Ep60 "Can we think better by wrestling with conflicting ideas?"

lives look the way they do. Today's episode is about something that I've talked about on here before, which is the extreme and seemingly growing rization that characterizes much of our society at this moment, and I'm interested in it from the point of view of neuroscience. I'm not banging on about any particular political position here. What I'm interested in is how we come to form our truths and

why we each believe in them so strongly. For all of us, with whatever political issue, our intuition usually is to say, well, I know that I'm correct about this, but the important part to point out is that, depending on the issue, roughly half of the society has a different point of view than you do, and on almost any hot button political issue, you'll find that the people on the other side of the issue have exactly the same dedication and passion that you do, the same absolute

belief that they are right and that you are misinformed. Generally, it's hard to see this with politics, and I don't want to ruffle any feathers here, but I just want to point out that it's often easier to see this with something like religion, whatever deity you were brought up with. You tend to think, okay, well, I know that's right, and I know that the other two thousand religions on this planet are all diluted and incorrect. But of course each of those people is looking at you and thinking

exactly the same thing. The way the atheist community sometimes phrases this is we are all atheists. I just believe in one fewer God than you do. And it's always a worthwhile exercise to think about what your beliefs would be if you happened to be born into a different religion, Let's say, on a different spot on the globe, where everyone that you cared about, your mentors, your hero is your relatives all believed in that deity. So ask yourself,

what would be your worldview? Now, if there were a single truth about which deity is correct, you might expect that that would spread everywhere equally. So you'd look for evidence of a grassroots takeover of Ottestanism in Mecca, or maybe a blossoming of Islam in North Dakota. But that's not what we see. We all take whatever our culture

pours into our nervous systems. Now, I use this as an example only to illustrate that it's easy to recognize that there are many points of view on things that we feel our fundamental truths, and for better or worse, people can hold these truths with absolute conviction and take up arms over this stuff, and we might be able to get ourselves to a point of realizing that if you were brought up in a different place, you might have a different point of view. Okay, now you've heard

me talk about on other episodes. Is that the brain is locked in silence and darkness inside your skull and its whole life. It's just trying to make a model of the world out there. We slide into the world half baked, and we each experience a very thin trajectory

in this world. We're born in a particular spot at a particular moment in time, and we have a handful of experiences that shape our view, and the massive flexibility of the human brain, what's called brain plasticity, is what allows us to absorb our local experiences and shape our model. So we each end up with an idiosyncratic model about what makes sense. But the interesting thing is that our human brains are generally terrible at seeing outside of their

own walls. We generally believe that our view of the world is the correct view, and we're typically likely to think that anyone who votes differently than we do is a real problem because they are misinformed or stubborn, or at the extreme, they're simply evil. So we have limited internal models combined with a sense that we know the truth.

This is just the way that brains work, and for much more detailedness, please listen to some of my previous episodes, which I've linked in the show notes on Eagleman dot com slash podcast. Now, one of the things that's been hard to miss is watching millions of humans on both sides of society doubling down and saying that they need to protect our democracy, which is being threatened by the

other side. And part of what makes me feel dismayed is that I have intelligent friends on both sides of the aisle, and many of the people that I know and love are truly unable to see the viewpoint of the other side. People on both sides claim to have logic on their side, and morality and the statistics, and they feel certain that they're right and the other side

is wrong. And for that matter, a lot of people feel certain that there even are clearly definable sides, even though so much of political life on Earth's complexities in which issues go with which. And again, what this comes down to is the limitations of the internal model. Without real effort, we have a difficult time putting ourselves at other people's shoes. And it would be one thing if only a few people had this other point of view.

