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0:17

Amanda Ripley began her life

0:20

as a journalist covering crime,

0:22

disaster, and terrorism. Than

0:25

in two thousand eighteen. And this is how

0:27

I became aware of her. She published

0:29

a brilliant essay calledcomplicating the

0:32

narratives. Which she opened

0:35

by confessing a professional existential

0:38

crisis. We journalist,

0:40

she wrote, and I quote, can

0:43

summon outrage in five words

0:45

or less. We value

0:47

the ancient power of storytelling and

0:50

we get that Good stories require

0:52

conflict, characters, and

0:54

scene. But in the present

0:56

era of tribalism, it

0:58

feels like we've reached our collective limitations.

1:02

Again and again, we have escalated

1:05

the conflict and snuffed the

1:07

complexity out of the conversation.

1:10

Yet, what Amanda Ripley has gone

1:12

on to investigate and so

1:15

helpfully illuminate is

1:17

not just about journalism or

1:19

about politics. It touches

1:22

almost every aspect of human

1:24

life in almost every society

1:26

around the world right now. We

1:29

think we're divided by issues. Arguing

1:32

about conflicting facts. But

1:34

actually, she says, we are trapped

1:37

in a pattern of dress known

1:39

as high conflict, where

1:41

the conflict itself has become the

1:43

point and it sweeps everything

1:46

into its vortex. So

1:48

how to get out? What

1:51

Amanda has been gathering by way of

1:53

answers to that question is an

1:55

extraordinary gift to us all. What

1:57

a pleasure to complicate this

1:59

narrative with the wise Amanda

2:02

Ripley. I'm

2:08

Tippett, and this is on being.

2:10

I spoke with Amanda before a live audience

2:13

at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs of

2:15

the University of Minnesota. Amanda

2:25

Ripley is both a chronicler

2:28

and a participant in

2:30

bringing the fuller story

2:33

of our time and our life together into

2:35

the light. And I

2:38

have been wanting to meet Amanda

2:40

in the flesh for a long

2:42

time, and I'm really grateful to Humphrey for

2:44

conspiring with me to get her here.

2:47

Thank you so much, Krista. I've been, like, having

2:49

this conversation in my head with you for, like, five

2:51

years. So

2:53

it's exciting that it's happening. I'm very grateful.

2:57

I'm excited. Yeah. Okay.

2:59

Well, let's go. So, you know, I

3:01

always ask a question of origins.

3:04

I I don't know that I knew this when I started

3:06

doing that, but that's a technique that's

3:09

used often in conversations

3:11

where we're trying to not have the predictable conversation.

3:15

And you wrote something that

3:18

was so was just so helpful to me and why

3:20

that works. I mean, I have all kinds of experiences

3:23

of why it works, but you said something that was

3:25

Ripley interesting that stories

3:28

of origins when we when we talk about

3:30

our early life, our childhood. You

3:33

said, these are by definition, dimensional

3:36

and messy. Unlike the debate

3:38

we think we're gonna have because you said

3:40

real life is not a bumper sticker. So

3:44

I think the question I wanna ask you

3:47

about Origins come to focus in on the

3:50

our topic today is how

3:52

you would trace the roots of your awareness,

3:55

of your attention to conflict

3:58

in the earliest background of your life, in your

4:00

childhood, your attention

4:02

to conflict, and what you took

4:04

away from that about what to do with it.

4:08

You

4:08

know, I don't think I really realize

4:11

this until pretty recently. But if I look back,

4:14

most of us, I think your first

4:16

exposure to conflict is at

4:18

home, right, with your family. If you think back,

4:20

what's the first time you experienced conflict.

4:24

Maybe it was with kids in the playground

4:26

or on the street, but probably it's

4:29

with a parent or

4:31

watching parents have conflict. So in my

4:33

case, my parents

4:36

had a lot of conflict. And It

4:38

took different forms, but it usually

4:40

involved a lot of yelling, particularly by

4:43

my mother, but she, as my father, was

4:45

quick to point out when I showed him a draft of the

4:47

book, She was not entirely to

4:49

blame. And they

4:51

both, you know, participated in

4:53

this conflict in all kinds of ways. But as

4:55

a kid, I would do this thing where I would

4:57

monitor their conflict. So I would

4:59

monitor those fights from the top of

5:02

the stairs. And I can vividly remember sort

5:04

of drawing in the carpet listening to

5:06

them fighting. And

5:08

I think it was a way to to control

5:10

it. Right, like a way to feel

5:13

like I

5:15

I could I was surveilling

5:17

the conflict if that makes sense. And for

5:20

me, I think that never ended

5:22

in a way. You know, like as a journalist, you're

5:24

always monitoring conflict.

5:26

Yeah. So I I see Right.

5:29

A lot of these patterns we learn don't service

5:31

when we get older, but I think you wrote somewhere else.

5:33

You know, I think when you're watching as a child, when

5:35

you're surveilling, when you're listening, monitoring,

5:37

and you said, you're that's

5:39

your way to try to feel safe, to try to

5:41

keep yourself safe, to think that you can participate

5:44

and keep keeping everybody else safe in it. It feels

5:46

to me like that, flows very

5:48

naturally into the reason that you would

5:50

become a journalist.

5:51

Yeah. Right. And I used to just

5:53

feel like that was

5:56

a failing. In other words, because it's a delusion.

5:58

It's a sort of grandiose one. Right? That you

6:00

can control conflict by writing about

6:02

it or monitoring it. On the other

6:04

hand, I think there is some

6:07

helpfulness sometimes in

6:09

trying to tell stories about the conflict.

6:11

Mhmm. That are enlightening if they are

6:14

or illuminated, but it's complicated.

6:19

So I've seen you writing, but tell me if

6:21

this is right. Was it around two thousand sixteen

6:23

that you really started to come to this conclusion

6:25

that this is not working? What do you

6:27

remember, like, was there a day or was there an

6:29

event or a story that brought that home? What would have

6:31

happened in twenty six PM? Yeah. I know. Okay.

6:36

I mean, in terms of the journalism you were

6:38

doing. Yeah. You just felt like

6:40

I mean, I had grown up where my dad

6:42

was a Republican, my mom was a Democrat, We

6:45

got the Trenton Times and the New York Times

6:47

delivered every day in New Jersey. And

6:49

the New York Times was, like, revered in my

6:52

household. Rightly or wrongly.

6:54

But, you know, my parents were the first in their families

6:56

to go to college. Education was revered.

6:59

I think there was a certain status attached to

7:01

The New York Times. You know what I mean? Like,

7:03

But think after the twenty sixteen election,

7:05

I couldn't I

7:07

mean, how do you not ask yourself if

7:10

this is working out the way we

7:12

planned. Right? I mean, in other words, it

7:15

didn't seem to matter what the New York Times

7:18

reported about Donald Trump

7:20

--

7:20

Mhmm. -- because half the country didn't

7:23

believe they were acting in good faith.

7:25

So but, I mean, I just feel like you

7:28

And you wrote, you know, you wrote, I think, in

7:31

in complicating the narrative, which was two thousand

7:33

eighteen. There are all

7:35

kinds of ways to analyze Right? And you

7:37

can talk about the influence of social media. You can

7:39

talk about the business model of journalism. And

7:42

you said all of

7:44

this mattered This is

7:46

where you came to, but none of these

7:48

explanations felt quite adequate.

7:51

Something else was happening to, something

7:54

that had not been named. Yeah.

