variable a very special evening ahead of us with monica guzman who is here with us to share >> we have a very special evening ahead of us to share the new book i never thought of it that way and then to have those fearlessly curious conversations and divided times joining in conversation very pleased to be hosting in person events and we do ask you to please make sure your mask remains on at all times both virtual and in person events in the author of red paint. and the author of all my rage to be here in conversation. find the full events calendar on facebook. we are cosponsored also by greater angels the largest nonpartisan and cross partisan organization offering workshops and debates and discussions driven by tens of thousands of volunteers and more than 70 chapters across the country. you canor learn more at the table heree tonight or online at braver angels.org. this event will be recorded by c-span booktv. please no questions will be recorded. we reserve the last 15 minutes for t q&a. please sign up at the microphone today's program will include public signing we love that yound would join us and i will now ask you to turn off your cell phones and other noisemaking devices for the duration of the presentation if you have not purchased a copy of the book they are availabley tonight. >> i am pleased to introduce to speakers monica is a journalist and entrepreneur is sparked by challenging a cofounder of an award-winning newsletter here in seattle and serving as advice through braver angels an organization to depolarized america. and a wonderful public speaker and the author of the recently popular ten talk how curiosity will save us studying social and political division as a leadership fellow spending years how they can better meet the needs of the participatory public and how politics and cultureer with the seattle conservative and contributed and thentr contributing to a clear site most recently created a a passionate with the collaboration and the black lives matter. tonight essence of the street talked focus. in a position for ideological reasons suchs connections that may enrich us. we are so pleased to be hosting this dynamic conversation please join me to welcome. [applause] >> good evening everyone. im excited too get curious with monica but before we dive in she will read a little bit from her book. >> it's awesome to see you all out here this is terribly exciting. thank you all just for being here. so i will read right from the introduction from the book on the morning of election day driving to my parents house wondering if isk should turn around and one week earlier i asked my parents if i can watch the results of the presidential election from t her house and then she looked back and she said of course then held mine then silently asking myself but are you sure you want to? after all i am a liberal who voted for joe biden and mom and dad are conservative who voted enthusiastically twice for donald trump. i drove in silence my hands on the steering wheel that my parents sold me for one dollar and in the 2016 victory he shooka' the world i prefer the alzheimer's wheels on the road with my parents and a happy and relieved or what i would feel at home in the country tomorrow? up ahead waved along the conifers of the highway bringing me back to my mother's naturalization ceremony 20 years earlier did you notice i dressed in red white and blue she texted the past independencee day when dad shared a family photo mom is in the red cardigan clutching a small american flag i was 17 and my long hair draped over purple sweater. and then we were automatically naturalized. the first family photo as american citizens. later that year i slung my backpack off my shoulders to see a bush and cheney sign above mom's desk. republicans? really cracks we were interrupted of clinton's welfare policy. i will never forget the drive homeme from cinema 12 after seeing the michael moore documentary liberal biases the truth i yelled in spanish from the backseat that has house rules meant i could is maybe anger bigger english vocabulary once and for all. i remember thinking how can they not see? by november 3rd 2020 and found myself the newue strange party trick admitting to a room full of fellow liberals that my parents uac most every weekend cooking tips to kids so lessons are mexican immigrants who voted for trial. and then the talk of mexico sending rapist and criminals and aimed at immigrants from latin america. and then i feel their eyes probing me and then asked the others why are you still speaking to them? the stars and stripes long faded into the parents cul-de-sac wondering one last time if i should just go home i parked the car in the driveway grabbing my found an overnight bag i stepped out to their covered front porch with the bumper sticker mom stuck on proudly i don't fully understand refuse tooo scrape off i took a deep breath and rang the doorbell. if there is one thing most people on the left and right can agree on its the way we treat and talk to the other side is broken we cannot stomach the ideas across the political divide let alone those who hold them and one for most americans thought the biggest threat to our country's way of five was other americans. by june, us voters made a decision the number one issue facing them personally. if you're reading this book right now you consider yourself conservative or liberal or something in between i bet you wondered how long we could hold it together while the differences are and to record relationship in our country and ability to share our lives. maybe you're like sophia a woman in boston who lost friendships when she stopped supporting hillary clinton and then went to donald trump 102020. and then is convinced he is an illegitimate president the facts are different and the values are different as she described the conservative states of america and theac liberal states of america. maybe more like marcus to file spiritualrf connection to his ideals and a perfect pursue. and those who want to reach conservatives. that's on there arere two modes in me a political vigilance and the need to understand. and then to watch them lecture me on what type of racist i am. and then feel helpless to stop it. i can't believe i heard from barbara and knoxville tennessee. and f then the 34th moderately liberal. barbara who does grant himself who has tried to keep the peace that holiday can't we just have a nice family dinner? when she walked over to survey the damage one was packing to leave early to use sons had stormed off. and then six months pregnant and then patted her mother's hand to say