But in the case of current political upheaval, it's usually the case that about half of the humans that you spin with might be on the other side of some issues. So it's not just a few people with a wacky opinion. We're talking about millions of people who genuinely feel differently about some issue. Than you do. And the question is, is there a way for us to expand our internal models to at least see their point of view, not even agree with it, just understand what their perspective is

and why. Now we're all familiar with the problem that's currently worsening our political discourse, which is we all tend to seek out the people who agree with us, and it's a self reinforcing loop such that we tend to believe that most or all sane and reasonable people agree

with us. But the question for today is is there any meaningful way that we could combat this tendency to retreat into our own echo chambers and at least here with the other side of the political issue is saying and how they're feeling, and to appreciate the complexities and diversity of opinions on the other side. There's a great quotation from the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald who says, quote, the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same

time and still retain the ability to function. And the poet John Keats, who was a believer in this concept as well, he called this ability negative capability, which he just meant as a person being capable of being in uncertainties and mysteries and doubts. So there's some nodding to this in the intellectual community, but we're not seeing a great deal of this in the political media. This holding two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, well

why not. I suspect there are at least two issues here. The first is that we all like to believe our own truths in the second is that people often feel that they will seem smarter and get more followers if they take a hardline position and say I understand this with crystal clarity, I have no doubts.

this right. We see this on all sides, and what this represents is our certainty that we know the truth and if we could just shout it loudly enough and start our own website, then everyone would see the wisdom of what we're saying and come to agree with us. And you may know that I made a triptich of episodes on this issue of the meaning of truth and truth on the Internet and truth in media. Those were

episodes forty to forty two. And if you heard my argument there, you'll know that I think this notion of telling the truth in media is a lost cause because, with the exception of a very few factual issues, most of telling a political story is interpretation, which is to say, even putting aside the fog of war issues, the issue of perspective determines which facts make it into your story and which do not. So the question I want to ask say is this, is there a different approach to

news telling? Is there a way to think about doing this totally differently? And I think one of the cleverest approaches, which is attempted every once in a while, is to build something that instead of trying to pick aside and fight and die for it, but instead works to say, look, there are multiple points of view here. Let's genuinely dig into the complexity of the issues and try to see

if we can build a more multi dimensional understanding. Instead of the typical approach of saying I have my team and the other team is simply misinformed or misanthropic. And one such attempt at making a site like this is from a journalist named Isaac Sahl, who runs a newsletter called Tangle. The idea of Tangle is to present different sides of the same argument to understand something about the complexities therein. It's not about saying both sides are right

and we're going to land in the middle. Instead, it's about saying, wherever you might land, can you do this with curiosity and intellectual humility and a meaningful level of self education on the position rather than tribalism and assumption. Big fan of what sites like Tangle are working to do, so I called up Tangles founder Isaac Sahl to talk with him about this. Okay, Isaac, it's so great to

have you here. You run a newsletter called Tangle, which I'm a giant fan of, and one of the things that has struck me as amazing is that you tell your readers if they disagree with you, not to throw vitriol your way or or you know, unsubscribe, but to tell you why they disagree and to make their argument to you. So tell us about that, tell us about Tangle and how you came to run a newsletter like that.

the presidential election goes. So I just grew up around a lot of people who had very different political views than each other, and so I saw how those divides manifested and also how people kind of talked through those divides in real time. And have a lot of friends and family people I love and care about who have different political views, which I think just makes me a

little bit more open minded to them. And then the second kind of genesis story was just being on the inside of media organizations and kind of seeing how the sausage was made. And it became very clear to me early on that a lot of media organizations are catering their content to their audience. You know, we have a

term for it now, audience capture. The idea that you know, an audience likes something, they like a certain tone or a certain editorial slam, and so news organizations give them more and more of that because they recognize that's what the audience wants. And we've created a lot of echo chambers and bias and you know, confirming people's preconceived notions.

And when I decided to go out and start my own media company, I was just looking at a blank page and that was super exciting for me to think about, how could I tear this whole thing down and start from the beginning. And what are some of the ethos that I would want a news organization to have. And one of them is that I want us to be

really open minded and fair. Another is I want to make sure we're representing people from across the political spectrum and not just presenting people with arguments reviews that they already believe. And the third is that I want my audience to be involved in the conversation and the production of the content and feel like their voice is heard and feel like they can actually interact and learn from the news and talk to me or our staff, or have a space where they can kind of express themselves.

