and i think they can be very on the underhanded. jesse jackson was running in 1984. he didn't specifically go after walter mondale from minnesota was the front runner . he was talking about hubert humphrey , ran for president in 1960, 68 and briefly in 52 as well and 1972 and he said humphrey was the greatest, only real progressive leader who came out of minnesota. you put two and two together and you figure is trying to go after walter mondale and he thought that was kind of a great line so i think the insults are something no matter what side you're on its kind you appreciate the way politicians are able to insult someone. sometimes it can be an impish first rate sophomore insult but other times it can be something that's creative and use a . >> rich rubino is the author of this book the great americanpolitical trivia challenge . available online. iq for spending a few minutes with us . >> was great to be on the station i dedicated the book to. >> listen to full episodes of about books.

or whatever you get your podcast or watch it online. >> watching book tv. tv, television for serious readers. >> we have a special evening i had of us with monica guzman who's here with us to share her new book i never thought of it that way. how to have fearlessly curious conversations in dangerously divided times. she will be joining conversation by alina weiss. we are pleased to be hosting in person event again. awe ask you to make sure your mask remains over your notes and not at all times. we are also excited to be hosting a number of both e virtual and in person events this season. tomorrow in fact we have joshua the point is the

author of red paint. the central on autobiography of a punk and that's right here on this stage. and on march 22 we are very pleased to have here the author of the instant new york times bestseller all my rage: in conversation with g willow wilson. you can sign up for our newsletter. tonight's event is also cosponsored by braver angel. braver angel is the nation's largest nonpartisan organization dedicated to the polarizing america, offering workshops, debates and discussions driven bytens of thousands of volunteers and more than 70 chapters in cities and towns throughout the country . to lilearn more i'm not there table tonight for online braver angels.org.tonight's event is going to be recorded by book tv. if you have questions for our authors know those questions will be recorded.

we reserve the last 15 minutes for the audience so please line up at this microphone to my left. tonight's program will include public signings. just to the right of the stage. i will ask you now to turn off your cell phones and other noisemaking devices for the duration of the reading and if you haven't purchased a copy of the nextbook we have them available hefor you tonight . every purchase you make supports this author series so thank you. without further ado i am pleased to introduce tonight's speaker. monica dezmon is a journalist and entrepreneur who livesfor good conversation parked by challenging questions . she's cofounder of the evergreen, old and award-winning newsletter in seattle serves as an advisor to braver angels is with us tonight. the national organization whose mission is to

depolarized america. she is a former columnist at the saddle times and the columbia journalism review and she is a wonderful public speaker and author of the recently popular ted talk called how curiosity will save us. monica is studying social and political division as henry m jackson leadership fellow and spent a year studying how journalists can better meet the needs of a participatory public as a nieman fellow at harvard university. joining monica in conversation is mostly no one. she is a seattle resident who writes about politics or how politics and culture impact our society. she blogs as a conservative and has contributed her thoughts on pow. molina has contributed to a clear fashion site and most recently created the project of the movement calling for solidarity and collaboration with members of our community and the black lives matter movement. sherry terkel who is a

professor at mit and author of the diaries called tonight feature book a sensible straight talk toolkit. and in a recent review for the new york times they write the book's greatest offering is of permission to reclaim people you might have come from ideological reasons. such connections may in fact enrich us. we're so pleased to be hosting this dynamic conversation tonight. join me in welcoming monica 's mom. >>. >> evening everyone. excited to be curious with monica but before we dive in monica is going to read a little bit from the book.

>> before that monica need some water. >> it's awesome to see you all out here. this is terribly exciting and a little scary for me so thank you all for being here. i'm going to read right from the introduction to the book. on the morning of election w day 2020 i was driving east across seattle to my parents se house in redmond washington wondering if i should turn around. about a week earlier i asked my parents if i could watch the results of the presidential election to my house. mom blinked over her plate of tacos from the food truck down away. she looked atdata and back at me . she said in spanish of course . then her eyes held my moment. asking what i was silently asking myself. but are you sure you want to? after all, i'm a girl who

voted for joe biden and mom and dad are conservatives who voted enthusiastically and twice now for donald trump. i drove their way in silence, my hands gripping the steering wheel of the black nissan ultima they sold me for a dollar when my civic felt too clunky for our kids. four months before trump's 2016 victory shook the world. i prefer the level of the wheels on the road to any music that can make the day feel to normal. when my parents and then a happy and relieved or what i? who would feel at our home in our country tomorrow? i had seen it brought me back to my mother's natural naturalization ceremony 20 years earlier. did you notice i dressed in red white and blue mom had texted this past independence day y when dad dug up and shared a family photo from the courthouse. in the photo mom is in a red cardigan with white buttons and the start. clutching a small american flag who had been naturalized

a month prior. i was 17 and. my long hair over a purple sweater. being 18 minutes my brother and i were automatically naturalized along with our parents. it was our first sfamily photo as american citizens. we were beginning. later that year i slung my high school backpack off my shoulders to see the bush cheney sign tax to the bulletin boardabove mom's desk . republican i thought? really? we corrupted about clinton's welfarepolicy one night . this was rattling when i hit our wooden table too hard. and i'll never forget the drive home from the 12th after seeing the michael moore documentary fahrenheit 9/11. liberal bias, it's the truth. frustrated that house rules