everything will be all right. i didn't need that things to friends or family the with the share determination to find an answer of those dangerously divided times. you can turn easily into desperation which is how i opened my e-mail to find a message in my inbox opening energy is liberal living in rural montana after taking text messages from his son he just told him he does not want him in his life anymore and is afraid he could indoctrinate hismi kids. and then to reach out he doesn't know where tohe turn that he found his way to me each story i hear from all political stripes way the device are calling them apart the declined invitations all the ways that people are no longer speaking to people why am i still speaking to them? and with race and w law enforcement when neither of us changed our minds even after the two hour argument how the white house handle thehe coronavirus pandemic why might only speaking to my parents who were on the other side but listening to them and learning from them and enjoying company and why would i say my parents and parents are mexican immigrants join us for a the rest cracks why my eager and afraid to tell my cell liberals i natalie speak to them that i understand them? and if i were them i would've voted for donald trump also. [applause] >> i'm so excited to talk to you. >> but what i love about the foundation of y your book is that is very personal talking about your family especially in seattle how people have reacted. so let's unpack that and how do you communicate and navigate those conversations with w friends? >> yes. what i describe in the book describing where conversations in 2017 would reach that point where people were confounded and then it sows people who voted for trump and that'sll when i felt like an obligation to sayen my parents are mexican immigrants and there was b a sense that would be surprising. times people actually would ask why they really would ask why they would come and find me later or they would ask me then. and then it was just a matter of sometimes frankly. it felt i felt impatient. i almost wanted to like download everything i knew about my parents into them so that it was clear. that but their human beings that they're really really cool and really good people and i think of data and star trek i grew up watching star trek and data the android could just like read a book really quickly just by flipping through the pages and that's what i wanted to do is i wanted to like impatiently just like here are my parents. they're real. they're awesome. maybe let's not be so sure that we know the hearts and minds of folks who made a different choice. but at least let me tell you about my parents. but because i couldn't do that it would just be just a little story. it would just be like here's the conversations i've had with them. here's why my mom. voted for trump. here's why my dad voted for trump, but but it would only be like little by little because it's a lot. it's a lot for people to take in. yeah, i think it's interesting that you would even have to validate their vote right in the city. but you know, that's part of the reason why i think we're together on this stage right now. is that our friendship our connection came through curiosity. we definitely don't agree on a lot of political. nope viewpoints. i'm a conservative leaning libertarian. i will say i'm not much of a trump fan, but but we still have plenty to debate when it comes to politics and so, you know thinking about that. there's probably some folks on the stage who are surprised that we're friends and probably a lot of people who have asked you. i've you know, i've tried i've tried to have conversations with people who i disagree with. i've had breakdowns and friendship breakdowns in my family. it doesn't work. why should i keep trying especially when those people those other people have ideas that are dangerous. why would i try to bridge the divide? yeah, and that is that is an extremely common and valid challenge and i got to tell you like i i sit and think about that a lot. it's a challenge that presents itself in different shapes and it has ever since the 2016 election, you know, january 6th the pandemic vaccines mandates, it's it's thing after thing after thing where i mean raise your hand if you know someone you know, who has had to break a tie over one of those issues. yeah, i see a lot of hands in this room. it's extraordinarily painful and and i hear about that pain a lot. because of the love we have for the people in our lives and then because of the values that we carry and we feel are important so so to take a couple of those in turn, you know. one of the things that we do struggle with is this sense of look. i built the bridge. i i sat and i talked to this person and i and i asked it, you know, i asked some questions and you know what happened. they didn't ask any questions back. they didn't reciprocate it was they were just talking at me the whole time. and so then what i hear is and so i burned the bridge down. obviously this doesn't work. like i'm done, you know and i'm gonna tell everyone i know. but this is silly. and so that's where i say that the most important thing to do with a bridge is to keep it not cross it. that our opinions are not the kinds of thing that will just turn on a dime. we we have roots going all the way down through our entire biographies. right? like i say a little bit that we we don't see with our eyes we see with our lives and it should be really hard. to feel heard by someone across a divide in a climate of so much distrust and such high stakes. it should be hard. it should not happen in the course of one conversation. and so if you find yourself in that situation where you're asking questions, and the other person isn't asking questions back. can you can you get curious about why can you get curious about what's really going on? it could be that that person is suddenly feeling heard by you or by someone in your group for the first time in a while, and maybe they have a lot they want to get out. and maybe that's what's going to take before they can feel heard and maybe it's the next conversation or the one after that. where it will be more of an exchange. can we have the patience for that? but i also want to get to your other point about when the ideas themselves can be harmful. do you want to say a little more about that the way you put that that like what if the ideas? yeah, what if your platform the idea is that kind of thing? oh sure. i mean i hear that all the time of well, their ideas are dangerous their ideas hurt others and well for me, it's pretty easy to hit