You know, I look at the comment section on Facebook on an article, and a lot of people see, you know, craziness and people spouting off and fighting, and it's always like, don't look at the comments section. And when I go and do that, I see something that I think is a gold mine for people who care about issues, people who want to express themselves, people want to be involved in the conversation, And so I try and invite those

people in a bit. And frankly, I learn a lot from my readers when they write in and tell me about why they view the world a certain way. It's almost always illuminating.

always has throughout you know, civil society. There were times when the idea of a printing press was exactly the same way we talk about you know, the internet today, that this would be too big and too easy to disseminate information, and we needed to limit this thing because it was so scary that someone could write down their ideas, you know, print a thousand copies of them, and cover a city in them, you know, in a matter of hours. And we went through the same thing with the radio.

We went through the same thing with the Internet, and it's something that's going to happen over and over again throughout society. And I'm sure there's communication methods we haven't even considered yet that are coming down the pike that are going to make it a lot easier to you know, transmit thoughts or ideas and create all sorts of different issues. And I don't want to downplay the idea that you know, misinformation or bad information is a you know, a threat

to democracy or a threat to an informed populace. It is. There are certain things about it that are really problematic. The Internet has a lot of really dark corners, and it's really easy for people to sort of sit in their own echo chambers and be radicalized. I mean, there's a plethora of evidence for that. But the way to sort of address these issues is almost never to eliminate them, and oftentimes it's not even good to quarantine them, because what you basically do is you just put people off

into their own silos. You put them into their own little corners of the Internet where they're only interacting with the people who agree with them, and it just pushes them further into the fringe. And you know, there are a lot of examples of this. I think the number of people who have been quote unquote canceled or silenced and the people who have done the cancelation or silencing

have gotten what they want is quite limited. You know, I could think of maybe two or three people who have I'm like, oh, I forgot that person existed because they got canceled or they got kicked off a platform or whatever. Most of the time, what happens is like what happened to somebody like Alex Jones, where you know, he becomes a martyr by being silenced, and then he builds his audience in his own space where nothing he

says or does gets challenged. And then you know, you look at something like January sixth, and who's there standing on the White House lawn on a table giving instructions on a megaphone. It's Alex Jones with a bunch of his supporters. And yeah, maybe we haven't seen him on Twitter for five years, but guess what, he's still building a massive audience, speaking to millions of people, and he's just doing it in a space where his perspectives are

never getting challenged. So I think that's the kind of illustration of why silencing these you know, quote unquote dangerous people is a really dangerous thing to do, and why I prefer to have the engagement and have it out and let the audience sort of make up their minds.

was really daunting. It seemed kind of unrealistic, and in a lot of ways, I thought, this probably isn't going to work, but it's worth trying. And I think most people who are looking at the media as a business understand that the best way to make money and the best way to grow is to give people the red meat that they want. You know, I mean the vast majority of trash and viewers on a station like Fox News or a website like the New York Times dot

com or whatever it is, they're political junkies. They are people who are going back to that every single day. You know, they represent maybe five or ten percent of the population. And if you can capture that group and keep them coming back day to day and keep giving them what they want, keep giving them ammunition for their arguments and their worldviews, that's a really good way to

build a subscription, you know, a subscriber base. It's a really good way to build an audience for primetime television. It's a really good way to build an advertising business that has consistent traffic and metricks. And so I think there's a lot of business stuff happening in the media

space that's sort of influencing these things. I had a vision for a subscriber supported news outlet where people were coming to us because they trusted us, because they wanted to understand the news better, because they wanted to get out of their bubbles. And I thought we could sell it to them if the content, you know, followed through on the promise, and we've been able to do that. But you know, I have one hundred thousand plus subscribers on my newsletter, which is a huge number, and I'm

super proud of it. And five years ago, if you told me that, I would have been really happy that we hit this milestone. But two million people watch Fox News every night, you know, The New York Times has two million subscribers. That Huffing and Post still gets hundreds of thousand of hits a day. So there's a lot of people who are competing with that make us look

like a small fish still. But I think that, you know, we're a growing movement of people who are interested in stepping into this kind of media ecosystem, and I hope it keeps growling.

