variable a very special evening ahead of us with monica guzman who is here with us to share >> we have a very special evening ahead of us to share the new book i never thought of it that way and then to have those fearlessly curious conversations and divided times joining in conversation very pleased to be hosting in person events and we do ask you to please make sure your mask remains on at all times both virtual and in person events in the author of red paint. and the author of all my rage to be here in conversation. find the full events calendar on facebook. we are cosponsored also by greater angels the largest nonpartisan and cross partisan organization offering workshops and debates and discussions driven by tens of thousands of volunteers and more than 70 chapters across the country. you canor learn more at the table heree tonight or online at braver angels.org. this event will be recorded by c-span booktv. please no questions will be recorded. we reserve the last 15 minutes for t q&a. please sign up at the microphone today's program will include public signing we love that yound would join us and i will now ask you to turn off your cell phones and other noisemaking devices for the duration of the presentation if you have not purchased a copy of the book they are availabley tonight. >> i am pleased to introduce to speakers monica is a journalist and entrepreneur is sparked by challenging a cofounder of an award-winning newsletter here in seattle and serving as advice through braver angels an organization to depolarized america. and a wonderful public speaker and the author of the recently popular ten talk how curiosity will save us studying social and political division as a leadership fellow spending years how they can better meet the needs of the participatory public and how politics and cultureer with the seattle conservative and contributed and thentr contributing to a clear site most recently created a a passionate with the collaboration and the black lives matter. tonight essence of the street talked focus. in a position for ideological reasons suchs connections that may enrich us. we are so pleased to be hosting this dynamic conversation please join me to welcome. [applause] >> good evening everyone. im excited too get curious with monica but before we dive in she will read a little bit from her book. >> it's awesome to see you all out here this is terribly exciting. thank you all just for being here. so i will read right from the introduction from the book on the morning of election day driving to my parents house wondering if isk should turn around and one week earlier i asked my parents if i can watch the results of the presidential election from t her house and then she looked back and she said of course then held mine then silently asking myself but are you sure you want to? after all i am a liberal who voted for joe biden and mom and dad are conservative who voted enthusiastically twice for donald trump. i drove in silence my hands on the steering wheel that my parents sold me for one dollar and in the 2016 victory he shooka' the world i prefer the alzheimer's wheels on the road with my parents and a happy and relieved or what i would feel at home in the country tomorrow? up ahead waved along the conifers of the highway bringing me back to my mother's naturalization ceremony 20 years earlier did you notice i dressed in red white and blue she texted the past independencee day when dad shared a family photo mom is in the red cardigan clutching a small american flag i was 17 and my long hair draped over purple sweater. and then we were automatically naturalized. the first family photo as american citizens. later that year i slung my backpack off my shoulders to see a bush and cheney sign above mom's desk. republicans? really cracks we were interrupted of clinton's welfare policy. i will never forget the drive homeme from cinema 12 after seeing the michael moore documentary liberal biases the truth i yelled in spanish from the backseat that has house rules meant i could is maybe anger bigger english vocabulary once and for all. i remember thinking how can they not see? by november 3rd 2020 and found myself the newue strange party trick admitting to a room full of fellow liberals that my parents uac most every weekend cooking tips to kids so lessons are mexican immigrants who voted for trial. and then the talk of mexico sending rapist and criminals and aimed at immigrants from latin america. and then i feel their eyes probing me and then asked the others why are you still speaking to them? the stars and stripes long faded into the parents cul-de-sac wondering one last time if i should just go home i parked the car in the driveway grabbing my found an overnight bag i stepped out to their covered front porch with the bumper sticker mom stuck on proudly i don't fully understand refuse tooo scrape off i took a deep breath and rang the doorbell. if there is one thing most people on the left and right can agree on its the way we treat and talk to the other side is broken we cannot stomach the ideas across the political divide let alone those who hold them and one for most americans thought the biggest threat to our country's way of five was other americans. by june, us voters made a decision the number one issue facing them personally. if you're reading this book right now you consider yourself conservative or liberal or something in between i bet you wondered how long we could hold it together while the differences are and to record relationship in our country and ability to share our lives. maybe you're like sophia a woman in boston who lost friendships when she stopped supporting hillary clinton and then went to donald trump 102020. and then is convinced he is an illegitimate president the facts are different and the values are different as she described the conservative states of america and theac liberal states of america. maybe more like marcus to file spiritualrf connection to his ideals and a perfect pursue. and those who want to reach conservatives. that's on there arere two modes in me a political vigilance and the need to understand. and then to watch them lecture me on what type of racist i am. and then feel helpless to stop it. i can't believe i heard from barbara and knoxville tennessee. and f then the 34th moderately liberal. barbara who does grant himself who has tried to keep the peace that holiday can't we just have a nice family dinner? when she walked over to survey the damage one was packing to leave early to use sons had stormed off. and then six months pregnant and then patted her mother's hand to say everything will be all right. i didn't need that things to friends or family the with the share determination to find an answer of those dangerously divided times. you can turn easily into desperation which is how i opened my e-mail to find a message in my inbox opening energy is liberal living in rural montana after taking text messages from his son he just told him he does not want him in his life anymore and is afraid he could indoctrinate hismi kids. and then to reach out he doesn't know where tohe turn that he found his way to me each story i hear from all political stripes way the device are calling them apart the declined invitations all the ways that people are no longer speaking to people why am i still speaking to them? and with race and w law enforcement when neither of us changed our minds even after the two hour argument how the white house