meant i couldn't use my english vocabulary to trounce their apartments once and for all . i remember thinkingand how could they not see . because of that long-ago conversation filling the silence in baltimore. by november 3, 2020 i found myself a new strange party trick in true blue seattle. admitting to room full of fellow liberals after a swig of whatever drink was in my hand that my parents who i see most every weekend and call about everything from cooking tips to the kids swim lessons are mexican immigrants who voted fortrump . it would always start the room for a moment. people needed time to swear this reality with what they know of the wall and the southern border , the talk of mexico and the rapists and criminals. all this seems like an endless string of hostilities and that immigrants from latin america . i'd wait for someone to ask the first question. so why did they put thatway? then i feel their eyes probing me as silently they

asked the other why are you still speaking to them ? with the stars and stripes long faded from my rearview i steered baltimore into my wondering ll to set if i should come dhome. i parked the car in the driveway inches from the closed garage. grabbing my phone and overnight bag i stepped out of the altima passing their covered front porch with a choose life bumper sticker and i for reasons i don't fully understand feel the urge to scrape off. i rang the doorbell. ifthere's one thing most people on the left and right can agree on it's the way we treat and talk to the other side is broken . we can't stomach the ideas across the political divide let alone the people who vote on them and january 20, 2021: most americans thought the biggest country threat to our way of life was other americans. by june us voters rated division in the country as the number one issue facing them personally. if you're reading this book

right now whether you consider yourself conservative, liberal or something in between our office altogether that you wonder if how long we can pull it together while our differences our ll relationships, our countryand our ability to share our lives . maybe you're like sophia, a woman in boston who lost the friendships when she switched from hillary clintonto donald trump . having grown up in a communist country she see something dark and destructive in the last agenda has been convinced in that your life is intelligent at present . she described her preferred solution. a conservative america and a literal states of america. a peaceful divorce might be the only way. or you might be more like marcus, a young man in portland who feels the spiritual action to his nation's ideas. the results of the 2016 election drew him into a state of confounded despair and made him want to reach conservatives and fight like

hell for a country he sees as shoving towards authoritarianism . in the political vigilance and the need to understand or is it any you relate to, a man in rural kentucky who said he's tired of turning on the news to quote, watson lecture me on what kind of racist i am. the way he sees in the mainstream media are responsible for the hate he sees america apart . they don't consider us human beings he says. i could hardly believe what i heard from barbara. a mother of five grown men whose families got so fired up class politics at thanksgiving dinner was like a bomb went off one of her sons is very conservative, another liberal third and fourth moderately and. my family is a microcosm of the country he says barbara who described herself as a conservative libertarian christian and try to keep the peace. we just have a nice family dinner she sang. when she walked in her house to survey the damage one

young family was packing up to leave early, two of her sons and tstormed off, daughters-in-law were comforting each other and third months pregnant started crying on a low wall while the two-year-oldgrandmother patted her daughters had changed everything's going to be all right . i didn't meet sophia eddie or barbara thanks tofriends or family . we connected to our shared determination to find some answer to the challenges of this dangerously divided times present in our lives. determination can turn into desperation like how i opened my email to find a message from a man. i found leo was a liberal and lived in rural lantana and after a series of escalating text messages from his conservative son his son had told him he didn't want him in his life anymore and he was afraid he might indoctrinate his kids. leo had seen a talk given about politically divided

families after the election and reached out . we don't know where to turn you wrote but somehow he found his wayto me . each story i hear from americans of all political stripes about theways these divide pulling them apart , each of them falling for declined invitations and the tostorms, all these ways people are no longer speaking to people brings me face-to-face with that question . why am i still seeing him? even after the intense conversation with mom in june 2021 neither of us change our minds even after the two-hour argument with that about how the white house and the pandemic where i definitely went too far even after all that why am i not only speaking to my parents who are way on the other side of the political divide but listening to them,learning from them and enjoying their company . and why when i see my parents are mexican immigrants who voted for trump do i not see the rest of it. while you're afraid to tell my feel of fellowseattle liberals not only my parents but i understand .