Those political orientations are actually moving, and it's really just tribal motivations and kind of tribal dynamics that are driving what constitutes being a conservative or what constant's being in liberal. And one of the things that he said to me. That has always stuck with me, which I really like is most voters go to the voting booth, and what they are doing effectively is like being a shop or going to a grocery store where you're looking for a

bunch of things. You want to go pick out all the things you want, and you get to the grocery store and there's one card A that's just full of half stuff you really want and half stuff you really don't, and one car card B full of half stuff you really want and half stuff you really don't. And you just have to pick one of the carts, and you pick the one with more stuff that you really like and less stuff that you really don't. And that's what

most American voters you're doing. And I think it's true of Democrats, and it's true of Republicans. And what's really interesting about it is the dynamic we have in our country right now is a lot of people who go to the grocery store and pick cart A. Look at people who go to the grocery store and pick cart B and think you're totally insane. I can't believe you

would do that, like you're a nut. Even though there's a bunch of stuff in card b they want to and a bunch of stuff in there cart that they don't really want, but they have a hard time seeing

that about the other person. And there's tons of dynamics I think that drive that, you know, whether it's the media polarization, which is an issue that I'm trying to solve, Whether it's the fact that, you know, we only talk about the people who are on the fringe when we talk about the other side, or the fact that in American society today, people are becoming a lot more siloed. So it's not just that we consume news that you know,

affirms a lot of our priority. It's that we also spend time with people in our social lives who mostly agree with us politically. So, you know, if you're a conservative living somewhere in rural West Texas, you might not

know very many in Muslims. And so the things that you see about Muslims on the news are the things that we all see about Muslims on the news, and you don't get to learn or meet somebody who maybe is not what you see characterized on the news, And that goes every direction in our country and it creates, you know, a really dangerous sort of boiling pot, which I think is part of what we have right now.

I want to tackle this. I want to represent everyone's point of view here so that we can understand each other.

to land on a bunch of half baked solutions. Sometimes the people on the left are right, sometimes the people on the right are right. I try and just take it issue by issue, and I don't know. I consider my self a moderate and open minded, but I don't consider myself, you know, middle on a lot of the really contentious issues. Sometimes I'd land there, but I try and you know, come to it organically and not seek

it out. In terms of like the the motivation for starting Tangle, I mean, part of it was the classic entrepreneurial thing, which was I wanted a product and I went looking for it and I couldn't find it, and so I thought, oh, it wouldn't be that hard to make that. I mean, I would go read the news and there'd be a story about Donald Trump's border wall, and in order for me to feel like I had a full understanding of all the arguments about whether a border wall was a good or bad thing, I'd have

to read the Wall Street Journal opinion page. I'd have to watch Fox News. I'd have to read the New York Times opinion page. I'd read an article on the Huffington Post. I'd read a piece from some immigration lawyers who are on the left or at the ACLU. I would listen to some conservative podcasts like Ben Shapiro or something.

I would go to twenty different sources and I'd six hours doing it, and then at the end of all that, I'd feel like, Okay, now I kind of have some clarity, and I've seen a bunch of the arguments on this issue, and God, I really wish there was a place that I could just go get that and not spend half my day doing it, and it would just take ten or fifteen minutes. And I went looking for that product and I didn't see it anywhere, and so I started a product that I felt fulfilled that need and figured