handle thehe coronavirus pandemic why might only speaking to my parents who were on the other side but listening to them and learning from them and enjoying company and why would i say my parents and parents are mexican immigrants join us for a the rest cracks why my eager and afraid to tell my cell liberals i natalie speak to them that i understand them? and if i were them i would've voted for donald trump also. [applause] >> i'm so excited to talk to you. >> but what i love about the foundation of y your book is that is very personal talking about your family especially in seattle how people have reacted. so let's unpack that and how do you communicate and navigate those conversations with w friends? >> yes. what i describe in the book describing where conversations in 2017 would reach that point where people were confounded and then it sows people who voted for trump and that'sll when i felt like an obligation to sayen my parents are mexican immigrants and there was b a sense that would be surprising. times people actually would ask why they really would ask why they would come and find me later or they would ask me then. and then it was just a matter of sometimes frankly. it felt i felt impatient. i almost wanted to like download everything i knew about my parents into them so that it was clear. that but their human beings that they're really really cool and really good people and i think of data and star trek i grew up watching star trek and data the android could just like read a book really quickly just by flipping through the pages and that's what i wanted to do is i wanted to like impatiently just like here are my parents. they're real. they're awesome. maybe let's not be so sure that we know the hearts and minds of folks who made a different choice. but at least let me tell you about my parents. but because i couldn't do that it would just be just a little story. it would just be like here's the conversations i've had with them. here's why my mom. voted for trump. here's why my dad voted for trump, but but it would only be like little by little because it's a lot. it's a lot for people to take in. yeah, i think it's interesting that you would even have to validate their vote right in the city. but you know, that's part of the reason why i think we're together on this stage right now. is that our friendship our connection came through curiosity. we definitely don't agree on a lot of political. nope viewpoints. i'm a conservative leaning libertarian. i will say i'm not much of a trump fan, but but we still have plenty to debate when it comes to politics and so, you know thinking about that. there's probably some folks on the stage who are surprised that we're friends and probably a lot of people who have asked you. i've you know, i've tried i've tried to have conversations with people who i disagree with. i've had breakdowns and friendship breakdowns in my family. it doesn't work. why should i keep trying especially when those people those other people have ideas that are dangerous. why would i try to bridge the divide? yeah, and that is that is an extremely common and valid challenge and i got to tell you like i i sit and think about that a lot. it's a challenge that presents itself in different shapes and it has ever since the 2016 election, you know, january 6th the pandemic vaccines mandates, it's it's thing after thing after thing where i mean raise your hand if you know someone you know, who has had to break a tie over one of those issues. yeah, i see a lot of hands in this room. it's extraordinarily painful and and i hear about that pain a lot. because of the love we have for the people in our lives and then because of the values that we carry and we feel are important so so to take a couple of those in turn, you know. one of the things that we do struggle with is this sense of look. i built the bridge. i i sat and i talked to this person and i and i asked it, you know, i asked some questions and you know what happened. they didn't ask any questions back. they didn't reciprocate it was they were just talking at me the whole time. and so then what i hear is and so i burned the bridge down. obviously this doesn't work. like i'm done, you know and i'm gonna tell everyone i know. but this is silly. and so that's where i say that the most important thing to do with a bridge is to keep it not cross it. that our opinions are not the kinds of thing that will just turn on a dime. we we have roots going all the way down through our entire biographies. right? like i say a little bit that we we don't see with our eyes we see with our lives and it should be really hard. to feel heard by someone across a divide in a climate of so much distrust and such high stakes. it should be hard. it should not happen in the course of one conversation. and so if you find yourself in that situation where you're asking questions, and the other person isn't asking questions back. can you can you get curious about why can you get curious about what's really going on? it could be that that person is suddenly feeling heard by you or by someone in your group for the first time in a while, and maybe they have a lot they want to get out. and maybe that's what's going to take before they can feel heard and maybe it's the next conversation or the one after that. where it will be more of an exchange. can we have the patience for that? but i also want to get to your other point about when the ideas themselves can be harmful. do you want to say a little more about that the way you put that that like what if the ideas? yeah, what if your platform the idea is that kind of thing? oh sure. i mean i hear that all the time of well, their ideas are dangerous their ideas hurt others and well for me, it's pretty easy to hit back because i'm a woman. i'm a person of color. i'm a lesbian and i promise you if you have a conversation with a trump voter it's not going to personally harm me. it's okay, so i just get curious about you know, how you feel about how people draw such a line in the sand of no, it's too dangerous to even have a conversation. i mean again, i always try to it makes a lot of sense and and i have i have shared that that sort of that fear. one thing. i'll say is that in the book i talk about various conditions of conversation that allow us to have more productive conversations that can actually be curious that can actually be an exchange and one of the most important is what i call containment, you know on social media and a lot of these platforms our conversations are not contained to the people participating in them. there are large invisible mass audiences and the less contained a conversation is to the people participating the more that will be tempted to perform instead of converse. and the more that our conversation really is not about learning from one another and the more of course that we would be worried about. oh, no what if i release some kind of beast, you know, and in this idea and what if then i cause harm to others watching this conversation, and the elegant answer to that is the power of one-to-one conversations. when you can contain a conversation to the people that are actually participating it in it. there's only one person that you could be maybe afraid might get infected by what you feel is a really harmful idea and that's you. and in that scenario, i would say. i mean i do. i think i think a little bit about the pandemic. it's it's like we treat we do we look at bad ideas. almost like