that if i were them i wanted would have voted for donald trump two. and with that. [applause] >> i'm so excited to talk to you. you left an impact. ththere's a lot to impact and what i love about the foundation of your book is it's very personal. and you kick off that way talking about your family and especially living here in seattle. how certain people have reacted and your parents are trump voters. so let's unpack that. how do you feel? how do you communicate and how those conversations with them. >> what i described in the book started with just a couple of times where it felt like conversations in 2017 would reset point of incredulity and people were

so confounded and then it would veer into this place of well, it's those people who voted for trump and that's when i almost felt like an obligation to say well, my parents are mexican immigrants who voted for trump and there was a sense that that would be him what despising candidates on the room. what i'm happy to report is a lot of times you would ask why. they really would ask why. and then it was just a matter of sometimes frankly it i felt impatient. i wanted to download everything i knew about my parents so that it was clear. >> .. ea

it would only be little by little because it's a lot for people to taken. >> i think it's interesting you have to validate their vote that's part ofs why i think we are getting together on this stage, our friendship and connection insert curiosity, we don't agree on political whose conservative leaning libertarian housing i'm not much of a trump fan but we have plenty when it comes to politics so thinking is

probably localization surprised we are friends and probably a lot off people who have asked you, i have tried, i've tried to have conversations with people i disagree with, i had great friendships 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? >> and that is extremely common and valid challenge, i sit and think about that a lot. it's a challenge that presents itself and it has ever since the 2016 election. january 6, the pandemic, vaccines, thing after thing after thing, raise your hand if you knowad someone is had to brk a tie over those issues. i see a lot of hands.

it's extraordinarily painful and i hear about that pain a lot because of the love we have for the people in our lives because of the values we carry so to take a couple of those in turn, one of thelo things we do struge with his sense of i built a bridge, i sat and talked to this person and ask them questions. you know what happens? they didn't ask any questions back, they didn't reciprocate, they were talking at me the whole time. then i hear is, i burned the bridge down. obviously it doesn't work. i am done and i will tell everyone i know that this is silly so that's where i say the most important thing to do with the bridges to keep it, not cross it. our opinions are not the kinds

of things, we will just turn on a dime, we have roots all the way down through our entire biography. we don't see with our eyes, we see with our lives. it should be really hard to feel heard by someone across the divide in a climate of so much distressed and high-stakes, it should be hard. it shouldn't happen in the course of one conversation so if you find yourself in that situation where you're asking questions and the other person is asking questions back, can you get serious about why? is really going on? it could be that person suddenly is feeling heard by you or 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 it will 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? i also want to get to your other part about when ideas can be harmful. do you want to say more about that?ea >> i hear that all the time, their idea is dangerous, their ideas hurt others. for me, it's pretty easy because i am a woman, a person of color, a lesbian and i promise you, you have a conversation with a trump voter, it's not going to personally harm me, it's okay. i get curious how you feel people draw a line in the sand, it too dangerous to even have a conversation. >> i always -- it makes a lot of sense and i have shared that fear. one thing i will say in the book i talked about various conditions of t conversations tt

allow us to havee more productie conversations that can be serious, and exchange and one of the most important is what i call containment. on social media and these platforms, conversations or not contained for the people participating in them. there are large invisible mass audiences and the less contained a conversation is of peoplee participating, the more you perform a set of converse. the more a conversation is not about learning from one another and we would be worried about oh no, if i release this idea and what if i cause harm to others conversations? the answer is the power of one-to-one conversation. when you can contain a conversation to the people participatingne in it, there's only one person you could be afraid mightet be affected by wt you feel is a horrible idea.

in that scenario i would say, i do, i think about the pandemic, we look at that ideas almost like a virus and if you allow it in the room, it could in fact the fall and that's not how opinions work. we have all of these roots going down, down, down. if we hear a story, hear from a person who holds an idea to make things unsavory, do we really think just like that it's going to sustain us, infect us? if so, why do we have our own constitution? it's most likely are afraid of ourselves. the best answer i could come up with is maybe we are living in a time where it's so acceptable to think of other people as monsters and ideas making other

people into monsters we think it could happen to us just by listening to somebody's perspective, listening to someone's story even in a contained conversation. >> when you talk about others, it makes me think about the chapter on uttering where as a human, you said this premise that it is natural for humans to be tribal, natural for us to justid take sides and you pointd to a number of experiences, experiments over the last 100 years were could be a silly thing like the number of marbles in a jar humans are immediately taking sides. thoseut people are wrong about w many marbles but it has gotten tore where i think it can be dangerous how divided we are and how we demonize the other. i personally have an interesting story that happened to me a ago, i went to

an author event and it was similar to this, a writer was asking questions and to kick off the night and i'm sure most people are familiar with the symphony hall, the gentleman says to her, i have a question for you. isn't it funny when an anti- vax dies of covid? immediately the entire crowd, the entire audience breaks e out in laughter. laughter then start dying down and before she could even answer the question, he says i'm sorry, not funny, is it hilarious when theyrs die? bursting into laughter about the biggest laugh of the night was a joke about an anti-vaxxer dying of covid. i'm sittingti there not laughin, not because i am axing anti-

vaccine myself but last year i have a cousin a couple of months younger than me, anti-vaxxer whd of covid, not funny. pretty tragic. i 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. one thing i can tell you about my brother is i disagree with him getting vaccinated but he's an exceptional loyal father, exceptional loyal husband, intelligent thoughtful man and for whatever reason, he's made the decision and he didn't want to get vaccinated. i don'thi agree with him but i also don't think he should die because of that decision and i certainly don't think it is funny. but i'm sitting there in a hole with people who are my neighbors who are great representative of