I wasn't building the person who wanted that. I think, you know, some of our growth has definitely confirmed that there's a lot of people out there, and over time the newsletter, in the podcast and the YouTube channel and all the stuff we have, it's just become a lot more personal because people want to know who's providing the news to them. So early on readers would say, hey, it's like, thanks for explaining this story. Cool to see what the left and the right are saying, but I'm

really curious, like what do you think? And that was like the genesis of my take, which is a section in the newsletter where I share my own personal opinion on stories and that's one of the engage parts of the newsletter because people are really interested in the kind of personal element and the person that is providing them this information why they view things certain ways. And I try not to just make that section a little mini

opinion piece. I try and address the arguments that we just laid out in the newsletter and talk about why so I'm resident with me and why they don't. And I go to it with, you know, just humility, with the acknowledgement that my position is not the right one and I'm trying to learn and figure out what i believe, just like a lot of Americans are.

going to write from the opposite point of view. I'm going to stealman the other point of view and represent that and try to see my own blind spots, and that is so rare, and I'm still I'm trying to figure out what makes you do that? And why isn't everybody trying to do that?

get them right. So the idea that I can go back and read an article I wrote a few weeks ago and then write an entire opinion piece criticizing the thing I just wrote that exercise for me is actually really fun and rewarding. But I'll say candidly that I wasn't always like that, and it wasn't always easy for

me to do that. And one of the things that made it easy was the actual exercise of doing the newsletter every day, and that is created in me, you know, like a muscle that I think I've trained the same way I trained muscles going to the gym, where I have taught myself that it's okay, it's okay to just like step out of my own belief step out of my own viewpoint, and try and put myself in another person's perspective or put myself in another person's you know,

ideological framework, and explore that a bit and think along those lines and play with it and going there. It's you know, I think a lot of people feel like they can't go do that because if they do, they'll never return to their core self or their values. And it's not true. You can sit down at your computer and write a five hundred word piece making an argument for a position you don't believe, just to see what it feels like and what comes out of you and

what positions come up and what ideas come up. And then you can delete it and never publish it or do anything with it, or you can show it to people and try and get feedback on it. And that exercise doesn't change who you are fundamentally. It just makes

you a little more open minded. I think teaches you to empathize with people who maybe you disagree, and I was fortunate enough that I did that publicly through Tangle with a community of readers who are interested in that, and they gave me a lot of positive reinforcement for it. You know, Like we published a piece today where I took the position that Israel should not have it like, not engage in a ceasefire in Gaza, which is not

a position I believe. I've been writing a lot about how I want Israel to make a ceasefire deal, and I said today I'm going to step out of that view and try and articulate the best arguments against my position. And you know, I've read fifty emails that have come in in the last hour and a half since we published that piece, and forty eight of them have been positive. You know. They are people saying, thank you so much

for doing this. I know you don't totally believe all these things, but it's so fascinating to watch you go through this process, and it's helping me better understand the conflict, and getting that positive reinforcement makes me want to do it more. So I'm very lucky in that sense, you know. I mean, I'm getting some of that feedback that it's clear people are interested in this kind of.

in the United States. Anybody can go do this right now. If you go to funews dot com and look up a story about, you know, President Biden's border policies, you'll see Fox News referring to legal aliens or illegal immigrants.

And if you go to the New York Times and look up stories about Biden's border policies, you'll see them referring to undocumented immigrants and that language choice might seem not that important to somebody who is really a political junkie, but to people who really care about that issue, that

those language choices matter a lot. And we found early on that people would write in and say, you know, I saw you refer to undocumented immigrants, and it's clear that you're on the left, so I've unsubscribed, And it's like they didn't even get to the arguments. They just saw that language choice, and to them, that's a tip

that we are taking some ideological stance. And so, you know, sometimes we would do articles where we mixed it, where we do some undocumented and some illegal immigrants, and then you know, people on the left would write in and say, like, no person is a lead goal, you're dehumanizing immigrants. I thought I was getting something better than this. I've unsubscribed

from the newsletter. And so we looked at our whole you know, vocabulary across the website and started thinking about ways in which we could find a little bit more neutral language that still articulated the thing we were trying to get across to our readers or listeners, so you know,

on the question of immigration. Our solution to that was we refer to illegal immigrants or undocumented immigrants as unauthorized migrants, which is actually the legal term that something like the Department of Homeland Security will use to describe somebody who's coming to the country illegally. And we find that that

doesn't offend the sensibilities at either side. It articulates exactly what we're trying to say, and it keeps people focus on the arguments we're presenting and not just the language choices we're making. And you know this is relevant for abortion, drug policy, every issue you can think of under the sun.