a virus right and if you allow it in the room, it could infect us all it could infect us all and but again, that's not how opinions work. you know, we have all of these roots going down down. so if we if we hear a story if we hear from a person who holds an idea that we may find really abhorrent or really unsavory. do we really think that just like that? it's going to stain us. it's going to infect us and if so, why do we have such little faith in our own constitution? it's almost like we're afraid of ourselves, you know, and the best answer i can come up with for that is maybe we're living in a time where it's become so acceptable to think of other people as monsters and of ideas making other people into monsters that we think it could happen to us just by listening to somebody's perspective just by listening to someone's story even in a contained conversation. yeah when you're talking about others, it makes me think about you know the chapter on othering where as humans and i thought it was great that you kind of set this premise that it is natural for humans to be very tribal. it's very natural for us to just take sides and you pointed to a number of experience experiments over the last hundred years where it could be such a silly thing like the number of marbles in a jar that humans are immediately taking sides and saying well those people are wrong about how many marbles are in the jar, but it has gotten to a point where i think it can be dangerous and how divided we are and how we demonize the other and i even personally have an interesting story that happened to me just a couple of weeks ago. i went to a and an author event at ben arroya hall. and it was very similar to this. there was a writer who was asking her questions and just to kick off the night and i'm sure most people are familiar with ben roy hall where the seattle symphony is big symphony hall of the the gentleman says to her. i have a question for you. is it funny when an anti-vaxxer dies of covid? and immediately the entire crowd the entire audience breaks out and laughter. and then the laughter starts dying down and before she can even ask answer his question. he says wait wait, i'm sorry not funny. is it hilarious when they die? and bursting into laughter. i mean the biggest laugh of the night was a joke about an anti-vaxxer dying of covid. and i'm sitting there not laughing. not because i'm anti-vaccine. i'm boosted myself. but last year i had a cousin who was a couple months younger than me anti-vaxxer who died of covid. it's not funny. it's pretty tragic. i also have a younger brother who for whatever reason chose not to get vaccinated. and if you were to die of covid that would be devastating for me devastating to my parents. and one thing i can tell you about my brother. is that sure i disagree with him of not getting vaccinated, but he's an exceptional loyal father an exceptional loyal husband an intelligent thoughtful, man, and for whatever reason he has made the decision that he didn't want to get vaccinated. i don't agree with him, but i also don't think that he should die because of that decision and i certainly don't think it's funny. but i'm sitting there in a hall with people who are really my neighbors who are great representative of what this city is made of, you know, demographically and we've gotten to the point where we're laughing at it. and what do you think about that when you you know, we're studying the idea of othering in our society today. yeah. i mean i think of how i have i have a pretty deep personal conviction that the way that we save our democracy is by talking with people. instead of just about them. in fact today, i got an email from someone who said hey, i'm really excited about your book. i want to come to your event. but it says that you have to show proof of vaccination to come in and i think it's really ironic that you've written a book about gathering people with different political opinions, you know in a venue where i can't show me and my friends can't come and that really stopped me today. because yeah, it's um. we have we have to continue asking ourselves. who we are and and what are us is and what are them is and whether it makes sense. and it's it's such a complicated thing because again like you said tribal right being parts of tribes, that's part of life. it's wonderful who has a sports team they love. i mean right it's great it like you want to feel like you belong you want to feel like you're a part of a group. that's what that's so much of what gives life meaning something that feels bigger than just you. it's great, you know, but there's a dark side to it and the dark side just happens when when othering blinds us when the fact that we are putting distance between us and someone who's different means that we begin to warp them into something they're not or when we begin to think. we're quite certain about them without without talking with them perhaps or we see something in the news and that's all we need to know about why that whole group of people behaves the way they do and that level of certainty is very tempting in our society right now, especially because of the high level of anxiety. we all have there really are some high stakes things going on right now and you know social researchers have shown us that when in times of high anxiety we want we want something called cognitive closure. we want an answer. we want an answer now, you know, we don't want to leave the door open for a lot of conversation because it's scary uncertainty is scary. but uncertainty is required for curiosity and curiosity is required. i think to even see our world truthfully when we're this divided this polarized. and i think i think that that's just that's just what's in front of us right now. so let's talk about real examples because i think we've set a lot of hypotheticals of how we can be more curious and how we can bridge that divide, but you have a great experience in the book of where you take a group of folks down to sherman county in oregon and have you know what you call i never thought of it that way moment. do you want to talk a little bit about that? yeah. so this wasn't 2017. i co-founded a newsletter in seattle called the evergrey and among our core values are curiosity and honesty and boldness and so after the 2016 election, you know seattle felt pretty dead. how many of you were here? it was tough. we're obviously, you know largely a blue culture politically and we started to hear from our readers that they wanted to be curious they did but they don't know any republicans they don't they don't know any conservatives. they're not really sure we've been where to go on seeing some nods. so so, how do we do this, right? and my co-founder onika stumbled on this interactive feature in the washington post and you could plug in your county anywhere in the united states and it would spit back out the county nearest to yours that voted exactly opposite in the presidential election turned out that for king county. that was sherman county, oregon a county of about 2,000 people second smallest county in the state very agricultural. you know, i obviously had zero connections with it, but we just said well why not and we asked our newsletter readers if we could figure out a way to visit to go to talk with people. would you want to do it and a lot of them were like, yeah, let's do it. so one thing led to another it was a lot of googling and finding really wonderful wonderful dear