what this city is made of demographically and with got to where weit are laughing at it. what you think about that when we study the idea of other in our society today? >> i think of -- i have a pretty deep personal conviction the way we save our democracy is talking with people instead of just about them. today i got an e-mail from someone who said i'm excited about your book and i want to come to your event but it says you have to show proof of vaccination to come in and i think it iss ironic you've written a book about people wite different political opinions in a venue where i can't show, he and my friends can't come. we have to continue asking ourselves who we are and what

our us is in them is and whether it makes sense. it is a comp located thing. tribal, being a part of tribe, it's part of life, wonderful. who hast a team they love? it's great. you want to feel like you belong, you want to feel you are part of a group, that's so much of what t gives life meaning, is great but there is a dark side. the dark side happens when other blinds us, the fact that we put distance between us and someone who is different means we work them into something they are not or we begin to think we are certain without talking with them oran see something in the news and it's all we need to know why theol whole group of people behaves the way they do. that level of certainty is

tempting in ourta society especially because of the high level of anxiety we have. there really are high-stakes things going on right now and in times of high anxiety, we want positive closure, and answer and answer now. we don't want to leave the conversation because it's scary, uncertainty is scary but it is required for curiosity. curiosityqu is required to even see our world truthfully when we are this divided and polarized. i think that's just what is in front of us right now. >> let's talk about real examples, hypotheticals of how we can be more curious and bridge the divide. you have a great experience in the book you take folks down to sherman county in oregon and have whatal you call i never

thought of it that way, moment. you want ton' talk about that? 2017, i compounded a newsletter and a long are core values are curiosity and honesty. after the 2016 election, seattle dead.retty it was tough, largely a blue culture politically and we started to hear from our readers that theynt wanted to be curiou, they did what they don't know any republicans or conservatives, they are not sure even where to go. so how do we do this? unmy cofounder stumbled on this feature in the washington post and you could plug in york county anywhere in the united states and what sit back out in the county years to yours the boat opposite in the presidential election. that was sherman county, oregon, about 2000 people, second

smallest county in the state, very agricultural. i had zero connections but we said why not? we ask readers if we could figure out a way to visit, to talk with people, would you want to? a lot of them were like yes, let's do it. one thing led to another, a lot of googling and finding wonderfuleo people who decided o take thish risk and longtime agricultural agent, we partnered with him and created this event. we drove down five hours, 20 people from seattle and about four hours of conversation. we did a quick tour, they made sandwiches for us, we shared a meal before we got in but here was -- i never thought of it that way moment and anytime you think or say that in conversation, it means some insights have crossed the chasm between another perspective and

your own, a magical thing that could happen inn our mind. we see from many perspectives. one woman, lora from seattle was difficult in this perspective, she noticed, she was afraid she was dehumanizing people who voted for a trump but for her, she voted against trump because of things she believed in that are really good and important. same-sex marriage and the environment, these policies were if youhe don't believe in these things, how could he be anything other than a bad person was how she was thinking? she went down on the trip because she couldn't help, she didn't know anyone else. there was a moment -- i asked a lot of people who went, was the moment that stood out? it wast a moment when a farmer named darren, 6-foot 9 inches a very tally man he stood up and

said something about why he voted for trump and i had to do with something called waters ofe the united states rule. when he talked about, people were like yeah, yeah and was? what is that? waters the united states was a federal regulation that basically says whether bodies of water -- when they can come into federal control and farmers are cevery concerned regulation cane interpreted to mean if it starts raining really hard, it's created on the land but the government could claim is now there land or these little divots in the ground in the field, maybe it's a lot water filled zones in the government can take control of that land and it turns out, i know it sounds silly but d there's been close calls and farmers are really nervous and they do not trust democrats to listen to the

concerns. so when he talked about this, lora was like i had no idea, it never occurred to me people might vote for trump for reasons that didn't even matter to me, it wouldn't have registered. did everybody who voted for trump over that? of course not but i the illustration is what are we missing? and went can say that, what are we missing? we oftentimest assume people oppose what support because they must hate what we love but that is a pretty finite formula, you know what i mean? we don't ask what might we be missing and go to people every now and then and check whatever signals we hear from media or silos, it's an informational landscape, how can we know? how will we know the full formula? was the moment for me.

>> i love that story myself because i can definitely relate, not that i know anything about water regulation but when people hear i sometimes vote for libertarian, republican, they immediately think what i think most seattle progressive voters are on top of their agenda civil rights and lgbtq rights so if i vote that way, i must be against my own interest. i even once it was in the audience about 300 people in seattle and have someone call me a self-loathing homophobic internalized racist because of the way i voted. what is interesting is that i vote mostlyy conservative becaue i am a person of color, i am a

lesbian. in my opinion, the government and institutions of our country have time after time after time i can failed us if there's plenty of evidence how they failed us. i would prefer the government get out of my way and allow me to flourish my own accord. one greatha statistic is we know people of color often don't have generational wealth you see in white families. lots of regulations, loss of red tape for me to build my own generational wealth for my family, it's hard to do in my opinion withh big government democrats. the way i vote is it has nothing to do with marriage equality because that settled. we don't need to debate it anymoree, i'd rather focus on other aspects that are very important to me.

