Public Affairs Videos

There's no way around it - it's a challenging time in America. Societies have lived through pandemics and political strife before, but never with powerful tools like social media and the Internet. It makes for a special brand of division that most of us have experienced in some way, from dinner table arguments with relatives to heated interactions at the grocery store. Have we forgotten how to interact and connect, despite our differences?

Journalist Mónica Guzmán knows the struggle all too well. She's the liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted - twice - for Donald Trump. She's also the chief storyteller for the national cross-partisan depolarization organization Braver Angels, which works to bring Americans together and strengthen our democratic republic. When the country could no longer see straight across the political divide, Guzmán set out to cut through the fog and discovered the most eye-opening tool we're not using: our own curiosity. In her new book, I Never Thought of It That Way, Guzmán draws from conversations she's had, organized, or witnessed everywhere, from the echo chambers on social media to the raw, unfiltered fights with her family on election night. Guzmán shares how to put a natural sense of wonder to work by talking with people - rather than about them - and asking tough, meaningful questions across divides while maintaining openness and curiosity.

Together with political cartoonist David Horsey, Guzmán discusses how to overcome fear, labels, and assumptions and have human conversations with people whose identities and values are different from, or even opposed to, our own.