all their concerns and have them heard — that's the tough thing.

One of the reasons — it's not just the psychology of people feeling heard and then being more receptive to other ideas, though that's true — is also something I haven't quite figured out how to articulate. Maybe you've run into this and can tell me about it. What I observe over and over is that when people engage in this process of putting it all on the table, giving themselves the time, the way they approach the issue to begin with — the way it looks to them — starts to transform. It transforms in a way that can only happen because they're talking to somebody who sees it a different way. Suddenly, everything they thought they could or couldn't accept, they have a different angle on. It's like taking a prism and looking at it from this side, then that side — it gains more dimensionality. That transformation of how the issue looks ends up changing you a little bit.

It's through that transformation that the most beautiful kind of compromise happens — where we've heard each other out totally, and now some of the stuff that stressed us out, that we thought we'd never accept, but when you put it that way, it actually seems okay, especially if the people involved are okay with something we didn't expect them to be okay with. Now I'm future-casting in my mind, imagining the world with a little more color — filling it in with the actual beliefs of the other side, rather than what I projected onto them. It turns out there are actually multiple ways to have a good world, not just the one I came in with. So now I've constructed this other one — let's go with that. We can get there. It's that process of transformation that's so necessary — but you have to actually be together to make that work.

Heidi: The way I'd explain the same thing is that when you're with people who have different worldviews, you begin to complexify yours.

Mónica: Exactly. 

Heidi: When you're just with your own group, your own bubble, practically nothing needs to be said, because it's all assumed — you all know what you're talking about, what you think, what the other side thinks. There's no need to talk because we all know.

But when you get into a situation where you know you don't know, and you start asking questions and being curious, you find out the situation isn't as simple as you thought.

Mónica: That's absolutely right. 

Heidi: It's much more complex — "I hadn't thought about that, and I hadn't thought about that, and what if this?" That's key to coming up with solutions that aren't compromise — it doesn't have to be a 50/50 split.

Mónica: No, not at all — it rarely is. 

Heidi: It can be, technically that's what compromise means, but you can come up with solutions that aren't just "I'll give you half and I'll take half."

Mónica: We look at it a little too cognitively, too — there's an emotional thing. In a way, you can think of this other kind of compromise we're trying to flesh out as less about the exchange of items in a rational sense, and more about people trying to figure out how they can all feel good about something. Is there something we can all feel good about? The act of finding things I can feel good about is a transformative thing that happens when you complexify issues. It's as much about feelings as it is a transaction — an account of things, a percentage, all on a spreadsheet. That's not what this is.

I do worry that because our world is constructed today such that everybody's billboarded everything — meaning I can go look at your tweets, Facebook posts, Instagrams, everything you've written — it's easier for me to think, "Look at all the material I can review from this organization, this advocacy group, this activist community. I already know what they believe. I don't need to be in the room with them to figure it out. It's all right there." That's wrong. That's actually not true. How we message stuff to the public and how we truly believe and think about something are two different things. So the conversation is the place of the most complexity. When we tell ourselves we don't need the conversation because we've got volumes of material we've already read, that's not actually telling you what you need to know.

Heidi: Yea. I want to switch to another topic, because we're running out of time and I really want to get there. You're a journalist — you've done research on how journalists can better address the audiences they're addressing.  I didn't say that quite right. Let me read it..." how journalists can rethink their roles to better meet the needs of a participatory public," was the way you put it in one of your materials. Journalism and the media have lost a huge amount of trust, and I'm wondering about your answer to how journalists can change to better address a participatory public — and whether that relates to whether journalists are trusted or not, and what individual journalists, and the field, can do to rebuild trust in media and journalism.

Mónica: Yeah, this is a huge topic — I'm planning an episode about it with some really well-positioned folks who have wonderful insights on it. It's multifaceted, there's so much. I think there are a lot of causes for the loss of trust, some easier to talk about than others.

Among the harder ones: journalists are increasingly white-collar, living in urban centers, people with four-year college degrees and more — and that aligns with some deepening divides in our society. Over time, fewer journalists have had familiarity and intimacy with different lifestyles, and it's been easier for them to fall on not just one side of the political divide, but one side of the educational divide. Suddenly all journalists are professionals, and they side with all the other professionals, thinking they're all playing on the same team. That can actually get in the way of being really curious. 

This is among the things I've learned from talking to conservatives with strong convictions about the COVID response.

We have to be careful — journalists need to be the most curious people of all. That should be a daily practice, and it's not. So that's my deepest diagnosis. 