7:57

So in my kind of mid

7:59

life crisis of wondering, what is

8:01

journalism? Does it matter? How

8:03

can I be useful in this in

8:06

this world in which every story

8:08

I do either

8:10

will have very limited impact

8:12

or just make things

8:14

worse potentially? Right? Partly,

8:17

I could go off on that midlife crisis because

8:20

I was a freelance Right? So I had some distance

8:22

from these places at this point. And there's

8:24

a lot of privilege in that to kind of to sort

8:26

of question fundamental things. Which

8:28

is much harder to do when you're in a newsroom every

8:30

day -- Yeah. Yeah. -- and go dense, dangerous,

8:33

difficult reporting. Right. So I just wanna

8:35

name that. But also, So

8:37

I kinda went off trying to figure out,

8:39

like, what is going on here? How do I make sense of this?

8:41

How do I be useful? And again, went down

8:43

a lot of different avenues, which

8:46

all of which matter. But when I

8:48

started spending time with people

8:50

who study intractable conflict or who

8:52

have been themselves in intractable conflict

8:55

or malignant conflict as it sometimes

8:57

called, then it was like everything

8:59

clicked. That, you

9:02

know, part of how you have to understand,

9:04

at least for me, what's happening is

9:06

to understand what high conflict is.

9:08

Which is a special kind of conflict,

9:11

which doesn't behave according to

9:13

the rules of normal or healthy conflict.

9:15

And it's very magnetic. It's a kind

9:17

of conflict that becomes

9:19

us versus them where we feel increasingly

9:22

morally superior and increasingly

9:25

baffled and threatened by the other

9:27

side or person, and we

9:29

make a lot of mistakes. So

9:31

there's a lot of research on this and

9:33

there is kind of a bright line between

9:37

healthy conflict, good conflict, and

9:39

high conflict. And just as quick

9:41

example, anger is okay.

9:43

In all the research on emotion and conflict.

9:45

I'm a big fan of anger. I don't know if anyone

9:48

else is a fanning, but it is initiatory.

9:51

It is important as

9:53

a signal. Right? It's energizing. Contempt

9:56

is really hard to work with -- Mhmm. -- and the same

9:58

with disgust.

10:00

So that's a bright line to just give

10:02

you an example I'm talking about. But that

10:04

for me was a really helpful bigger

10:08

umbrella to understand how all these

10:10

other forces were interacting. And

10:13

really what you did is you got interested

10:15

in of course, I like this because the

10:17

human condition is my lens. Right?

10:20

That's I mean, there's this line where you said

10:22

in in complicating the narrative. After

10:24

spending more than fifty hours

10:26

in training for various forms of dispute

10:28

resolution, I realize that I've overestimated my

10:30

ability to quickly understand what drives people

10:32

to do, what they do. I have overvalued

10:35

reasoning in myself and

10:37

others and undervalued pride,

10:39

fear, and the need to belong. And

10:41

I want you to flesh this out I've been

10:44

operating like an

10:44

economist, in other words, an economist

10:47

from the nineteen sixties. Yeah.

10:49

You know, this is the thing that I think

10:52

is really helpful for me

10:55

in trying to understand where we need to get

10:57

to. So if you think about

11:01

economics used to be based on I'm

11:03

I'm sort of reducing it down.

11:05

So forgive me for the economists in the audience.

11:07

But used to be based on certain theories

11:09

about how people would behave. Right? And

11:12

and then finally Daniel Donovan and others

11:15

convinced the field more or less

11:17

that actually human behavior

11:19

isn't quite as simple as

11:21

you are saying. And the idea also was that

11:24

there was that we were basically rational,

11:27

that people were basically rational economic

11:29

actors. And, of course, that when we try all the time,

11:31

but somehow this overall rationality would

11:33

balance it out? Exactly. Yep.

11:35

Yeah. And it turns out, that's not

11:37

right. Yeah. And so you get this field

11:39

of behavioral economics, And

11:43

for a long time, we were thinking of calling that essay

11:45

behavioral journalism, but that felt

11:47

too creepy and weird. So but

11:49

that would be the goal. It's you know, what if

11:52

you started over with journalism

11:54

and you try to create a

11:56

a field of storytelling that was designed

11:59

based on what we actually know about what humans

12:01

need to thrive and make decisions.

12:04

In a world that's inundated with

12:06

information, and that

12:09

requires a lot of interdependence across different

12:11

groups. So what would that actually look like? Mhmm.

12:13

And think, you know, your show is closer

12:15

to that. You know, where you're thinking about

12:17

the audience as a

12:18

human. Mhmm. Yeah. Mhmm.

12:21

Okay. So I wanna come back to something that you

12:23

you just touched on. Well, let me just

12:26

say this. So, really, this conversation we're

12:28

having and the

12:30

the the investigation you're doing, the conversations

12:32

you're leading, the

12:34

entry point was journalism, but this is

12:36

really a conversation exploration

12:39

and truth telling about what it means to be human

12:41

and alive now. So

12:45

before we get into breaking down high

12:47

conflict little bit more, which

12:49

feels so familiar even as you start to describe

12:51

it, I really do

12:53

wanna kind of establish this foundation

12:57

that you're on that and and that

12:59

psychology is on too, that conflict in

13:01

and of itself is not problematic

13:04

-- Right. -- that it's often productive, that

13:06

it's necessary, that it is and

13:09

can be a good.

13:10

Yeah. This is like the single biggest

13:13

mistake that think it's made in public discourse

13:15

around this. I

13:16

mean, we need conflict to get better. To

13:18

be challenged, to challenge each

13:20

other. In

13:21

fact, I think the the USC is a lot more

13:23

good conflict, not less. There's

13:26

no better shortcut to transformation

13:28

that I know

13:29

of. And

13:32

that's not what we've got. Right?

13:34

So we build a bunch of institutions to

13:36

cultivate high conflict as opposed to good

13:38

conflict, which means we could design

13:40

them differently, right, to cultivate good

13:42

conflict. But there's a place called the difficult

13:45

conversations lab at Columbia University

13:47

where Peter Coleman studies and

13:49

his colleagues study conflict. And

13:51

so they've hosted more than five hundred strained

13:55

and awkward arguments between people

13:57

who disagree on profound important

14:00

things like gun control,

14:02

abortion, the Middle East. And

14:05

what they found is you can roughly sort

14:07

those conversations into two buckets.

14:09

Which is there's one group that

14:12

get really stuck in the

14:14

same one or two negative emotions.

14:16

And then there's another group where there's

14:19

movement. So that's the experience frustration

14:21

and anger. But then there's

14:23

like a flash of curiosity or even

14:25

humor. God forbid. And then

14:28

back to frustration and anger. So when you

14:30

see it in the data, it's like a galaxy of

14:32

emotions as opposed to just one

14:34

And and that think is how it feels

14:36

to be in good conflict. Right? There's a sense

14:38

of movement. Yeah. Yeah. That

14:41

something is possible here and you can't predict

14:43

exactly what it is. And in those

14:45

conversations, people asked each other more questions

14:47

and they came out of the lab more satisfied than

14:50

they come

14:50

in. So I think I hold those graphs

14:52

in my head as far as, you know,

14:54

what what we've got and what what we could have

14:56

and what I hope we have. I

15:16

wanna read two things that just put them

15:18

side by side from high conflict.

15:21

You said, we

15:23

need turbulent city council

15:25

meetings, strange date night dinners,

15:28

protests and strikes, clashes

15:30

in boardrooms and guidance counselor offices.