people in sherman county who decided to take this risk with us and sandy mcnabb was the longtime agricultural agent. we partnered with him and created this event. we drove down five hours 20 people from seattle and had about four hours of conversation. we also did like a quick bus tour of the fields. they they like made sandwiches for us. we shared a meal before we got into it. but here was the biggest i never thought of it that way moment, and and i never thought of it that way moment is is anytime you think or say that in conversation? it means that some insight has crossed the chasm between another perspective and your own it's a truly magical thing that can happen in our minds. it's really interesting. we can see things from many perspectives. and so one woman laura from seattle was pretty typical in this respect. she really she noticed that she was afraid that she was dehumanizing people who voted for trump, but for her, you know, she voted against trump. because of things she believes then that are really really good and important, you know, like same-sex marriage and the environment and certain other policies are like you, you know, if you don't believe in these things, how could you be anything other than a bad person was was how she was thinking that was the assumption she was making and so she went down on the trip with us because she couldn't help but be curious. she didn't know anyone else, you know, she's on the bus just kind of by herself. and there was a moment in and i asked a lot of people who went like what was the moment that really stood out and it was a moment when a farmer named darren who is six foot nine inches, very tall man where he stood up and and said something about why he voted for trump and it had to do with something called the waters of the united states rule. and when he when he talked about this the people from sherman county were all like, yeah. and people from king county like the hell it what what the heck is that the waters of the united states rules of federal regulation that that basically says, you know whether bodies of water come when they can come into federal control and farmers are very concerned that that regulation could be interpreted to mean that if like if it starts raining really hard and a pond just you know gets created on their land just from the rain that the government could claim that that is now their land or what's called furrows which are these little like divots in the ground in wheat fields that maybe if like a lot of water fills those what that count and then the government can take control of that land and it turns out i know this sounds silly, but there's actually been some close calls and farmers are really nervous and they do not trust democrats to listen to those concerns now when so when darren talked about this, you know, laura laura was like oh. i had no idea it never occurred to me that people might be voting for trump for reasons that that really didn't even matter to me that really wouldn't have even registered. now did everybody who voted for trump vote for that? no, of course not but the the illustration there is what what are we missing? right and anyone across this country can be asking that what are we missing? we oftentimes assume that people oppose what we support because they they must hate what we love. but that's a pretty finite formula. you know what i mean? and and if we don't ask what might we be missing and if we don't go to people every now and then and check whatever signals we're hearing from media or frankly our silos because it's a very siled informational landscape. how can we know? how can we really know? what the full formula is? and that that was the i never thought of it that way moment. yeah, i love that story myself because i can definitely relate to the farmers of sherman county. not that i know anything about water regulation, but that when people hear that, i you know sometimes vote for libertarians vote for republicans. they immediately think about i think what most seattle, you know progressive voters are on the top of their agenda. so, you know civil rights and lgbtq rights. and so if i'm voting that way i must be against my own interests i even once was in an audience of about 300 people in in seattle at links and use theater and had someone call me a self-loathing homophobic and an internalized racist. because of the way i voted but what is interesting is that i vote as mostly conservative because i am a person of color because i am a lesbian and it's because in my opinion the government and institutions of our country have time after time after time again failed us and there's plenty of evidence of how they have failed us. and so i would prefer that the government just get out of my way and allow me to flourish on my own accord. one great statistic is that you know, we know that people of color often don't have generational wealth that you see in white families. so lots of regulation lots of taxes lots of red tape for me to be able to build my own generational wealth for my family is harder to do in my opinion with big government democrats and the way i vote really is, you know has nothing to do with marriage equality frankly that's settled we don't need to debate it anymore. it's law. so i'd rather be focused on other aspects that are very important to me. yeah, i mean i'm not i should be the one asking the questions but of course because i'm very curious. i really wanted to be like, oh do people end up asking you you know your reasons, but we don't have to go there you can ask more questions about you can ask me. yeah, do you do you get there are people curious mostly i'm just told him wrong. okay. but but those are some of my reasons. all right, so i'll get back to asking you a question. so in your book you talk a lot about attachment and i think that that's a really critical idea. they think we we all wrestle with it and especially if we are ourselves, you know, i'm a republican. i'm a democrat and if it's something especially if it's you've held lifelong you kind of go along with how your party evolves and and some degrees they've evolved and interesting ways in recent years. so, you know talk a little bit about attachment and and maybe some experience that you've seen in your own life how that has has made things a little uncomfortable. yeah, so an attachment to me is something that holds you to a belief and it can be a good thing because it's sort of reinforces something that you really truly feel you that you are it can be a bad thing when it pressures you to kind of pretend your beliefs are something so that you meet other people's expectations, and that happened to me in a really interesting way that i describe in the book. i have a really high value for honesty right like journalism kind of drills that into you if you're responsible journalist and many of us are promise. um promise i really care about the truth and i always try to be honest about who i am and there was there was a time when i did a talk about my parents and my relationship and with with braver angels actually and the newsletter for braver angels included a of of that talk. and the person who wrote it said that me and my family had really struggled to make it over the border right that we had immigrated with struggle. and i hadn't actually said that. it actually isn't the case. my family was more sort of middle class upper middle class in mexico, which is not common and you know, we we crossed over