There there are language choices like this that readers are really keen on, and it's a good way to kind of get people's barriers down and make it so you can communicate with them a little bit more openly.

Why is that such a challenge for people generally?

But from what I understand from reading a lot of you know, people like Jonathan Haate who write a lot about the way our brains work, and you know, the competing things that happened and reasoning, what we know is that, you know, use is the analogy of the elephant and the rider, that our emotional response is like this ninety percent part of our brain, this kind of instinctive response we have to certain ideas to certain politicians or whatever

it is. That's the elephant, and then there's the rider, that's the ten percent logic reason that's trying to control this emotional thing. But sometimes we've lost the battle before we even you begin. There's tons of super interesting political, you know, poly sized studies about this stuff. Like, for instance, one of the things that I've read about is a study where people are shown the image of a politician for about three seconds, and then the image is removed.

Then there's some the image of another politician for about three seconds. The image is removed, and then they're asked to vote on which politician they like more. And then they do the same experiment again with people where they show them these politicians and then they spend twenty minutes explaining the views and they do the same thing and

the results are almost identical. And so what the researchers take away is that a lot of times people are making their minds up in a split second, just like literally based on how somebody looks, all the things they can assume about them, just based on their appearance and what they look like, and that by the time they get to know their actual views and policies, you're only moving like ten percent of the population. Kind of a

scary thought, right, I mean, really like whoa. But it's reflective of the fact that we are a tribal species, you know, like there are people that we've interacted with, there are people that we've spent our lives growing up with, people that feel foreign, are different from us, and when push comes to shove, those kind of like instinctual based lizard brain type responses do a lot of the driving. And you know, to the point I was making earlier,

I think it's a muscle you have to flex. It's something you have to be very intentional about to do. Everybody's capable of it. But I don't think it's something that comes totally organically to people to just you know, be open minded about the views or ideas or politicians or whoever they're considering. That's right.

by the way, everybody should do a lot more. But I'll just say I don't you know, I don't know like I feel conflicted about this. I don't feel confident saying strongly that what my view is one way or the other. Here's why I feel conflicted, and I'm just not sure where I land on. You know, whether Congress

should pass this bill or not. And people feel strongly about that issue, will you know, write in accusing me of being wishy washy or whatever else, and my response to them, like the standard response is I understand why you feel strongly about this issue, and I can see very clearly you know why this matters to you, what's important to you about it. If you were looking for somebody who's just going to give you something in black and white terms all the time, I'll tell you right

now you're not going to get that here. And this isn't the news outlet for you. I think there's a lot of people doing that, and I hope you keep reading them and you keep engaging them and supporting them if you like their work. But to me, it seems like we are actually the place you should be spending some time with to get a little bit more of

the gray. And that response oftentimes goes over well, sometimes it lands a little condescending or off putting or whatever, but oftentimes people are receptive to that and they're appreciative I took the time to write back or answer them somehow, and so I just try and you know, be authentic about what we're trying to do and who I am as a person. And people typically, you know, they reply positively when you just transparent and authentic and put a little effort in.

feel the opposite about this. But you know, we actually have this in common, and we both like to surf, and we both like this kind of dog, and we both have children at the same elementary school, and we love the you know, activities there. And so when things get tangled like that, then people find it a little harder to completely dismiss the person and say you're my enemy. So I'm just curious, you know, your newsletter I think

goes a long way to doing that. What would you see in terms of the ways that we can entangle the allegiances that people have in our society.