15:33

People who try to live without any conflicts

15:35

who never argue or mourn tend

15:37

to implode sooner or later as any

15:39

psychologist will tell lifegiving

15:42

without conflict is like living without

15:44

love, cold and eventually

15:46

unbearable. And

15:48

when you introduce the notion

15:50

of high conflict, You

15:53

describe it as the mysterious

15:55

force that incites

15:58

people to lose their minds in ideological

16:00

disputes political feuds

16:02

or gang vendettas. The

16:04

force that causes us to lie awake

16:06

at night obsessed by a conflict

16:08

with a coworker or a sibling

16:11

or a politician we've never met.

16:14

Right. So that's the diabolical thing about

16:16

high conflict. Right? Every single

16:18

one I've followed all over the world

16:21

you end up harming the

16:23

things you care most about, the

16:26

thing you went into the conflict usually

16:28

to protect without realizing.

16:31

Right? So there's something diabolical

16:33

about that system of high conflict

16:36

where usually everyone suffers

16:38

but to very different degrees. Which

16:41

is maybe worth noting here

16:43

that the phrase high conflict, which I

16:45

liked better than intractable conflict. Which is,

16:47

yeah, which is Peter Coleman's phrases Yeah.

16:50

I I just feel like intractable feels

16:52

like impossible even though I think that's not

16:54

technically

16:54

true. Yeah.

16:55

Even though I think that's a kind of alluring drama

16:57

to it. Right. And it doesn't It could

16:59

go, it could change. Right? What

17:01

goes up might come down. So

17:04

the phrase high conflict comes from high conflict

17:06

divorces. Which in the eighties,

17:08

lawyers started noticing that about a quarter of

17:10

American divorces were stuck in

17:13

perpetual cycles of hostility and blame.

17:16

And you know who suffered the most -- Yeah.

17:19

-- which is kids. Yeah. Right? And that's true today

17:21

in the United

17:21

States. Right? And that's true in in every high conflict

17:24

I've seen, whether it's gang violence or guerrilla

17:26

warfare.

17:27

That the children. Yeah. Except for. Yeah. Yeah.

17:30

So there's a

17:32

lot of similarity across really different

17:34

conflicts, really different high conflicts, because

17:36

humans are humans. And there's

17:38

collective behavior that's important and

17:40

there's different access to resources and

17:42

weaponry and that's important. But

17:45

the behavior is really similar,

17:47

which for me was exciting

17:50

because then it means you can learn you can learn

17:52

from high conflict divorces and you can learn

17:54

from high conflict politics. And

17:56

it's sometimes helpful to get out of the

17:58

myopic focus on one one

18:01

kind of conflict and look at it sideways

18:03

from another context. You know,

18:06

something that this also sparks in me that I've

18:08

I've thought about in these years

18:10

is also how we have

18:12

such a body of experience and intelligence

18:14

in our personal lives

18:18

about navigating conflict,

18:20

about how there's gonna be lots of

18:22

times when when

18:25

love is not a feeling, but just things you do

18:27

despite how you feel that day.

18:29

That that with the people we're intimate

18:31

with, we don't say every we don't

18:33

blurt out everything we're thinking all the time

18:36

because we know we're in relationship and

18:38

there are times when what you do is

18:40

you don't talk about certain things because you know

18:42

it won't be heard. Or so, you

18:44

know, one of the things you talk about

18:46

one thing high high conflict does is it collapses

18:49

complexity and is thinking

18:51

about how, you

18:54

know, how annoying it is when when

18:56

you're getting relationship counseling and

18:58

and they say, you know, you said you always.

19:00

Yes. And you're like, well, that but it's true.

19:02

It's true. Right? But then but but but

19:05

collapse complexity is actually collapsing

19:07

the fullness of reality. So what do

19:09

we what do we know about

19:11

our brains on simplicity

19:13

and our brains on complexity. Right.

19:16

So one

19:18

of the things that Peter Coleman and his colleagues

19:20

tried once they realized there were these two

19:22

kinds of good conflicts and high conflicts in the

19:24

lab, they decided, well, could we induce

19:27

one or the other? Right? So they experimented with different

19:29

things. And one thing that they did

19:31

was to show people a a new story

19:33

before they went into the lab, about

19:35

some other hot button controversy.

19:38

Right? And they gave half

19:40

the group a traditional news story with

19:42

with basically two sides. Right? What

19:44

you might see about most

19:47

controversial issues, you know, where you have sort of

19:49

activists or advocates are doing back and forth

19:51

like a tennis match. And then they gave the other

19:53

half a story at the same length,

19:56

about the same controversy with more

19:58

complexity tethered to reality.

20:01

So it might say, you know, in fact,

20:03

It's hard to sort Americans into two camps when

20:05

it comes to abortion rights. In fact, most

20:07

Americans have very complicated feelings about

20:09

abortion. Yeah. And there might

20:11

be four or six or eight different

20:14

categories if you really try to

20:16

reduce it. And if you ask the question

20:18

differently, people will answer polling on

20:20

this subject very differently. So Those

20:23

people went in and had good conflict conversations.

20:26

And the ones who read the traditional stories

20:29

went in and were much more likely to have. The

20:31

less good or high conflict conversations.

20:34

So it's an example of how we can

20:36

be primed for curiosity and

20:38

entity, which is awesome. Right? Mhmm.

20:40

And I think has obvious implications

20:43

for journalism, particularly in a time like

20:45

this. Because I

20:47

feel like my whole job now is to get people

20:49

to be curious about things that they're not

20:51

curious about, but maybe shouldn't be. And

20:55

So think all of our normal cognitive

20:57

biases get much more extreme

20:59

in high conflict, and the research supports that.

21:01

So you literally lose your peripheral vision,

21:03

and figuratively. And you miss big opportunities

21:06

that I mean, everyone I followed for

21:09

high conflict who was stuck in

21:12

really really difficult conflict

21:14

and then shifted to good conflict. Every

21:16

single one of them made huge

21:19

mistakes that they regret. Because

21:23

the narrative was so powerful. So,

21:26

you know, just as quick example, Curtis

21:28

Toller who was pretty high ranking

21:30

gang leader in Chicago for many years,

21:33

was really trapped in a series

21:35

of vendettas with a rival

21:37

organization based on a

21:39

story that he had had in his

21:41

head since he was a kid about

21:44

a homicide that was tragic and

21:46

heartbreaking for him and many other Chicagoans.

21:49

Eventually, he runs into the

21:51

guy who had done that shooting. And

21:54

is that a point in his life where he can hear

21:56

him and he had

21:58

that feeling. I don't know if anyone's ever had this

22:00

feeling, where you're listening and

22:03

suddenly something comes undone in

22:05

your head and in your heart. And you

22:07

realize that you've been really wrong about something

22:09

you'd assume about your enemy or the opponent.

22:13

And it's a very destabilizing moment, very

22:15

disorienting moment. But

22:19

it was really important

22:21

to him to staying out of high conflict,

22:23

to be able to realized

22:26

the mistakes that he had made --

22:28

Mhmm. -- all for understandable human

22:30

reasons but you

22:33

know, it just doesn't serve us well

22:36

in the world we live in to

22:38

stay too long. In that world

22:41

in which we are morally superior --

22:43

Yeah. -- than other groups. Yeah.

22:46

That's hard right now. I think because in

22:50

our fractured country, I think

22:52

people feel very justified and

22:54

they like that it's very just very true. That

22:57

they are morally

22:58

superior. That's our high conflict.

23:00

Right? Right. No. It's just

23:04

to circle back to Curtis, one

23:06

of the things he told me is,

23:09

I think whenever there's a better than

23:11

and a less than, there's always room for

23:13

war. So

23:16

Curtis now works for Chicago Cred,

23:18

which interrupts getting violence in Chicago

23:20

and is doing really difficult work

23:22

trying to treat people

23:24

who are most at risk of shooting or being shot

23:27

as as complicated humans.