because my father was hired by by an american corporation. and so i looked at that and i thought oh man, i better you know, i better let them know and can they correct it, you know, no big deal and i wrote a quick email to my friend at the organization who had written it and i knew he'd be fine with it. he could change it. no, no worries. and then i hovered over the send button. and i was like maybe i'll let this one go. and and some really interesting things went through my head that i'm not terribly proud of. e well i don't know. maybe i'll get more empathy if people think i struggled. well, i don't know. maybe i shouldn't question that, you know, i shouldn't push back on that because we have to keep the focus on the struggle. and so i don't want to yeah, no, let's keep that in. and then not to mention. not to mention. am i a latina? am i a mexican immigrant if i don't fit the stereotype of mexican immigration if i don't fit that narrative? am i still? you know and i just said no, i'm not gonna send it. and then my mother called. oh, and then my mother called it was like within seconds. i swear and she's like did you see the newsletter? did you see? what you're gonna write monica like you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna call him right? you're gonna tell him to change it right like monica, monica. monica and i'm like, ah, and yeah and i and i really and i told her of course mom. yes, i will thank yes, i will. i will let them know that we need to change that because it's not true. and i hung up the phone and i just sat there i hit send and i just sat there thinking about what i'd almost done, you know and attachment to an idea of what my group of something that is true about. my group has to be true about me or else i am not me or else somehow that identity does not fully apply to me or i cannot consider myself belonging to that identity or some bull -- like that. so those are attachments and and that was that was a hard story for me to share in the book and frankly a hard one for me to share tonight, but but i think we have to be really honest and curious about our own ideas where they come from and whether they are truly what we think and who we are or whether we are putting on a show for others. i agree and that that part of the book really resonated with me in the story and you know, you shared this story with me before is i i see attachments and identity in my own family and this book really helped to open my eyes of how powerful not only evaluating our own attachments, but also like you said in the beginning of the conversation being curious and waiting for questions before burning that bridge can be really powerful so like my own life i was you know, raised very religious conservative and my father, you know, he was a minister for for most of his of my upbringing so my coming out was extremely difficult for my parents. in fact, pretty much severed our our relationship. i'm 40 years old now. i'm still getting to that point in our relationship where it's very strong and healthy. and i really thought about that idea of attachment because i remember when i was you know, young in my early 20s first coming out first understanding myself and being very angry with my parents because they wouldn't accept me and having friends who would often just say forget your parents build your chosen family if they don't love you, they don't deserve you forget them. you know, that was the sentiment and i often felt that way myself. but now that i i understand how powerful and identity can be an attachment can be my father's entire identity is being a christian man is being a minister. and he has made so much progress to embrace me to embrace my partner to embrace everything of who i am and what i realized is it wasn't his unwillingness to love his child, but it was the work to pretty much shed everything. he identified with his entire life that's in order to completely fully unconditionally. love his child. that's serious. love. but if i had decided to burn that bridge we would have never gotten here. if he hadn't decided to really examine his identity and say hey i can still be a christian man. i can still hold my beliefs while loving my child we wouldn't be here. but i'll tell you it's been 20 years of really hard conversation to get where we are today. which is why i'm here on the stage with you because i know it can work it can work with friendships with coworkers or even the most intimate family relationships and you're talking about i mean that's hard work. i mean that emotionally and in a relationship to hold that bridge that long. yeah. that takes a lot of faith. that takes some courage and it i don't know. it's it's i've not had to face anything like that and i do wonder if i could i do. i'm sure there's folks here who yeah have their own stories. yeah something to think about. i know we've got a few minutes left before we get to q&a and you did want to have a fiery debate with me i did so let's go. all right. so i think we decided on the topic of free speech. i bet you can guess who loves free speech liberty. um and particularly on the the topic. i hate to bring them up again, but donald trump mr. t. and him being d-platformed and i'll say it again. i am not a fan of donald trump and he's not really a conservative. i'm just saying. but i don't think he should have been removed from social media. what say you? yeah, i i realize that we should probably talk about this because yeah, like we definitely disagreement here. i am also a huge fan of free speech. i mean my whole book is about we need to create context where we can be honest with each other where we can share our deep down real concerns, right like that has to happen or else we can't see each other. we can't like lead meaningful lives with people who are different and we can't build our society. i mean, we just can't so i really believe that and yet i'm stuck on this idea of what would the last? couple years have been like if ah, if if he were still on social media my parents and i hugely disagree on this too, by the way, i mean, we've had it out about this, but but all i can think of is man. i don't know i mean the word harm does come up like wasn't that kind of discourse from from him or from it just felt like it was hurting us. it felt like it was hurting our ability to to function and to look at each other and i can i can see my parents being like no. no, hang on like, you know, but we saw a lot of good and what he was saying he was standing up for us and and i could see them here right now like yeah, but bomb dad like look at what it was doing to our country and and i can see us getting into it. so let's get into it. of so, i don't know if i quite agree with your parents. i don't think he had much interesting or productive things to say, but at the same time. i don't i think we often we often say that words are dangerous or thing, you know things that we say are dangerous nowadays, and that's simply not true but by d platforming him what we're doing is is giving life to to darker platforms where we can't really see potentially dangerous people out in the oh, that's a great point. i think that's a really good point and parlor why? yeah, why do we have parlor? yeah and parlor. we you know, we could certainly point to being the the platform that helped to organize the january 6. yeah event. oh, yeah, that's true like that there is that principle like when when people aren't heard like it's not i really think