There's a lot of institutional arrogance in every profession, definitely in journalism — I'm in it, I know. There's a lot of "we are really smart." And we are. Journalists are actually really educated. There's a lot of signals that tell us we know what's best, and that these folks with less education, or less whatever, don't. That set of assumptions has kept us from asking what we're missing — what people with different lifestyles, different paths through their lives, know. That's definitely big.

There's also this huge, ongoing debate in journalism between objectivity and transparency. Do I get more trust if I hold firm to "just the facts, ma'am, that's all I'm giving you"? Or do I do better if I'm super transparent about my views? There are pros and cons to both. 

If journalism is only "just the facts," which a lot of the public demands — a lot of folks say "I just want the facts" — yes, but —clearly what people need is help making sense of a complicated world, and that's very difficult to do with just facts. So often we need help interpreting the facts. And then it becomes, "Well, what flavor of interpretive pattern would you like?" That's when we fall into the problem of siloed media. The New York Times tends to do it for more elite, liberal, coastal, urban folks — they do it very well. Explaining how those people tend to interpret the world, the  New York Times is really good.  You go to Fox News, RealClearPolitics, MSNBC — you get different flavors of interpretation. It turns out that's what people gravitate toward, and that interpretation shapes the headlines, crafted to get the most attention, because that's the economics of media.

One of my friends, Jonathan Stray, has a beautiful idea he calls "multi-partiality." His answer, which I think is fascinating, is: you [journalists] can't be "on both sides," because that's sort of weird — it implies there are only two sides to everything. You try to find the two most oppositional sides, get the fieriest quote from each, and sometimes you contribute to divides. You also can't say you're on no one's side, totally objective, but people know that's BS — you're a human being too, so nobody really believes you're somehow above it all. So instead — can we be on everyone's side? As I, as a journalist now, I'm invested in making sure everyone is being heard, that everybody's views get explored and everyone is somehow represented and gets that kind of "say."

That's simplifying it too much, but there's something really interesting in what he's saying. Can we be on everyone's side as journalists? To me, that's the easiest link to staying curious — because it's easy to believe, "There's this group of people I think is causing harm, and therefore I don't want to include them in my story, because I'm afraid" — and by the way, really good journalists come to this conclusion because they want to be good people, we can't blame them for that. "I can't put that voice in my story because it will just amplify the harm." They want to be good people. But sometimes they miss that this narrative — that it's "just amplifying the harm" — deserves a closer look. What do you mean by that? Where did that come from? What happens when you don't amplify certain harm by ensuring certain views never actually get fully explored and seen, and we don't understand the fears and concerns underneath them — that's harmful too. So let's look at that level of harm as well.

I talked a long time on that one.

Guy: One of the related, tough issues we've been struggling with is the distinction between good-faith and bad-faith efforts to address some of these issues. Certainly, bringing out the voices of folks trying to make honest, good-faith efforts to understand issues from different points of view, different ways of knowing, is critically important. But the other thing — and sadly this is very real — is that there are bad-faith actors trying to undermine the credibility of journalism. There's Steve Bannon's "flood the zone with shit" plan, where the whole point is so much garbage that people throw up their hands and conclude there's no objective truth. The Russians call it — or RAND calls it — the Russian firehose-of-falsehood approach. There's an awful lot of deliberate misinformation, and figuring out how to sort that out is critically important and very hard to do.

Mónica: That's right, that's right. I have to bring some humility into this, because I've noticed recently I have this habit — it happens a lot with my parents, but it can happen with anyone — where if I really, truly believe I'm right, I won't just state a fact in support of what I'm saying. I'll exaggerate that fact beyond the point of my actually knowing it. I did this with my dad once, in a way I really noticed and later apologized for. But I caught myself doing it again a couple of days ago. It happens automatically in my head — I invent misinformation to support my own case. I consider myself pretty mature on this stuff, and I say that because I think it's important to acknowledge the seed of this in all of us.

What people are really doing is thinking the ends justify the means. It's usually somebody you know who's producing this misinformation intentionally, because they think it will ultimately be good for the world — to provoke outrage, activate people, flood the zone. "That's because the left (coming from the right) is just way too in control of our culture. We need to jam them, put them in a traffic jam — it's the only way to get a more conservative culture back in the United States." I've heard that argument. So there's almost always a purpose. I think it's important not to say, necessarily, it's just evil and malevolent. There's a seed of it in every single one of us — misinformation. We just want people to see things our way, and we'll do whatever it takes, even if it's awful and harmful.

So for me it's: let's be aware that happens, and figure out our own approach and posture toward information. What helps me be the healthiest consumer of media? In what experiences between me and media do I feel most nourished by information, and where do I feel hoodwinked, hijacked, my emotions toyed with? 