23:29

Right? And and

23:31

interrupt this cycle. So they make fewer

23:33

mistakes just

23:35

the way he wished he could have done sooner for

23:37

himself. Yeah.

23:40

Something I've heard you talk about too is

23:43

that we

23:45

all have many identities. Right? What

23:47

is that line as I contain multitudes? And

23:50

that's just true of all of us. And

23:52

you said something that can happen and in

23:54

the high conflict, I guess people are really locked

23:56

into and defined by and they're defining

23:58

the other person by an identity.

24:01

Mhmm. And you've talked about how

24:04

it can happen that

24:06

that another identity that somebody has.

24:09

Like, do you describe this moment kind of

24:11

breaks loose and enters the

24:13

room? Right. That's a well

24:15

put. I mean, I think with

24:17

Curtis, it was his identity as a father.

24:20

It's often not, but not always. Like,

24:22

but that is a very effective way

24:24

to try to help people out of high conflict

24:26

is to light up their

24:29

their identities outside of the conflict and

24:31

especially their identity as a parent

24:33

or a child. So,

24:36

you know, if you think about it all

24:39

the time, our identities are shuffling

24:41

and reshuffling. So one of the problems right now

24:43

is that we are locked into this binary winner

24:45

take all political system, right, where people

24:47

don't have anywhere to go. So

24:50

the more partisan leaders

24:53

and influencers and pundits you can get

24:55

to question to sort of step

24:57

out of the conflict, step out of the

24:59

the zombie dance of high conflict, then

25:02

the more space you create for other

25:04

people to still hold on

25:06

to their identity as a Republican or

25:08

a Democrat. And deeply,

25:14

refuse political violence

25:16

as an option. Right? So you have to create

25:18

that space. And just very quickly, one

25:20

of the things that I love this because

25:22

I think it's so hopeful. Columbia,

25:25

you know, has been through a lot of violence for

25:27

half a century. And they've also

25:30

tried a lot of things to invite people

25:33

out of conflict, out literally out of the

25:35

jungle, out of the gorilla

25:37

groups. To disarm and

25:39

reintegrate lots of

25:41

complexity there, you

25:44

know, but putting all that aside. One

25:48

of the things that has worked best

25:50

according to pretty new research by

25:52

Juan Pablo Apericio is

25:55

they did these very simple public service

25:57

ads during Colombian National

25:59

Soccer Games, National Team Soccer Games.

26:01

And because they knew from listening, to

26:04

former gorilla members that all of them listen

26:07

to these games on the radio in the jungle,

26:10

whenever they could. And they

26:12

in those ads would just say very be.

26:16

Next time, come home. We're saving

26:18

you a seat. Watch the next game with

26:20

us. Yeah. And it was like the mothers and fathers.

26:23

Of Gorilla Members.

26:26

And what they saw is the very next

26:28

day twice as many demobilizations voluntary

26:32

departures from the conflict, which

26:35

over time, over nine

26:37

years of running these ads, added

26:40

up to more people leaving the civil

26:42

war voluntarily than left

26:45

when the peace treaty was signed. So that's

26:47

incredibly powerful. And there had to be other things

26:49

happening. Right? Like, it wasn't just the ad,

26:51

but they lit up this other identity on

26:53

purpose in a way that really resonated.

27:19

Support for on-being with Tippett comes

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from the Fencer Institute. Fencer supports

27:24

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at pedser dot org.

27:45

You have said that

27:48

there should be in journalism a

27:50

fear and loneliness beat. Yeah.

27:54

Yeah.

27:55

Talk

27:55

to them. Be interesting. What if somebody

27:58

gave you that job? Yeah.

28:01

Well, I mean, that's kind of what you're what

28:03

that's a little bit of an illustration of

28:06

how that could be very

28:07

sophisticated. Right. Right?

28:10

It's not about feeling sorry for people.

28:12

It's about acknowledging the

28:14

reality. Right? Because

28:18

there's a few things that pretty reliably

28:20

trigger high conflict and

28:22

one of them that I think is most underappreciated

28:25

is humiliation. Uh-huh. So

28:29

until we start talking about that and

28:31

reporting it and understanding it,

28:33

you know, we're really not telling the whole story.

28:35

Yeah. So to

28:38

me, that's that's

28:40

where I think journalism needs to go. Right, is

28:42

there needs to be more psychologically

28:44

informed reporting that we're

28:47

not afraid to

28:47

do. And I think still it makes

28:50

people nervous. Makes editors nervous.

28:53

Yeah. And that just

28:55

saying just making sure you attend to both

28:57

sides or pay or pay or pay slips over both

28:59

sides, you've said it's just another form of simplicity.

29:01

That's actually not complexity. Right.

29:04

I mean, it's a trap in

29:06

a way. And you can spend a lot of time

29:09

arguing about it? Like, right now, there's a

29:11

lot of people arguing about which side is worse

29:13

when it comes to rhetoric. Yeah. And

29:16

I'm happy to weigh in on that. And

29:19

that's how this always goes. In

29:21

every high conflict, it's asymmetrical all

29:24

over the world. And everybody

29:27

rightfully focuses, understandably focuses

29:29

on the same questions.

29:31

Who is worse? Who is more to blame?

29:34

And that is not how you step out of this dance.

29:38

I've I

29:40

mean, the other thing about the fear, what was

29:42

it, fear and belonging, It's

29:45

just to acknowledge that

29:48

as a dynamic is to cover

29:51

in journalistic length, the full humanity

29:54

of whoever is being covered and also

29:56

the consumers of

29:59

the of the journalism. I

30:01

mean, We have this

30:03

fascinating and terrifying phenomenon

30:07

right now that that

30:10

this high conflict and polarization

30:13

is happening everywhere globally.

30:16

Right? And I I personally

30:18

think that fear

30:21

and there's a lot of good reason.

30:24

People are being reasonable when they're fearful

30:26

now. Right? But there

30:28

are a lot of things reasonably to be fearful about

30:30

-- Yes. --

30:32

that, like, another way to describe what's

30:35

happening in the world? Is this the amygdala on

30:37

the loose? Yeah.

30:39

You know,

30:42

John Powell, who runs the Othering and Blushing

30:44

Institute. He explains

30:46

it really well, I think. He said, you know,

30:49

the pace of change social

30:52

economic

30:52

technological, which way predates the

30:55

twenty sixteen election to your point. Right?

30:58

As well as I would add the the

31:00

pace of news, like

31:03

influx of information, has

31:06

so outstripped our capacity to

31:08

process it. That it creates

31:10

this profound anxiety and

31:14

a sense of unease. Right?

31:16

And one thing we know about humans is

31:19

that we're good at noticing when

31:21

we're unhappy and or afraid especially,

31:24

and we're really bad at assigning

31:26

a reason why. So

31:29

into that void, we'll step a

31:32

long list of conflict entrepreneurs and

31:34

politicians and pundits who

31:36

are happy to give you

31:38

a simple story about why

31:40

you feel the way you do that

31:42

blame somebody else. Right? So

31:46

I think, for me, it's been helpful

31:48

to think about that

31:51

bigger picture of where did that

31:53

malaise come from? And sometimes it's

31:55

it's being tweaked and embellished and

31:57

incited on purpose now. Right?