this is a true thing about the human condition if people aren't heard they will find someone who hears them. we always will we will find someone who hears us, right? and yeah, if we decide that some people can't be heard then. yeah, well, they're gonna go somewhere and and we're not going to all have the same conversation and we wonder why we're here where we are now, so i do agree with that. but what about yes, but what about what about the power that he had? well, i mean because he he did and you know, okay, you know what? i think he did have power and influence and i think that okay. i've got a theory go with me. oh, sorry do it. so i think that donald trump says a lot of nonsense on social media and certainly gave the media a lot of great content to work with but at the end of the day, i think most of what he said was dumb and didn't do anything. however, i go back to the midterm elections. i certainly like to look at the virginia state elections and how young can one i am confident 100% confident that if donald trump was still on twitter youngkin would not have one that election. and it's because he had the ability to distance himself from donald trump. and he had the ability to woo back some of those more moderate voters. and when the state i think that in a way. democrats shot themselves in the foot by being happy about donald trump being off of twitter. because now he it's harder for him to associate himself with a lot of the republican politicians who would rather him not mention their name and we saw a big sweep in the midterm elections. i think if he was on twitter tweeting at all of the people running saying i love that guy. he's my guy vote for him because of vote for him is a vote for me. i think there would have been less republicans who won during the midterms. interesting. okay. yeah, i don't normally think of it. i wasn't thinking of it in sort of the political gamesmanship of it, but but i can see but that's but i think that's really what it comes down to is we're so narrow and how we look at something that happened. we're so narrow of yes, donald trump's off twitter. that's a good thing. but what are all the other? effects of what happened and speaking of that. i mean that that i think is i think about it. i think my deeper concern is about the climate that the climate of discourse that was that was swirling around many of his tweets and much of his content as everyone had to react everyone had to react to him the media of which i am a part can't help but you know, sometimes echo and amplify and talk about these things and and i'll just ignore him. well it i know but it felt like the the anxiety level was so much higher because everyone had to react everyone had to see everyone had to look. and that's the piece that i'm like it's just things felt calmer in a good way when facebook and twitter banned him and i will admit when it first happened. i was like, i never thought that was gonna happen and i don't know how i feel about it, and i still don't but if i could go back like would i go back and have have them keep him on? i'm not there yet. i'm just not there yet. i'm not sure. and it's a slippery slope, you know, if we as a people become more and more comfortable with people being d platformed with people being canceled with people being censored. it's going to impact things that are important to you. and i think another example is like nicole hannah jones. who's the author the 1619 project? pretty much nothing. i agree with her about but her book has been banned in many public schools and many states. i think that is 100% wrong and dangerous. if you don't disagree with her. let's all read the book and debate it. let's have a book that has a differing opinion, especially in the public school system, you know, we're teaching our kids that we just have to think one way and any other way is not just wrong, but it's immoral completely agree on that. and so if we deplatform donald trump, then we start banning. so then the you know, the other side says well, we're going to start banning. so it's it's the other side there's this i think you're absolutely right about that too. so that's what i'm talking about. that's concludes our passionate debate. right on time where you can seeding or bill don't know that i could have i could have allowed. yeah, i still wouldn't go back and change it but but i but in principle i totally agree with you. it's that one that one circumstance that's just sitting in my head and we don't want to stick to our principles. i gotta try. yeah, i gotta try i know. so i think we're going to move on to q&a now. okay. does anyone have any questions? hopefully we've warmed you up. i think you just line up. behind the microphone hi. was one of those guys that that went to oregon and yeah, right. that was amazing. yeah, so i i got a first amendment comment. i think it was great that the founders made free speech the first amendment. but you could speak on a soapbox. maybe even with the microphone maybe even with a megaphone. to reach a number of people and anybody could do it and you could say it and if you had a repeat it. he's like a rock star you couldn't do it on a record. you'd have to go and have another performance and then another one and then maybe would gather attention. but thank goodness for dorsey the guy from twitter who did a lot of crappy things, but he also the platform trump. and for whatever you think jeff bezos he did do the washington post. when a person speaks through a broadcast. it's a different kind of free speech. once it leaves here and goes through here and then goes all up like in okay, that's gonna go to to the book beat. suddenly i'm speaking to a whole bunch of people. and it's different. it's a whole different medium. so yeah free speech, but there's some responsibility like yelling fire in a crowded theater, and i think that needs to be discussed and you may or may not agree with it. but at least let's put that on the table when you talk about no, i really i really like that you brought that up responsibility is a good point there. and yeah, was that your question to just comment on that? yeah. yeah well, but but here's the thing that stops me and you know braver angels is here and and i'm with braver angels and we do some really amazing work that you know challenges assumptions that we have about what we're able to talk about and one thing that i've really i've really observed is that we want people to affirm a shared reality. before they can earn our trust. but what if it takes trust to build a true shared reality? that's the sticking point for me. um, so it's true that yeah, of course we have to share information responsibly in a broad way. but if we close the door to all conversation where people can test their ideas and fully say what they think and mean, you know, those contained conversations. sure. then then we're really missing the opportunity to build trust and what's happening right now. npr just did a wonderful report on this our blue. zip codes are getting bluer our red. zip codes are getting redder. people are moving their bodies and their lives to be closer to people who agree with them and already we had this problem that the glue that held us all together was fading and and you know, we're shutting doors. we're burning bridges. and it just feels like if the shared reality right if dangerous ideas and misinformation is what worries us. well. trust is really an important ingredient and if we don't have trust