back because i'm a woman. i'm a person of color. i'm a lesbian and i promise you if you have a conversation with a trump voter it's not going to personally harm me. it's okay, so i just get curious about you know, how you feel about how people draw such a line in the sand of no, it's too dangerous to even have a conversation. i mean again, i always try to it makes a lot of sense and and i have i have shared that that sort of that fear. one thing. i'll say is that in the book i talk about various conditions of conversation that allow us to have more productive conversations that can actually be curious that can actually be an exchange and one of the most important is what i call containment, you know on social media and a lot of these platforms our conversations are not contained to the people participating in them. there are large invisible mass audiences and the less contained a conversation is to the people participating the more that will be tempted to perform instead of converse. and the more that our conversation really is not about learning from one another and the more of course that we would be worried about. oh, no what if i release some kind of beast, you know, and in this idea and what if then i cause harm to others watching this conversation, and the elegant answer to that is the power of one-to-one conversations. when you can contain a conversation to the people that are actually participating it in it. there's only one person that you could be maybe afraid might get infected by what you feel is a really harmful idea and that's you. and in that scenario, i would say. i mean i do. i think i think a little bit about the pandemic. it's it's like we treat we do we look at bad ideas. almost like a virus right and if you allow it in the room, it could infect us all it could infect us all and but again, that's not how opinions work. you know, we have all of these roots going down down. so if we if we hear a story if we hear from a person who holds an idea that we may find really abhorrent or really unsavory. do we really think that just like that? it's going to stain us. it's going to infect us and if so, why do we have such little faith in our own constitution? it's almost like we're afraid of ourselves, you know, and the best answer i can come up with for that is maybe we're living in a time where it's become so acceptable to think of other people as monsters and of ideas making other people into monsters that we think it could happen to us just by listening to somebody's perspective just by listening to someone's story even in a contained conversation. yeah when you're talking about others, it makes me think about you know the chapter on othering where as humans and i thought it was great that you kind of set this premise that it is natural for humans to be very tribal. it's very natural for us to just take sides and you pointed to a number of experience experiments over the last hundred years where it could be such a silly thing like the number of marbles in a jar that humans are immediately taking sides and saying well those people are wrong about how many marbles are in the jar, but it has gotten to a point where i think it can be dangerous and how divided we are and how we demonize the other and i even personally have an interesting story that happened to me just a couple of weeks ago. i went to a and an author event at ben arroya hall. and it was very similar to this. there was a writer who was asking her questions and just to kick off the night and i'm sure most people are familiar with ben roy hall where the seattle symphony is big symphony hall of the the gentleman says to her. i have a question for you. is it funny when an anti-vaxxer dies of covid? and immediately the entire crowd the entire audience breaks out and laughter. and then the laughter starts dying down and before she can even ask answer his question. he says wait wait, i'm sorry not funny. is it hilarious when they die? and bursting into laughter. i mean the biggest laugh of the night was a joke about an anti-vaxxer dying of covid. and i'm sitting there not laughing. not because i'm anti-vaccine. i'm boosted myself. but last year i had a cousin who was a couple months younger than me anti-vaxxer who died of covid. it's not funny. it's pretty tragic. i also have a younger brother who for whatever reason chose not to get vaccinated. and if you were to die of covid that would be devastating for me devastating to my parents. and one thing i can tell you about my brother. is that sure i disagree with him of not getting vaccinated, but he's an exceptional loyal father an exceptional loyal husband an intelligent thoughtful, man, and for whatever reason he has made the decision that he didn't want to get vaccinated. i don't agree with him, but i also don't think that he should die because of that decision and i certainly don't think it's funny. but i'm sitting there in a hall with people who are really my neighbors who are great representative of what this city is made of, you know, demographically and we've gotten to the point where we're laughing at it. and what do you think about that when you you know, we're studying the idea of othering in our society today. yeah. i mean i think of how i have i have a pretty deep personal conviction that the way that we save our democracy is by talking with people. instead of just about them. in fact today, i got an email from someone who said hey, i'm really excited about your book. i want to come to your event. but it says that you have to show proof of vaccination to come in and i think it's really ironic that you've written a book about gathering people with different political opinions, you know in a venue where i can't show me and my friends can't come and that really stopped me today. because yeah, it's um. we have we have to continue asking ourselves. who we are and and what are us is and what are them is and whether it makes sense. and it's it's such a complicated thing because again like you said tribal right being parts of tribes, that's part of life. it's wonderful who has a sports team they love. i mean right it's great it like you want to feel like you belong you want to feel like you're a part of a group. that's what that's so much of what gives life meaning something that feels bigger than just you. it's great, you know, but there's a dark side to it and the dark side just happens when when othering blinds us when the fact that we are putting distance between us and someone who's different means that we begin to warp them into something they're not or when we begin to think. we're quite certain about them with