Ask ourselves those questions. Do I trust what I'm consuming? Should I trust it? Sometimes I trust it just because it makes me feel good — can I be honest about that? 

And who has the time? That's also part of the flood-the-zone thing. As a journalist, as soon as digital technologies came about, the competition was on — the race was on. Remember when Turner created CNN — now he needed to fill the airwaves for 24 hours. Oh my Lord, right? So the media models became "we need you to just keep going, just keep going, just keep going!" I think there's something really broken about that. Because it's created the sense that to be adequately informed, we need to spend — how long with the news? That's not possible — no. There's so much of that that isn't being examined, and it's actually not in the media industry's interest to get people to look at less news. So they're not going to lead us toward that. We have to lead ourselves toward that.

Guy: There's a place for a good bit of humility in all of this. I've been talking about the social equivalent of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle — I'm not quite sure what the truth is about COVID or climate change or any of these issues, but they're all fascinating. I spend a staggering amount of time reading interesting articles that shed more light on it, but I'm never quite sure what the real truth is. I've got a cloud, and most likely it's something like this, but it could be that. And you can see how different people, who have access to different sources of information, and with different worldviews might see things differently.  If we can resist this notion that we've got it all figured out, there will be a lot more curiosity. So yes, we have to stay curious. It's a good line!

Mónica: It really works for just about everything. If you get a little more curious about it and aim that curiosity in the right place, it makes something more constructive every single time. That's why I shout it from the rooftops — it just works.

Heidi: Five minutes left, and I haven't asked you — and I should have first off — tell us about your podcast. What are you trying to do with it? Why should folks tune in?

Mónica: It's called A Braver Way. The shortest way to say what it's out to do is to help people meet division with strength. 

What is strength? That can vary. One way I think of it is staying grounded and engaged in dangerously divided times — hearing and being heard, that's strength. Staying curious when it's hard, that's strength. These are things that, when you look a couple levels down, you realize we need to do better at. None of us want to be hijacked by our own emotions. None of us want to do things that rupture relationships we value, because we just didn't know how to handle a certain situation. All the skills kind of fall underneath that for me.

In the podcast, we do interviews — I bring on fascinating people who've either demonstrated courage in bridging divides or shed light on insights we desperately need. I'm also trying experiments, like the conversation I mentioned earlier with my friend Travis, who's a conservative libertarian — we just take the news and go. 

At Braver Angels, there are all these structured workshops and wonderful programs, but I know a lot of people want to go off-leash. What does off-leash look like? We start to think that unless we're on a leash, we can't trust ourselves. 

One of the things I want to show with the episode with Travis is that mostly we're just learning how to be good humans. It's not rocket science. Sometimes, if we give ourselves a little more trust and a little more care toward the people around us, that can actually do a lot. That's what we're trying to show.

There's a lot to it. Episodes come out every other Friday. There's a text line, an email address — we respond to everything. It's a community as well, because I certainly don't know these answers, I'm as curious as everybody else, I'm just trying to find them. It's "better together," right? So everybody come in — if this sounds fun and interesting and useful for you, let's figure it out.

Heidi: That's great!

We really appreciate you taking the time to do this — I could talk for a lot longer. My last question: is there anything you really wanted to say that I didn't give you a chance to say?

Mónica: No, apparently not. I'm really grateful to you both. I love when these kinds of conversations get me to meet people who carry serious wisdom. You guys carry serious wisdom, and I'm just glad you're doing what you're doing.

Heidi: Well, thank you so much. We're glad you're doing what you're doing — we love your stuff. And let's hope we can convert lots more people to be much more curious.

Mónica: That'd be great.

Heidi: All right, thank you.

Guy: That really important — I think what it highlights is John Kennedy, when he was running for president, wrote a book, Profiles in Courage. We've been talking about Braver Angels and Courageous Citizenship and how we encourage that kind of bravery, and what you really have here is a series of profiles in courage — people who are doing the things that need so desperately to be done.

Heidi: The podcast is called A Braver Way, so —

Mónica: It is indeed. Because courage — something isn't brave unless it comes with risk, unless it comes at a cost. We have a lot of performative courage out there — people feeling brave because they've slung another rhetorical hand grenade at the other side. That's not brave.

Heidi: Nope. Where there's actual cost and risk, what you're advocating is brave — it does take courage and we need a whole lot more of it.

Guy: And we appreciate it.

Mónica: Yeah, we do. Thank you so much.

Guy/Heidi: Thank you, guys. We'll be in touch.