i don't know how i'm a journalist, right? it pains me that so many people don't trust journalists, but i also can admit journalists. have a role to play in earning that distrust we do and i could go on about that but and this is a really really tricky one. so that's my comment that probably raises a lot more questions. i just say one thing to your point, sir. jack dorsey is no longer ceo of twitter. but but the point but what i'm saying is what if the guy who takes over for him is like i'm gonna get those horrible liberals off of twitter that are sending out misinformation about the right. i created a word called malinformation. it's different. there's this information. you don't know there's misinformation. maybe you wanted to go and have some fun. then there's being malicious and actually making something called information, which is just massaging data doing it for malicious purposes the bad and i don't see anybody in the media using the word mal information. and that's the one that they ought to use when they're talking about that. i get the last word. yes. yes. so yeah, yes, but if you go right now. are you doing my name is oscar. i'm not really good at this. so really nervous just being up here. you got this. i just wanted to say my i never thought of it that way type of thing. it's kind of a it's kind of a love story. so if you don't mind me saying this. 12 years ago i met a woman and we were just friends and we met briefly. i didn't know really anything about her last year. we reunited and both of us were able to start seeing each other and we promised each other. that politics and all of this would not be part of the discussion. a mexican-american my family came from mexico in the 60s. i was born in 69 on 52 now. i'm basically the only liberal in my entire family 99% of my family voted for trump most of them live in california. after we got to know each other me and this gal. we find it excited to to now talk about the important things and lo and behold. she's a trump voter. she's a republican. she's in the army. i myself served in the in marines years ago. and the conversation led to well now it doesn't really make a difference. even though most of her opinions about why she votes for trump. i don't agree with and she doesn't really agree with mine. but we got to this is what i say. it's a love story because we got to that part first. and part of the conversation was like when i hear this about like water regulations and religion and and politics i start to think, you know when i in the military. if we all here in this room didn't discuss these things at all, just like her and i did and we got to know one another. no matter what our background was i guarantee you say we were stuck in this room for a while that we probably all become friends right that we'd all get to know one another that we have similarities and if we promise to not talk about that then we would remain friends. and then now we bring politics into the situation and now all of a sudden. i'm a jerk or they're a jerk and then we start going our separate ways. so i guess if there's a question is do we take a look at some of the things that you talk about in the book? i haven't read it obviously, but do we say are we looking at it in the wrong perspective? are we all just picking these things out and saying? well, i don't like that. i don't like this whatever and stuff and we're and we're losing the ability to you know, i'm 52. i seem to remember a time when it wasn't like this right and then and then my liberal friends say, well you have to pay attention and you have to do these things and my conservative friends say well, this is the way we've done it and it seemed to work in in a certain age, right? so it just feels like it's too much for a society a community. yeah, right, and i know i'm going on but no no i get no i get it. it's too much for us to yeah. i mean when you when you look at the volume of opinions being shared per human right. yeah, you know what? i mean? like, holy it's just and and not to mention like the ethic of social media is basically like you need to have an opinion about everything someone in your network is waiting for your opinion on everything like that's not you know, and so what it would it becomes and you see this even on social media profiles right people will put their opinion on something right there at the level of their name. it's it's a billboard. it's like, you know, here's my name and here's my cause and that's my signal, you know, and what does that signal do the signal is a beacon to others who agree with me it is a shield for people to stay away if they don't so, yeah, i think that we unfortunately have just reached a point where we believe that people's opinions are then that's what they are. that's they are that they're that opinion and i can judge them entirely for that opinion in the book. there are several chapters about seeing people. i think that this this divided time and this clash of ideas means we have to go a leverage a level deeper. and ask about people get curious about people, you know, so one good way to do that is instead of asking. why do you believe what you believe which gets people to just like, okay. here we go, like time to defend myself. how did you come to believe what you believe? you ask them for their story? you walk alongside them as they take you through that and it's a tour not a trial. judgment doesn't come into play as easily in that scenario instead. you're gathering information, which is what curiosity needs curiosity needs information and then gaps appear in your brain. oh wait, you said this in this but why did you do this when this happened to you? that's a question out now. i'm curious now. i'm gathering more information. i'm modeling curiosity in the conversation. i'm learning about you. and it's that it's the stories behind our opinions. they get us a little closer to who we are and to your illustration, you know, yeah, we don't have to start with the politics. you know, i mean in sherman county that trip don you remember, you know, we started with a bus tour we started with a meal. used we started the first question everyone answered with each other in pairs was what's your favorite childhood memory? that's where we started seeing each other as people first. which is just too -- hard and on the internet, which is a non-place place that makes us into non-people. thank you. thank you. all right. they already know we have something in common because i love your shirt. oh my shirt. yes you yes. you are. flaky fan. yes. yes. i see why people are playing their mass down for the mic. well, thanks. i love arts flaky too. hi monica, it's lauren holsteiger. hello. hi, so i think one of the big blocks i am a curious person, but one of the big blocks i have is like kai gang passed the whole point of okay. i want to understand why do you do that or how did you get to that conclusion, but then i'm still thinking in the back of my head, but it still means that you're harming like these people or this group of people or it's a it's still in a front to me, even if you're not voting against me per se so like how do you get through that wall to open up your mind a little more and not feel as defensive and what kind of conditions do you need to be into make it optimum? yeah. yeah. i mean first that i'm so glad you brought that up. yeah, and and someone someone else asked me a very similar thing like i you know, what if crossing the divide means that