to approach this the conversation or whatever? And you know, depending on the context, I think one of my common go to answers is just like, have you ever tried grabbing a six packup ear and ocking on their door and asking if they want to spend a little time together? I mean, genuinely, like, people are social creatures. We're typically curious, you know, we're typically peaceful if people approach them in

a peaceful manner. And I don't think it's particularly dangerous to just try and go open a conversation with somebody who you recognize might feel really differently about your worldview. One rule that I have, I like a rule of engagement I have about doing that is just try your best to ask two or three questions before you make

any statements. And so like, when I'm speaking to somebody who's somebody new and what will happen to me because of my work, and you know, someone might know me, or somebody a friend tells them that I write this politics podcast, they'll come over and just like start drilling me with political stuff immediately, you know, like spraying me with their opinions whatever it is, are peppering me with questions, and I my rule is just like, don't like get

on your stool and start pontificating out of the gate. Do your best to ask like two or three questions, earnest questions, like real genuine questions, and hear the person, listen to them, pay attention to what they're saying, and just try to understand them a little bit better before you start trying to explain anything to them, or you know,

convince them that your position's right. And that exercise to me has always you know, entangled me in some sort of societal fabric way where they'll say something or I'll hear something that they that they offer that makes me think of a friend or a relative, or you know, I recognize a little bit of who this person is or where they're from, and I can connect them to some other part of my life, and that makes me a little bit more empathetic to whatever else is coming

out of their mouth, or maybe some positions they have that I find a boor or whatever it is. And so, you know, I think earnestly asking questions is genuinely you know, spending time with somebody trying to talk to them is

a good strategy. And I know it sounds so cheesy and corny, and people can pretend it's not true, but it is really genuinely true that the vast majority of people, not just in the United States but all across the world, you know, they they care about their family, They care about safety and security and eating having food on their table and taking care of their kids, and you know, growing up in an environment that's kind of safe and boiling off some steam and having some fun and you know,

everybody smiles and everybody laughs. Everybody can do that. Everybody has that capacity, and you can reach people who feel unreachable if you're you know, asking the right questions or coming into I think with a truly open minded posture. So that's kind of what I preach and I think it's effective in my personal life.

every day, which is really cool. And we have teachers from all over the country who are high school teachers who are subscribers to the newsletter of the podcast and have written in and told me, you know, they're using editions that we've written about controversial issues as sort of jumping off points for their classes. You know, it's a really big problem. I think the education side of it and bringing kids up, you know, in an environ that teaches them to be a lot more open minded, and

we need to do it at that age. I mean, the question you're asking, in my opinion is really the right question, is how do we get the next generation to a place where they're a lot more open minded and inquisitive and you know, tolerant of the other side or people who have different political views in them, because

I think we're seeing a hardening right now. And you know, I think the really the really cynical part of me feels in some ways like, you know, the people who are in their fifties and sixties and seventies, they are not lost, but it's you know, it's like a euphemism that it's so hard to you know, teach an old

dog nutrix. For a reason, it's it is, And we need to focus on, like the young people and our generation who are coming up next and are entering a society that is really black and white and really hard and really ideological right now and break them out of that because it's getting worse in a lot of ways. And I think we have a small window to kind of course correct that. So I'm doing my best to you know, spread tangle to the masses, and I hope model some of this, you know, model the way that

I want to see people go about this. But the more participants the better, and kind of spreading the word is really one of the only good ways to fight back against some of the stuff we're saying.