>> i shouldn't be theo one askig questions but i am curious. two people end up asking you reasons? but we don't have to go there. [laughter] >> you can ask me. >> i mean yeah -- >> there are people curious. >> okay. >> those are some of my reasons. i'll get back to asking you questions. in your book you talk about attachment and i think the best critical idea, we all wrestle with it and especially, i am a republican, a democrat and it's something you held lifelong, he tried to go along with how your party evolves and in some degrees they evolve in interesting ways in recent years so talk about attachment and

some experience you've seen in t your own life that makes things uncomfortable. >> and attachment to me is something that hold you to a belief that can be a good thing because it reinforces something you truly feel you are. it could be a bad thing for pressuring you to defend your beliefs on something see you meet other people's expectations and that happened to me in an interesting way i described in the book. a high value for honesty, if you are irresponsible journalist, it was driven into you and i really care about the truth and i tried to be honest about who i am and there was a time when i did talk about my parents and my relationship and the newsletter included the summary of that and a person

they've reallyle struggled to me it over the border, and i hadn't actually said that. it isn't the case. my family was more middle upper class in mexico which is not and we cross over because my father was hired by an american corporationo so i looked at that and thought i better let them know and corrected, no big deal. i wrote an e-mail to my friend, the organization who wrote and you could change it, no worries and i hovered over the send button and i was like maybe i will let this one go. and some things went through my head that i'm not terribly proud of. things like well, maybe i will get more empathy if people think

i struggle. i don't't know maybe i shouldn't question and focus on the struggle so i don't want to struggle, let's put that in. and not to mention, am i a latina, mexican immigrant if i don't fit the stereotype of mexican immigration? if i don't fit that narrative, and i still -- i just said no, i'm not going to send in my mother called. it was like within seconds, i swear. can you see the newsletter? you're going to call right? monica, monica? monica. i'm like -- and i really -- i

told her of course, i will. thank you. i will let them know to change that because not true. i hung up the phone i sat there, i hit send about what i'd almost done, and attachment to an idea of something true, it has to be true aboutm me or else i am not me, somehow identity does not fully apply to me when i do not consider myself belonging to the identity or some bull crap like that. [laughter] those are attachments and now is a hard story for me to share in the book, hard for me to share tonight and i think we have to be honest and curious about our own ideas on where they come from and whether they are truly what were think and who we are r whether we are putting on a show for others.

>> i agree and that part of the book resonated with me in the story, you shared the story with me before. i see attachment and identity in my own family. this book opened my eyes, how powerful not only evaluating our own attachment also the beginning of the conversation being curious and waiting for questions for burning that bridge is really powerful. my own life, i was raised religious conservative and my father, he is a minister most of his life, all of my upbringing, my coming out was extremely difficult for my parents, pretty much severed our relationship. i am 40 years old now, i'm still getting to that in our relationship was very strong and healthy. i really thought about that idea of attachment because i remember when i was young in my early 20s, first v coming out, first understanding myself, being angry with myh parents because they wouldn't accept me.

having friends who would often just say forget your parents, build your chosen family. if they don't love you, they don't deserve you, forget them. i often felt that way myself but now i understand how powerful and identity can be an attachment can be. my father's entire identity is being a christian man, being a minister. he's made so much progress to embrace me, to embrace mypartr,g of who i am and what i realize it wasn't his unwillingness to love his child the work to pretty much shed everything he identified with his entire life in order to completely fully unconditionally love his child, that is serious love.

but if i had decided to burn that bridge, we would never have gotten here. if he hadn't decided to really examine his identity and say i can still be a christian man, i can still hold my beliefs while living my child, we can be here. i'll tell you in the 20 years of hard conversations to get where we are today is why i am here on this stage because i know it can work, friendships with coworkers the most intimate family relationships. >> you're talking about -- that is hard work. emotionally and in the relationship to hold that bridge that long, it takes a lot of space andth courage and i don't know, i'm t not had to face anything like that and i do wonder if i i could. i do. >> i'm sure there are folks here who have their own stories.

i know we have a few minutes left before we get to q&a. you did want a fiery debate with me soe let's go. >> all right. [laughter] >> have we decided on the topic of free speech? i bet you can guess who loves free speech. >> libertarians. he[laughter] >> particularly on this topic but donald trump, him being platforms, i'll say it again, i'm not a fan and he's not really a conservative, just saying. i don't think he should have been removed from social media. what say you? >> i realize we should probably talk about this because i don't know, we do disagree here. i am a huge fan of free speech, my book is about we need to create context where we can be honest with each other and share our deep found real concerns. that has to happen or we can't see each other, we can't be

alive with people who are different and we can't build our society so i really believe that and yet, i am stuck on this idea of was the last couple of years have been like if he were still on social media? my parents and i usually disagree on this as well. we've had it out but all i can think of is i don't know, the word harm does come up. was in that kind of discourse from him? it felt like he was hurting us, our ability to function and look at each other and i can see my parents being like no, hang on. we saw a lot of good in what he was saying, he was standing up for us. i could see them here right now,