32:00

I've been really struck just, you know, I came here from

32:02

DC and was in the hotel room last night

32:04

watching friends,

32:06

I think, which appears to be on the twenty four

32:08

hours on network

32:10

TV. But anyway, the

32:13

commercials were so fear

32:15

based because you all are in the middle

32:17

of election and I was like,

32:20

whoa. Right. And

32:22

then here's here's

32:24

also the the

32:26

terrible result of that,

32:28

which you also are

32:30

right about in such a compelling way,

32:35

fear doesn't when people feel vulnerable

32:37

or humiliated or all the things

32:39

one feels, it doesn't nobody

32:42

says very rarely I

32:45

feel scared. I'm afraid.

32:47

Yeah. No. We get

32:49

mad because that feels like a strong

32:52

thing. And that gets rewarded. And

32:55

I really you often you

32:57

know, you're doing such complicated research

33:00

And then you also do you're always applying

33:02

this, and I think this is a lesson for all of us. Like,

33:05

again, to what's happening close to home? Like, you notice,

33:07

because that's a story telling story about your son.

33:09

Like, you notice, you understand in

33:11

a way that I don't think I did with my children

33:13

at home, that when they're afraid, it

33:16

shows up looking like anger. Mhmm.

33:18

Being mad.

33:19

Mhmm. At least with my son, it

33:22

does. I don't know if that's true for No. It it makes so

33:24

much sense. But it's interesting that this is something

33:26

that we all do routinely and are so

33:28

lacking in self awareness about

33:29

it. And now, I mean, it's such a

33:31

crisis for our life together. Yeah.

33:34

Yeah. And I do this too. To be honest. Like,

33:36

I and that maybe that's where he learned it. But I when

33:38

I'm frightened, I just without thinking, I

33:40

get angry. You know? And I'm trying

33:42

to undo that programming, but because

33:45

it's super unhelpful. Like,

33:48

it's an interesting thing. Right? How are all of our

33:50

visceral assumptions about what will work

33:53

when we feel threatened, when we want

33:55

to persuade, all of those are

33:57

wrong. And and this is the lesson that I

33:59

relearn every day In

34:01

high conflict, any intuitive thing you

34:03

do to get out of the conflict will

34:05

almost certainly make things worse. So

34:08

now I try, don't always succeed to take

34:10

my first intuition -- Uh-huh. -- and just

34:12

ask myself, just ask, could

34:14

I do the opposite? What

34:16

would that look like? Because that's

34:18

how you step out of that

34:19

dance. Mhmm. But it's it's

34:22

very unintuitive.

34:23

How long does it take? Right. It takes a lot

34:25

of practice. It takes a lot of practice in

34:27

low stakes settings. If that's worth practicing.

34:30

Totally. Totally. So for me,

34:32

you know, I talk in the book about looping as a

34:34

listening technique and there's other ones out

34:36

there, but

34:37

talk about looping. Okay. So looping is

34:39

something I learned from Gary Friedman who's

34:41

a conflict expert who's in the book who

34:43

also gets sucked into high conflict. As

34:46

soon as he runs for office in California, but

34:49

then extracts himself out of it to his credit.

34:52

Anyway, He teaches this

34:54

to mediators and I've now taught it

34:56

to a lot of journalists because it's totally

34:58

transformed how I interview people and

35:00

how I talk to, you know,

35:02

friends and family. But it's basically

35:05

you're listening for the most the thing

35:07

that seems most important to the other person

35:10

who's talking. What's most important to them,

35:12

not to me, which was hard.

35:14

For all, I'm embarrassed to admit, took me a while to

35:16

make that switch. And then

35:18

I try to play it back to them, not robotically

35:21

repeating the words, but distilling

35:23

it into the most elegant language I can

35:26

muster And then also

35:28

easy to

35:29

forget. Then I check to see,

35:31

is that right? Because

35:33

when you do this,

35:34

you ask them. Is that I literally ask them.

35:36

Yeah. Is that Right? Yeah. Because

35:38

they can tell even

35:41

if you're wrong, which is, like, way more than

35:43

I'd like to admit. They

35:45

can tell you're really trying. Uh-huh. So

35:47

it's sort of injecting a little

35:49

humility -- Yeah. -- because there's

35:51

that old saying the only mistake in communication

35:54

is thinking it happened. You know, like,

35:56

we think we understand each other and

35:58

we think we're saying the thing And

36:00

actually, it's much more iterative than that. Like,

36:02

it's very hard to, you know, to get

36:05

to the real thing on the first go round

36:07

without some back and forth.

36:09

This is also about how there's

36:11

so much going on in a conversation that's

36:13

happening that's not in the

36:14

words. Yes. Right? And also

36:17

that that you can ask a curious

36:19

sounding question.

36:20

I mean, this happens in journalism all the time.

36:22

But the other person at an

36:25

animal level knows whether you're actually

36:27

curious or

36:27

not. They're gonna respond to their animal

36:30

level -- Yeah. -- experience of you.

36:33

Yeah. There was some really good research on

36:35

this where they tried to

36:37

see if people could tell if

36:39

other people were listening. Based

36:42

on the obvious cues. So I used to think it

36:44

it was listening if I was nodding

36:46

and smiling at the right moments and came

36:49

prepared with my questions and frode

36:51

my brow and all those things,

36:53

it turns out that's

36:56

not listening. People can tell

36:58

when you're really listening and it's usually

37:01

not always based on what

37:03

you say next. So I'm like,

37:05

what are you actually hearing what I'm saying?

37:07

I mean, you've been interviewed by reports Like,

37:10

you know this feeling of -- Yeah. --

37:12

you say something that feels really revealing

37:14

and to you important

37:16

and you actually wanna say more about

37:18

it, Yeah. And they immediately go to something

37:20

else, you know. And you're just like, oh,

37:22

yeah. It's about them. Yeah. Mhmm.

37:27

Kind of following on this wonderful

37:30

place we got, which is things we can do,

37:33

things we can practice. Hi.

37:36

I kept a couple of pages of notes

37:39

of places in your writing where

37:41

you share the

37:44

power of a better question. A

37:46

question is such a powerful thing. Right? And

37:48

so if a question

37:51

No way to think about it is a that answers,

37:53

rise, or fall to the questions they meet. Right? So

37:55

if a question is combative, it's just

37:57

very hard not to be combative back. And if it's

37:59

simplistic, It's really like, as you say, even

38:01

if you really have something you wanna say, it's gonna

38:03

be as your simplistic question. It's really hard to transcend

38:06

that and say something complex. Right. And

38:09

and you've talked about specific questions that have

38:11

been found to be useful in different

38:13

settings. And these

38:16

were suggestions for reporters. What

38:19

is oversimplified about this issue?

38:21

How has this conflict affected your life?

38:23

What do you think the other side

38:25

wants? What's the question nobody is asking?

38:28

What do you and your supporters need to learn about the

38:30

other side in order to understand them better?

38:34

Here's another one working with

38:36

the newsroom. What

38:38

do you want the other community to know about

38:40

you? What do you

38:42

want to know about the other community? A

38:45

couple that in my lifegiving,

38:47

one that was really important to me early on was with

38:49

an evangelical philosopher,

38:52

Richard Mao, who said he was talking actually

38:54

about the issue of gay marriage, which is interesting

38:57

to remember. And

38:59

he said, I just wish we could stop the

39:02

the suspicion and we could just start the conversations

39:04

about saying, what are the hopes and

39:06

fears you bring to this? And

39:08

Francis kissling who I actually talked to

39:10

in this space and we had a conversation about

39:12

abortion and vowed with two people

39:14

on the two sides and vowed not

39:17

to use the words pro life or pro choice, which

39:19

you can actually do. And she talked about

39:21

this question. She's used asking

39:25

And this is something you have to get to because it's

39:27

a vulnerable question. But if

39:30

if people can get to a place to

39:32

say, what

39:36

in my own position

39:38

or group causes me

39:40

discomfort. Mhmm. And what

39:42

do I admire

39:44

in the position of the other. I'm

39:47

so glad you shared these because I was dying to ask

39:49

you what questions you like to ask

39:51

to get to this. Because I'm constantly adding

39:53

to that list. So -- Yeah. -- this is great.