And I think that's kind of what I'm more articulating, is that, you know, if you're a sixty five year old and you're a lifelong Democratic voter and you know you think Trump is the worst thing you've ever seen in the history of US politics, I am way more skeptical that in the next fifteen years you're going to change your mind about that position than I am if you're a twenty year old college student who feels that way, and I know you're about to go through this next

phase of your life and your world's going to change and your world's going to evolve, and you know, I think it's true. I think you make a great point that a lot of the longer you are around, I think the more you realize that the world is not black and white. But I think people also become more fixed in their positions and less willing to kind of

have their mind changed by other people. And part of that, I think, part of what scares me I think about this moment right now in particular, is that we're in this weird kind of societal moment where a lot of younger Americans are entering a space where, you know, silence

is complicity. There is a perception that if you are not tapped into or have a strong opinion about certain issues that our country is facing, that you are somehow, you know, part of the problem rather than somebody who's just ripe to become educated or learn more about an issue or whatever else it is. And so people feel really really compelled to take sides and sort of this blue versus red culture war that we have right now

that I don't think has always existed the past. And so a lot of young people that I know and I'm seeing, you know, on college campuses across the country are jumping into issues, you know, headfirst in a way that I'm like, yes, you should care about this, you should be thinking about this, Like I love seeing this civic participation and whatever else it is. But they're doing it because it's it's almost like a social phenomenon. It's

a community thing. It's not it's not necessarily like an educational thing that pushed them there or an interest in you know, going really deep on this topic and learning about all the complexities. It's like, oh, all my friends are doing this thing, or you know, all my friends have picked this side, and I feel like I need to go pick this side. And there's a really really strong, you know, social pressure, I think in part because of social media and just also how divided the rest of

the country is. And I really want to get to those kids and try and just like teach them that, you know, it's okay to change your mind. It's okay to not have a position yet, it's okay to say you're still learning, and it's okay to feel really radically passionate about a certain issue if like you spent the requisite time to learn about it, and that that's kind of like what I'm hoping to get out there a

little bit. And I think sort of the distinction I see between the older and younger generations.

hearings or whatever else it is. You actually have to separate yourself from that and go live your day to day life and experience the world as it is right in front of you, to stay really grounded and to understand that, you know, not everything is what's happening on the kind of political fringes and whether it's in congress or in war zones or whatever else it is. So I try really hard to just like get some space from that and take breaks and live and experience, you know,

the things that I'm talking about myself. And I also just think we are sort of programmed in a way to remember and focus on and emphasize the negative feedback we get and not necessarily the positive feedback we get. And I know in my work, when somebody writes in really critically or says something that's really sharp or biting about something I've said or my writing, that's the thing that I spend all day thinking about. It's not the email from somebody telling me your news source is like

the best thing that's ever happened to me. I'm so glad to be a subscriber. And I could get ten of those emails and one of the kind of biting ones, and I'll think about the biting one the rest of

the day, and I just dismissed the other ten. And so I've tried to be a lot more intentional about like, you know, focusing on the people who are standing up and clapping and saying we want more of this, like this is what I've been looking for, and remembering that like those people are relying on folks like me to

kind of step into the fray. And you know, as I like to say, like I'm going to war with partisan news, like that's the battle that I have is that there's a lot of people out there who are intentionally turning the temperature up when they don't need to. That's going to happen organically. We don't need to manufacture that. But they're doing it on purpose, and I'm trying to fight against those people. That's sort of my quote unquote enemy is the people who are trying to turn the

temperature up. And I just want people to be more informed and have a more holistic view of things. And when I feel that exhaustion, I just like step away, give myself a little bit of a break, and then try and focus on and remember the people who are I know are like rooting for us and rooting for me and rooting for my company, and want what we're doing to kind of prevail, and hope that they just stick around and keep supporting us.

us to think about multiple points of view. One does not have to agree with the other points of view, and one may still feel dismissive towards them, but at least one sees that reasonable people can hold different points of view, can wrestle internally with deeply uncomfortable issues, can even feel lost and confused about issues. Rather than pretending that everything is black and white, this sort of approach values a wide embrace of society rather than dismissing half

the population. If we have any hopes of retrieving a more communicative and less polarized world, it's only going to be having a willingness to expand our viewpoint just a little bit, to not assume that everything is our way or the highway, and to force ourselves at all moments to see and celebrate our common humanity.