look at what it was doing to our country. i could see us getting into it so let's getwi into it. >> i don't know if i agree with your parents, i don't think there's interesting or productive things to say but at the same time i think we often say wordsw are dangerous, things we say are dangerous and that is simply not true but the platforming him, what we are doing is giving life to darker platforms where we can't see potentially dangerous people connect i think that i was great points. >> why do we have partners? we could certainly say the problem that helped with january 6 event. >> there is that principle when people are heard, is true about the human condition, it people are hurt, we will find someone

who listens, we will find someone who hears us. right? if we decide some people can't be heard than they are going to go somewhere and we are not going to have the same conversation and we wonder why we are here but i do agree with that. but what about the power he had? >> i think he didnc have power d influence and i've got a theory, go with me on this. i think donald trump has a lot of nonsense on social media and gave the media great content to work with but at the end of the day i think most of what he said dumb and didn't do anything. however, i go back to the midterm election, i certainly like to look at the virginia state election and how youngkin one. i am confident, one 100%

confident if donald trump were still ongk twitter, duncan would not have one that election. it is because he had the ability to distance himself from donald trump and the ability to woo back more moderatee voters and when the states. i think in a way democrat shot themselves in the foot by being happy about donald trump being off twitter because it is harder for him to associate himself with aub lot of republican politicians who rather not mention their name. we saw the sweep in the midterm election. on twitter looking at people saying i love that guy, he v is my guide, vote for him because of votere for him is a vote for me, i think there would been less republicans who one during the midterm. >> interesting, okay. i don't normally think of it --t i wasn't thinking the political terms but i could see that.

>> i think that is what it comes down to,re we are so narrow howe look at something that happened, so narrow that yes donald trump is off twitter, but what are all the otherct effects that happen? >> as i think about it, i think my deeper concern is about the climate of discourse swirling around in his content, everyone had to react to him. the media of which i am a part can't help but -- you know? sometimes echo and amplify and talk about these things. >> and ignore him. >> it felt like anxiety levels were somewhat higher because everyone had to react, everyone had to see, look and that is the peace of them like it seems homer in a good way when facebook and twitter banned him. when t i first saw that, i thout

it would never happen, i don't how i feel about it and i still don't but if i could go back, when i go back have them keep him on? i'm not there yet, i'm not sure. >> it is a slippery slope. if we as a people become more and more comfortable with people being platforms, canceled, people being censored, it is going to impact things important to you. i think another example is the author of the 1619 project, pretty much nothing i agree with her but her book has been banned in many public schools and state, i think is one 100% wrong and dangerous. if you don't disagree with her, but read the book and debated, a different opinion especially in the public school system. we are teaching our kids we just have to one way in any other way is not just wrong but a moral.

if weum keep platform donal trump, the other side says we niare going to ban, to. >> i think you're rightht about that. >> that's what i'm talking about. >> that concludes our passionate debate. [laughter] >> right on time. >> were you conceding or? [laughter] >> i still don't know that i could allow -- i still wouldn't go back and change it but it's principle, i totally agree with you, that one circumstance in my head and won't move. >> we will take ourur principles democrat try. >> i think weme are going to moe on to q and i, anyone have questions? i think you just line up behind the microphone. >> i'm one of those guys who went to bargain --

>> that's right, you were there. >> i've got a first amendment condiment. i think it was great the founders free speech the first amendment but you could speak on soapbox maybe with the microphone or even a megaphone to reach a number of people and anybody could do it, you could say it and you had to repeat it and like a rockstar, you couldn't do it on a regular, you have to have another performance and another one and then maybe it would get your attention. thank goodness for dorsey, the guy from twitter, did a lot of crappy things but also deep platforms trump, jeff bezos, the washington post. when a person speaks through a broadcast, it's different kind of free speech. once it leaves here and goes through here and is going to go

toto the book be. seventy i'm speaking to a bunch of people and it's different, a whole different media so yes, free speech but there is responsibly like yelling fire in a crowded theater and i think that needs to be discussed. he may not agree but put that on the table. >> i like that you brought that up, responsibility is a good part there. was that your question to just comment on that? but here is the thing that stopped me here, we do some really amazing work that challenges assumptions that we have about what we are able to talk about in one thing i've observed is we want people to affirm a shared reality before they can earn our trust but what if it takes trust to build a

true shared reality? that is what it is for me so it's true we have to share information responsibly in a broadway but if we close the door to all conversation where people can test their ideas and fully say with anything in me, continued conversations, sure. then we are really missing the opportunity to build trust. what's happening rightid now, a wonderful report on this, elusive because are getting bluer and reds b are getting redder. people are moving their bodies and their lives to be closer to people who agree with them and already we have this problem, this glue that held us together was dating and we are shutting doors and burning bridges. it just feels like it's a shared reality, a. dangerous idea and misinformation that worries us. is an important ingredient and if h we don't have trust, i

don't know how, i'm a journalist, it pains me so many people don't trust journalists but journalists have a role to play in earning that distrust. we do. i could go a on about that but this is a tricky one so that is my comment that probably raises a lot more questions. >> one thing. jack doors is no longer ceo at twitter but what i am saying is one of the guy who takes over for him isff like i'm going to t the horrible liberals off twitter sending out misinformation about the right? >> i created a word called male information, it's different. there's disinformation, misinformation, if you want to have fun. then there is being malicious and making something called disinformation, massaging data and doing it for malicious b process.