39:56

One of the questions that we got from Jay Rosen

39:58

was along those

39:59

lines.

40:00

And he's a he's a kind of journalistic stage.

40:03

Yeah. Yeah. Thinker.

40:06

Yeah. And his question was

40:08

where do you feel torn, right,

40:11

along those lines? Yeah. And then my the other

40:13

one I'm really into right now, which comes from

40:16

actually family therapy, which is

40:19

if you woke up tomorrow and this problem

40:21

was solved the way you wanted to be solved,

40:24

how would you know? Like, walk

40:26

me through that day because

40:28

people very rarely get to talk about

40:30

or even think about what a

40:33

better future would be like. Mhmm.

40:35

And it's just a way to get out

40:38

of our old grooves on

40:40

this on whatever the subject

40:42

is. And try to be

40:44

filled with wonder and curiosity again,

40:47

you know. Mhmm. And

40:49

you've talked about how you've

40:52

experienced people who get to that other

40:54

side

40:56

and how life giving that is. Yeah.

40:59

I think this is the thing that's hardest to

41:01

talk about because

41:03

people don't believe you Tippett. But

41:08

when you actually are in

41:10

the presence of good conflict with people

41:12

you really profoundly disagree with,

41:15

when there are enough guardrails and

41:18

connective tissue, there's

41:21

something euphoric about it. You

41:24

want more of it. So I actually ended

41:27

the book with a woman named Martha

41:29

Acklesburg who is

41:32

lives in New York City and went on this very unusual,

41:34

like, three day home state exchange

41:37

to visit conservatives in

41:39

Michigan. And she said

41:41

to me, you know, I wanna

41:44

be the way I showed

41:46

up there all the time

41:48

in my life.

41:49

Open, curious, able

41:51

to be surprised.

41:53

And this is someone who's very partisan, and

41:55

she was visiting someone who very partisan

41:57

on the other side. So was it was not an easy

42:00

experience. And and I think somehow

42:02

it's easy to to sort of gloss over

42:04

that. It was upsetting at

42:06

times, frightening at times, angering

42:09

at times, and also

42:11

exquisite. And something

42:13

that very few of

42:15

us get to do anymore. Mhmm. Mhmm.

42:19

That it's just a it's a manifestation

42:21

of what you said, the the quality

42:24

is of good conflict that it is movement.

42:26

Right? It's growth. Right. And you feel

42:28

it in yourself. At

42:39

this point in the conversation, political

42:41

scientist Larry Jacobs came

42:43

up to curate a few questions from the audience

42:46

at the Humphrey School in Minneapolis.

42:51

First question, is

42:53

the current moment new or repeat

42:56

of the past with social media

42:58

serving as a megaphone this time?

43:01

Well, I think

43:03

there's a lot of similarities

43:05

in the current moment to other high conflicts

43:07

all over the world and throughout history, I

43:09

do think that what's

43:12

new is we've really reached the upper limits

43:14

of

43:15

the ability to solve these problems

43:17

with us versus them adversarial thinking.

43:21

You

43:21

know, we just can't solve big

43:23

problems that way anymore because we're too

43:25

interdependent and too aware of each

43:27

other and too globalized. So

43:30

we can't keep using the same old

43:33

us versus them model to

43:36

try to solve problems. And that's particularly

43:38

obvious in politics. Right? And one of the reasons

43:41

the US is so much more polarized than other

43:43

countries is that we have a binary

43:45

winner take system with just two choices.

43:48

So if you win, I lose, and

43:50

and most democracies have proportional

43:52

representation where it's not

43:55

winter take all. And there's,

43:57

you know, ranked choice voting, which more states are

43:59

experimenting with, is an example

44:02

of something that would be better, right,

44:04

where you get to choose your top four candidates

44:06

or five candidates as opposed to one. So

44:09

I think we've a

44:11

lot of this is the same. And

44:13

yes, social media matters, although maybe

44:15

a little less than we've assumed. I

44:19

think human behavior matters a lot.

44:22

And if you if you

44:24

look at just the way the

44:26

world has changed and the

44:28

flow of information has changed. to

44:32

solve this high conflict with

44:34

more high conflict is gonna make things

44:36

worse.

44:38

Next question. How

44:42

do Jewish trans people

44:45

black indigenous and people of color?

44:47

Work to reconcile with those who

44:50

do not see them as human and

44:53

see them as some part of an evil conspiracy

44:55

to indoctrinate kids or takeover

44:58

the world? Yeah,

45:00

I mean, I think there are some situations

45:03

in some people that you're you're not gonna

45:05

reach. Right? And there's Often

45:08

in high conflict, that group feels much bigger

45:10

than it is until things

45:12

get worse. Right? So there's a there's

45:14

a very difficult line there. Who

45:17

who is still willing to

45:19

engage in good faith? Who

45:23

is open? To questioning

45:26

their assumptions. Can

45:28

I question my assumptions about them?

45:30

You know, I

45:33

think power matters and not everything

45:35

is complicated, and

45:39

people are complicated. So,

45:43

you know, it's funny because when

45:45

I'm not sure of this myself and

45:48

I struggle with it internally, I

45:50

often find it really clarifying to reach

45:52

out to people who have been in much worse conflict.

45:57

Because the things, for example, Curtis

45:59

Toller, asks young men to

46:01

do in Chicago right

46:03

now, are

46:06

much, much harder than anything we have

46:08

asked of members of Congress. And

46:12

yet they have far more trauma

46:14

and far fewer resources. So

46:19

it can feel and it's a little bit of

46:21

trick of the mind, it can feel like

46:24

millions of people are beyond talking

46:27

to. But in fact,

46:29

if you talk to someone like Curtis, or

46:31

people who work in civil

46:34

war in other countries or even genocide,

46:37

you cannot give up on anyone. It

46:40

may not be that you personally have to engage.

46:43

Right? That's okay. But

46:46

someone sure does. And

46:49

it's a little bit of a bummer because

46:52

I feel like I'd like to give

46:54

up on some people and I'm sure people would like

46:56

to give up on me. And that's not

46:58

the way this is gonna go down.

47:00

Mhmm. We are stuck with each other

47:02

in this country. One

47:04

of the things that I was talking to someone

47:06

who worked on peace in South

47:08

Africa. One of the things that

47:11

has to happen is we have to convince

47:13

each group that the other group is not

47:15

leaving. They're not

47:17

gonna be annihilated. They're not gonna

47:20

die out. We are

47:22

stuck with each other and we've got kids together.

47:25

Just like in a high conflict divorce. So

47:29

it's really hard to come

47:31

up with an example of someone you would give

47:33

up on completely. John

47:35

Lewis said that. Okay. I

47:37

feel better to give up.

47:40

I feel better growing that. He

47:42

agreed. But you're right. It's not necessarily that

47:44

everybody needs to be with them. I you know,

47:46

one thing John Powell says also is

47:48

we're in relationship. Right? Like, you can look at those

47:51

fractured maps, red stays blue states. He said, we

47:53

you can be in a good relationship. It can be a bad

47:55

relationship. You're right. We're in like a high conflict divorce

47:57

situation, but we're in relationship.