i'm you know endorsing ideas that hurt communities that hurt, you know, maybe folks without a lot of power folks who need help. i'm seeing a lot of heads not this is a really that's a really real and and difficult challenge and you know one of the things i say to that is this that it's true that our opinions we have to take responsibility for them. right what what opinions motivate in behavior and then the outcomes of those behaviors have to take responsibility. so so yeah, i mean some opinions will motivate behaviors that harm people. so then what do you do? and here's what i do what i see us do very often is whatever that conclusion is, whatever that belief is, we we've we've decided that it leads to harmful behavior. so one thing is just are we sure? are we sure sometimes we are sometimes we are but can we be curious about that link? i talk in the book about a dynamic i call chaining which happens a lot online and you can really trace it which is basically where like you know to take summer of 2020 somebody posts on facebook lamenting the looting of businesses. and somebody decides that because that person lamented the looting of businesses. they're probably racist. now what happens there is a chain reaction where the person without checking. thinks well, some people who lament the looting of businesses may really be against, you know, they're really bothered by the protests some people bother by the protests may be bothered by black lives matter some people bothered by black lives matter, maybe bothered by black lives matter because they have a concern about you know, the cause underneath some people who do that may actually be racist, but that's like that's a math that mathematical formula, you know, and you multiply probability by probability. it's a small thing, but what we do is we chain it all together. and we decide if you say that you believe this. i've seen the script play out on twitter. with all these like highly retweeted things that keep elevating themselves and sure enough it. i mean it happens, right, but we see the ugly the ugly goes way up high and we see it and we're like, oh a equals z got it and then we go out and we assume that the harmful things are all chained together. and so that to me is the issue is can we get curious about our certainty that this person's entire thing is to harm that this person's entire opinion is harmful. maybe maybe some of it is maybe some of it is not and also maybe their conclusion is something we really find find unsavory and it's so hard to be there, but what if we get curious about their story, i personally think i've talked to people who hold all kinds of beliefs all across the spectrum and and you can often find truth and something to relate to in what led to someone's belief or you go. oh, i see i see where you're coming from on that. i totally don't agree where you ended up, but that i get and and i connect with the human experience of that and how okay how it might have led you over here and over there. and what that does is it often turns the volume down on everything. it just turns it down a little bit again. it doesn't mean you agree. but but it's still ultimately about being curious. thank you. thanks lauren. thank you for having us. it's a really great to hear you both and thanks to brave angels. i first wanted to ask some monica what if you could suck a little bit more about why relatives did well for trump. also, i'm a progressive who has relatives who vote for trump who voted for trump, and i'm also disturbed by the way, some of the folks in our progressive community. perhaps demonize those folks i have, you know relatives or post american immigrants who you know voted for him. so i'm curious about that. also, you know, the issue about twitter is intriguing to me. i can see both sides and believe very strongly in free speech but i wonder if this is worth consideration. it seems to me maybe i'm missing something about it, but twitter is a private corporation. so unless i'm wrong they have the right to. interview somebody or not. i used to be on the city council back in wisconsin and we were always trying to get the quotes. you know, we always try to fight for who would get quoted but sometimes you get quoted sometimes you don't that's the newspapers thing and if i think the twitter people really struggled over it to me the issue is what you don't want to limit free. speech. hardly ever but if the person who is talking isn't if i think it's one thing to say. well, i don't agree with their policies. i think their policies are bad. that's one thing but if they're in effect saying lying about the election trying to really undermine the whole system of elections and and really attacking the media and saying you know the media is the end is public enemy number one, like i was a teacher and so every you try to give all the students a chance to talk. but if one of the students starts attacking the other students or saying they or you know, beating them up or something, they're like, okay. you don't get a microphone there. so i just wonder what the issue twitter if they don't have that right as a private corporation and if people are if when people try to take away other people's speech if maybe that's a line. there should be thought of a yes, so, i don't know if we have time for both of those maybe but since i was kind of two and one, but but i'll start i guess talking about my parents a little bit. so first of all, i just want to say i'm mom and dad if you're watching later, thank you for letting me share your story because they're amazing. i'm very lucky to have them as parents. but yeah, so for my mother a big big part of it is about abortion. mexican catholic is a particular kind of catholic and and i was i was raised, you know, mexican catholic myself. i'm no longer religious. but but that stuck with me anyway, so for her. it is very very difficult to put anything. on the other side of a democrat that would endorse murdering an unborn baby and have it be worse. so that's the case for her. it's just very difficult and we've had we've had this conversation. i mean wow. for my dad for my dad, he he really grew up in mexico. you know, i talk in the book about how he used to watch his father be mocked by his father's friends. for paying his taxes on time. mexico was a place unfortunately where you can get away with things with not doing things. and my dad really really really his own father. for following the rules even when maybe he didn't have to there was a nobility that he loved that about him. and so he looked at the united states as a place that follows its rules that enforces its laws. so people ask me about my father in immigration. my father wants strong borders, you know, and it's because of that because he he sees the united states. he sees a healthy society as one that it's forces its laws if you're going to change the law is fine change them but change them first. um, so a lot of that is kind of led to his support for trump. he saw trump just kind of along and say hey. what are we doing? you know, we've got laws we're gonna use them. we're going to do this and and i mean it's still tricky for me to kind of, you know, understand that that piece of him, but but when he talks about my grandfather i get it. there's something about it. i get. um, yeah. well, then thank you. that's all the time. we have. thank you so much for coming out everyone. thank you so much everyone. this is awesome. thank you. thanks, melina.