i don't see anybody in the media using the word male information and that is the one they are to use dragon the last word? >> i guess so, yes. [laughter] [inaudible] i just want to say, my i never thought of it that way kind of thing, a love story. if you don't mind me saying it 12 years ago i met a woman and we were friends and we met briefly, i did know anything about her. last year we united, we started seeing each other and we promised each other this would not be out of the discussion. i am mexican-american, high family came from mexico, i am 52

now. i'm basically the only liberal in my entire family. 99% ofmp my family voted for trump. also live in california. after we got to know each other, we now talk about import and lo and behold, she's a trump voter, republican in the army and conversations led to well, now it doesn't make a difference even though most of her opinions about why she voted for trump, i don't agree and she doesn't really agree but this is what i say is a love story because we got to that part. part of the conversation was when ihi hear this about water regulations and religion and politics, you start to think

when i was in the military, if we all here in this room didn't discuss these things at all like her and i and we got to know them no matter our background, i guarantee if they were stuck in this room for a while then we would probably all become friends. we would all get to know one another and have similarities and promise to not talk about that then we would remain friends. now we bringng this into the situation and all of a sudden i am a jerk or they are a jerk and we go our separate ways so do we look at the things we talk about, are we looking at it in perspective? are we picking things out and say i don't like that, i don't like this, whatever? we are losing the ability, i am 52, i seem to remember a time when it wasn't like this. my liberal friends say you have

to pay attention and do these things. my conservative friends say this is the way we've done it and it seems to work in a certain age so it feels like it is too much. >> i m get it. when you look at the volume of opinions shared for human -- you know what i mean? [laughter] not to mention the ethic of social media is like you need an opinion about everything. someone in your network is waiting for your opinion on everything. what it becomes and you see this on social media profiles, you will put their opinion on something at the level of their name, is a billboard. here's my name and here's my cause.

as the signal do? it is a beacon for others who agree with me and a shield for people to stay away if they don't so ihi think unfortunatel, we've just reached where we believe people's opinions are that, that's what they are. they are that opinion. i can judge entirely on that opinion in the book. there are several chapters on this. this divided time and clash of ideas means we havepl to go a level deeper and ask about people and get curious about people. one good way is instead of asking why do you believe what you believe? which gets people here we go, time to defend myself, how did you come to believe what you believe? you ask for their story. he walked alongside them as they take you through that judgment doesn't come into play as easily in that scenario. you gather information and said

which is what curiosity needs. curiosity needsnd information ad gaps appear in ukraine. he said this in this about why did you do this? that the question, now i am curious. i'm gathering more information and following curiosity in learning about you. it is the stories behind the opinions to get us closer to who we are in your illustration, we don't have to start with the politics, shermanan county, we started with a bus tour, neil. you started each other in pairs, what's your favorite childhood memoryth that's where we started seeing each other as people first which is just too hard on the internet which is a non- place that makes us into non- people. >> thank you. all right. you arty know we have something in common because i love your shirt.

[laughter] >> my shirt? >> yes, you i see why people are pulling their masks down tonight. [laughter] >> hi, monica. >> i think -- i am a curious person, past the whole place of i want to understand why he would do that how did you get to that conclusion but then i am still thinking in the back of my head but, it t still means your harming these people were this group of people or if you're not voting against me, how do you get through the wall to open up your mind a little more and not feel as defensive? what kind of conditions do you need to be and to make optimum? >> i'm so glad you brought that up.

someone else asked me something similar, what if crossing the divide means i am endorsing ideas that hurt communities, hurt baby books without a lot of power, folks who need help? i'm seeing a lot of heads not. it's a real and difficult challenge. one of the things i say is it is true our opinions have to take responsibility for that. what opinions motivate and behavior and the outcomes of the behaviors, have to take responsibly so yeah, some opinions will motivate opinions that form people. and what you do? here's what i do. but i see us do often is whatever the conclusion is, whatever the believeie is, we've decided it leads to harmful behavior so one thing is just,

are we sure? sometimes we are but can we be curious about that? i talk in the book aboutdy a dynamic happens online, you can trace it, it's basically where summer of 2020, somebody posts on facebook lamenting the looting of businesses and somebody decides that because that person lamented of looting businesses, they are probably racist. what happens there is a chain reaction where the person, without checking things, some people who limit looting of businesses would be against, they are bothered by the protests. some people are bothered by protest, maybe bothered by black lives matter in some people bothered by black lives matter may be bothered because they aru have more concern about the cause underneath. some people do that may actually be racist but it's a