47:59

Yeah. And we've got kids together. And

48:00

we can't do worse, but you're still gonna have to

48:02

deal with the custody arrangement. I mean, that's

48:04

just the way it is. William Yuri, who works on peace

48:06

negotiations all over the

48:07

world. He says, there's no winning this marriage.

48:11

You know? And I think that's a good way a

48:13

good thing to keep in mind. And and

48:16

I think one thing that people get

48:19

paralyzed about understandably and

48:21

start to feel hopeless like there's

48:23

nothing they can do, there's no group, they could

48:25

convene, there's no relationship, they could build to

48:27

home that would matter because they'll look at their worst

48:30

case, most violent. Mhmm. I really

48:32

am

48:32

great. This language of conflict entrepreneur is

48:34

helpful. I can't change that

48:36

person's mind. Right.

48:38

But I think I've heard you say, you

48:40

don't have to start with the worst case

48:43

exemplar.

48:43

Right. Who you can get in the room

48:46

or or build an actual relationship with matters?

48:48

Right. Because your mind will naturally go

48:50

to the extremist, the

48:53

worst case, the the deviant outliers,

48:55

like the, you know, and that's understandable because

48:58

they are threatening. And I'm always

49:00

trying to remind myself to widen the lens,

49:02

right, to look at a fuller picture. So

49:04

when Curtis

49:07

came out to talk to some senate chiefs

49:09

of staff about how

49:11

he helps interrupt violence in Chicago and

49:13

how we might try to do that on Capitol

49:15

Hill. And their reaction,

49:18

understandably, was, you

49:21

know, you're talking to the wrong chiefs. Like,

49:23

we're not the problem. And you hear this again again.

49:25

I hear this with members of Congress. I mean, it's amazing.

49:27

And you hear it with gang members, you know? Like, it's

49:30

not us. It's those guys.

49:32

And they're not wrong. Often.

49:35

And so but the nice thing is to be able to turn

49:37

to Curtis and say, what do

49:40

you think? Since since we don't

49:42

have the right people in the room is all hope

49:44

lost. And then he says, well,

49:46

Amanda, we never have the right people in the

49:48

room at first. That's

49:51

you just that's not how these things start.

49:53

You know, you start with who will come into

49:55

the room and then you slowly ban

49:57

the circle, and you're not going to get every

49:59

single person. Another

50:04

question, this one is from online.

50:07

How do we have civil conversations when

50:10

we cannot agree what the

50:12

facts are and what is real?

50:14

Mhmm.

50:16

Yeah. This is where my head often gets

50:18

stuck. Right? You know, you go round and round. What if

50:20

this happened? then this happened, well, But

50:23

we can't do anything because or let me

50:25

phrase this another way. I am afraid because

50:27

we cannot agree on basic facts to

50:29

go back to your point. Let's say the thing. Right?

50:32

So if we can't even do that, isn't

50:34

all hope lost. Often,

50:38

I will try to ask

50:40

that question, how do you decide

50:43

whom to trust when I'm interviewing

50:46

someone who breaks out

50:47

some, like, you know,

50:49

information that I I know to be

50:51

false. I was

50:51

like, how do

50:52

you because I've heard this other thing. So how do you know?

50:54

And that gets actually into some interesting space.

50:57

So that's a question you'll ask when

50:59

somebody's giving you a fact that you

51:02

doubt. Right.

51:02

Rather, I used to get into a, you know,

51:04

I'll be like, well, actually, statistically, let me

51:06

just give me this controlled study that, you

51:08

know, and then Yeah. -- just not the way

51:10

people work. I wish it

51:11

were, you know. And so so first, I

51:13

try to acknowledge what they've said. Like, oh,

51:15

wow. So you feel

51:18

like XYZ. So

51:20

now they know I heard them. Right? Because that's half

51:22

of what people want. Is to be heard.

51:25

Happens about five percent of the time according to

51:27

the research, so at least I could give them that.

51:30

And then It's funny because

51:32

I heard the exact opposite. How

51:36

do you decide who to trust today? You

51:38

know? And that doesn't fix it. Like, we still got

51:40

a big problem. But why we're

51:42

not talking about trust and how to build

51:44

it every single hour of every single

51:47

day in this country? I do not know. Mhmm.

51:49

You know? I don't I don't know

51:51

how we get out of this without working on

51:53

that. Because again is is the question we'd

51:55

be asking if it were in a real world relationship.

51:58

Right. Right. If it was a couple in the

52:00

room, that's what I would be focusing on.

52:01

Right. We

52:02

focus on that all the time in our lives.

52:04

Right. Right. It's not a new problem.

52:06

Yeah. But it is a harder

52:08

problem and a more and more yes. Right? I mean,

52:10

it is but I once interviewed a trust

52:12

researcher and he said to me, I don't know why I found

52:15

this reassuring, but maybe you all will too. He said,

52:17

You know it's impossible to survive without trust.

52:21

So everybody trusts something or someone.

52:23

So then it's about, well, why? Why

52:25

that thing and not the other thing. And,

52:28

you know, how does that shift? Because there are countries

52:30

that are dramatically, including Germany, dramatically

52:33

increased trust in recent history -- Mhmm.

52:35

-- in public institutions. So

52:38

why aren't we studying how they did that? Mhmm.

52:40

You know? And there are I mean, to be fair,

52:42

there are people focused on this. Like, the trusting

52:44

news project is a great example. But

52:47

I feel like more creative

52:50

talented, dedicated people

52:52

need to be focused on this. I

52:55

also think that it I I love hearing

52:57

you talk about stories that do something different,

52:59

that work, Because the truth

53:01

is, for all

53:03

the reasons we've been talking about, the complexity of

53:06

human beings and our psychology and

53:08

how what a powerful motivator

53:10

fear is. And our bodies are

53:13

it was designed to protect us. Right?

53:15

It's it's not the enemy, but we gotta

53:17

grow up Yeah. And

53:21

so there's a reason that

53:23

the that the terrible inflammatory story,

53:26

the conflict entrepreneur, Even

53:28

the story about the most catastrophic terrible

53:30

heartbreaking thing that happened today -- Mhmm. --

53:33

it mobilizes us. And

53:36

it is a challenge for the for journalism

53:39

to know how to make goodness as

53:42

riveting as evil. Yeah.

53:44

Right. But you know it's possible.

53:47

I mean, there's there's some wiring here

53:49

that is hard to resist. Yeah.

53:52

And there's a lot of wiring. That

53:54

we've managed to get better at.

53:56

You know? Oh, gosh.

53:58

The other day I was talking to editor

54:01

at a national news outlet that

54:03

I won't name, and that and he said,

54:06

you know, the problem is we've just gotten too

54:08

good. Like, we know people too well.

54:10

So we know how to push out headlines they will click

54:12

on.

54:13

Yeah. He literally said, we are too

54:15

good at knowing what's in people's hearts and

54:17

minds. And III

54:19

wish I had

54:19

said, I didn't think of I always think of it, like, you know, an

54:22

hour later. I was like, I

54:24

was just flummox at the time because

54:26

I'm not on staff at a place and so I'm not, like,

54:28

in this all the time. And I was, like, wow.

54:33

What I should have said is, Well, you know

54:35

what really gets a lot of clicks is porn.

54:38

So why does it work a prestigious news

54:40

outlet? Just do that. If you know people so well,

54:43

What's the difference? You know? I mean, so

54:45

this idea that this

54:47

is different and acceptable

54:50

Mhmm. -- needs to shift. And

54:52

I think more and more journalists are

54:54

getting really just

54:56

exhausted from this -- Yeah. -- just like

54:58

readers you know? Yes. No. They're

55:00

yeah. And we all share

55:02

this problem, this challenge.

55:07

And just in terms of kind of bringing

55:09

this down to this question that we

55:12

all wanna ask, like, what can I do? How can I make

55:14

a difference? This person, Dan

55:16

Christenson, would you just tell the story of

55:18

Dan Christenson?

55:20

Yeah. So the best thing that's ever happened

55:22

to me on Twitter is I met bus driver

55:24

Dan who is

55:26

a public bus driver

55:28

in Portland, Oregon, who's also very fascinated

55:30

by conflict and communication and has

55:33

read a lot of books on it and tried out a

55:35

lot of things on his bus because, you

55:38

know, who's taken a bus recently in

55:40

the city. Okay. So, you know, there's a good amount

55:42

of conflict. That happens on public

55:44

buses. So he has this

55:47

lab. And as he puts it, you know, I

55:49

just assume every day that I'm the only one who's

55:51

unarmed, that I'm strapped in. So

55:53

he has to inter interrupt conflict,

55:57

and he has a bunch of techniques that he uses,

55:59

and we had him on the how to podcast

56:01

for how to deal with a fight in public, you

56:03

know, when you're not the one directly

56:07

in conflict, and he does a bunch

56:09

of things. That that I've

56:11

learned from. And one of them is, as soon as someone

56:13

comes on the bus, he welcomes them

56:15

with like a a genuine smile. Hi.

56:17

How are you? Even when they don't respond. That's

56:20

so that's brilliant. Right? That's

56:22

great. That's hospitality. Yeah. And

56:24

that's a tool a technology that humans

56:26

use to elevate --

56:28

Yeah. -- help people walk into the room.

56:30

Right. Because he feels like something might go down

56:32

-- Yeah. -- but somewhere in your subconscious,

56:35

you might think of me as a friendly. You

56:38

know what I mean? Like, I I've greeted you

56:40

as a person. I've seen you. And

56:42

he said when he was wearing masks

56:45

during the pandemic, people he could

56:47

tell that people could tell if

56:49

he was smiling or not -- Mhmm. -- even under the

56:51

mask. Because you know how your voice changes when you

56:53

smile. You know? So he would always smile

56:55

with or without a mask. And then

56:57

when conflict erupted, he has a methodology,

57:00

which I love, which is basically two

57:02

questions and a choice. So,

57:05

you know, first he pulls the bus over and opens

57:07

all the doors. Mhmm. Because it's important not the

57:09

corner people who are in conflict. Metaphorically

57:12

or literally. But you say

57:14

that again, it is important at the corner people

57:16

who are in conflict. Mhmm. So

57:18

then keep in mind. They

57:20

have to have a way out. And so then

57:23

it gets on the intercom, which is helpful.

57:25

Wish I had an intercom. And

57:27

he says, what happened?

57:31

Right? He doesn't say, I mean, there's

57:33

a million things he could say, like, what are

57:36

you doing? What is your problem? You

57:38

know? And he says, what happened?

57:41

In a voice of genuinely wanting

57:43

to know. So this takes

57:45

practice. Yeah. And then, you know, what

57:47

usually happens because people when they're in that

57:50

amigula, hijacked mode. They

57:53

don't really see a question coming, so

57:56

it forces them to think first. I think.

57:58

Yeah. And so they'll say, well, he closed

58:00

the window and I and

58:03

Dan will say, I

58:06

can tell you're really mad, so he's looping

58:09

them Ripley. And then

58:11

he says, what

58:13

do you wanna do next? So

58:16

it's not him telling them. And then he gives them

58:18

a choice which because usually that flummoxes them

58:20

like, well, I don't know that. And then he says,

58:23

That's my angry conflict voice.

58:26

And then he says, I

58:29

could call someone right now, which I'm gonna

58:31

have to

58:32

do. Or you could come up here

58:34

and talk with me and we get everyone safely

58:36

to where they're going. So

58:38

he's offering them a way out. Come

58:41

with me. There's

58:45

there's a lot more to it, but he's he's

58:47

just a very wise experienced practitioner.

58:50

It's It's such an important

58:52

story. We

58:55

have to bring mister Close. We could obviously

58:57

keep talking for ever. I

58:59

I have to have to say I was really intrigued that

59:01

you quote roomy. That's poet

59:07

is Muslim mystic at

59:09

the beginning at the very beginning and the very

59:12

end -- Yeah. -- of high

59:13

conflict. Isn't

59:14

that the great thing about writing a book? You just do

59:16

whatever the heck you want? Yeah.

59:18

But it ends like when the soul

59:20

lies down in the grass, the world

59:22

is too full to talk about. So

59:25

this is

59:25

actually also spiritual work we're

59:28

talking about, isn't it? Absolutely.

59:30

I think that's what's missing from a

59:32

lot of these conversations. Is

59:34

is joy

59:36

wonder, hope, dignity,

59:39

and faith. So

59:43

thank you for bringing those things. Into

59:45

my ears, especially during the pandemic,

59:48

you really helped keep me

59:50

sane, and I think many other

59:52

people I vividly remember going on those endless

59:54

walks. I just kept walking the same routes.

59:57

Yeah. And you know how people would cross the street

59:59

when they saw you coming? Which

1:00:01

I get, but it's not a great feeling just

1:00:05

intrinsically. And I remember listening

1:00:07

to you talk about how you too had cut down on

1:00:09

your news consumption. And

1:00:11

I felt like, oh, it's

1:00:13

okay. Like, he gave me permission

1:00:16

to do that. And also to question, you

1:00:18

know, is there a better way to do the news?

1:00:21

You know, maybe it's not just that I've gone

1:00:23

soft. You know, if Christa

1:00:25

is doing it, so

1:00:28

thank you for that. Well, if I

1:00:31

was a source of nourishment to you and I'm

1:00:33

I'm very pleased because we need you,

1:00:36

thank you for what you're doing and

1:00:38

for this beautiful investigation

1:00:41

you're on on behalf of the rest of us and

1:00:43

for being here today. Thank you.

1:00:59

Amanda Ripley is the author of several

1:01:02

books, including high conflict,

1:01:04

why we get trapped and how we get

1:01:06

out. You can find her fantastic

1:01:09

essay, complicating the narratives

1:01:12

on the Solutions journalism blog

1:01:14

of the Solutions journalism network.

1:01:17

She is cofounder of the company, Good

1:01:19

Conflict, and she hosts the

1:01:21

slate podcast. How to.

1:01:24

Special thanks this week to Larry Jacobs,

1:01:27

Lee Titten them, and the entire staff

1:01:29

at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs

1:01:31

at the University of Minnesota for hosting

1:01:33

this event.

1:01:43

The on-being project is Chris

1:01:45

Hegel, Lauren Drummerhousin.

1:01:47

Eddie Gonzales?

1:01:48

William Bo.

1:01:49

Lucas Johnson.

1:01:50

Susan

1:01:51

Zach Rose.

1:01:52

Colin checked Julie Cycle. Gretchen

1:01:55

Arnold.

1:01:55

Audrey Go Tooma. Gautam Freakishin.

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April Adamson,

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Ashley Her, Amy Chattelling, Romey

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Nemi.

1:02:02

Cameron Musaar.

1:02:03

Kayla Edwards, Juliana Lewis,

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and Tiffany champion. On-being

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