mathematical formula and you 'multiply probability small things but what we doer is chane altogether and you say that, you believe this seems a script on twitter with all these highly retweeted things i keep elevating themselves and suren enough it happens, we see the ugly, the ugly goes way up high. a equals b, got it. we go out and assume the harmful things are changed together so that is the issue, can we get serious about certainty this person's entire thing to harm, the entire opinion is harmful? maybe some is, maybend some is t and maybe there conclusion is somethingns we find on savoringt is hard to be that but what if we get serious about their story? i think, i've talked to people who hold all kinds of beliefs all across the spectrum and you can often find truth and something to relate to and what

led to someone's belief where i see you're coming from, i don't agree with you and that up but i get. i connect with the human o experience how do i lead you over here and over the? that often turned the volume down on everything, it turns it down a little bit. it doesn't mean you agree but it's ultimately about being curious. >> q. >> thank you for having this. i wonder if you could talk more, i am a progressive, i have a relative who voted for trump and also the folks in our progressive community, perhaps even those were american immigrants, i am curious about that.

also the issue about twitter, i feel strongly on free speech but wondering if this is worth consideration, if i'm missing about twitter, a private corporation, unless i am wrong, they have the right to interview somebody or not, i used to be on wisconsinouncil in who would try to get close and tried to fight for who's voted but sometimes you get who's voted for and sometimes you don't. i think twitter people struggle over it. for me the issue is you don't't want to limit free speech hardly ever but the person talking -- i think it's one thing to say i don't agree with the e policies, they are bad, that is one thing but if they are saying, lying about the election and underlying the whole election and attacking the media saying

the media is public enemy number one, never you get the students this but if one starts attacking the other students beats them up something like okay, you get a microphone. i wonder if they don't have that right as a private corporation and people, people try to take away other people's speech. >> i don't know if we have time for both of those, that's two in one but i'll start talking about my parents a little bit so i want to say, that if you're watching, thank you for letting me share your story, they are amazing. so for my mother, big part is about abortion. mexican catholic is a particularly kind of catholic.

i was raised mexican catholic myself, i amck no longer religis but that stuck with me. for her, it is very difficult to put anything on the other side of the democrat who would endorse murdering an unborn baby and have it be worse. it's just very difficult and we have had this conversation. for my dad, he grew up in mexico, i talk in the book about how he used to watch his father walked by his father's friends for paying his taxes on time. mexico is a a place unfortunatey where you can get away with things but not doing things? my dad really admired his own father for following the rules even when maybe he didn't have to. he loved that about him.

he looked at the united states as a place that follows this rule, enforces it most. my father wants strong borders it is because of that, he sees the united states as a healthy society and enforces its laws. if you're going to change the, laws, fine, change them but change them first. a lot of that led to his support for trump, is that they would come along and say what are we doing? with got lost and we are going to use them and do this and it's still tricky for me to understand that piece of him but when he talks about my grandfather, there is something about it. >> wethank you. >> that's all the time we have, thank you for coming. >> thank you for coming, this was awesome, thank you,.

>> thank you, monica. >> several books are reviewed each week in three of america's largest newspapers. the new york times, "wall street journal" and washington post. here's a sampling. this week in the new york times, author joe rice francis his latest book, liberalism and discontent identifies neo- liberalism on the right and critical theory on the left, primary trust the american public. art buchwald was a must read in the nation's capitol for nearly 50 years. "wall street journal" review of a new biography about him by michael hill, reviewer dave right but while riding his weekly column. he typically knocked up the 600 word pieces in less than an hour and enjoyed friendships with a vast array of makers including several kennedys.

new biography by michael hill called funny business. finally the washington post, reviewer matthew reimer, cocreator of the online resource at lgbt history, find james history of washington offers service little glimpse at the promise of homophobia in the federal government press corps. all of these books and authors will appear on book tv in the near future. >> recently on author interview program "afterwards", george mason university professor justin just looks at six countries that experienced demographic changes in the past and spoke about how their experience may shed light on the next minority milestone in the u.s. interviewed by few research centers mark lopez, here's a portion of the interview. >> i think the most important thing to recognize is there's going to be nativism, prejudice. prejudice and and nativism are

assisting human response to demographic change, particularly approaching majority minority milestone. that's true even in societies that cope well. to me it is important to recognize, not something to be elevated, who want to try to mitigate racism and nativism in our society but so many people think we are going to be able to properly adapt in this change unless we eradicate racism, nativism but what i find is those sentiments among people experiencing this change, that is the turf on which change needs to happen. the majority minority milestones are effectively suffering, highly subject to the management of government civil society and businesses, how they respond to demographic change really matters because the prejudice is natural reaction to gross change shows how we cope with that.

>> "afterwards" is a weekly interview program with relevant guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest work. to watch this and others, visit booktv.org/"afterwards". >> here's a look at the few of the books published this week. democratic senator rafael warnock of georgia discusses his life in service as a pastor at ebenezer baptist church and now a u.s. senator in his book, a way out of no way, run more of true transformation and new american story. fox news host pete hedge that looks at the american education system and what he views as leftist indoctrination, battle for the american mind. msnbc news host, katie turf has a new book, her second. a member entitled rough draft. other seabrook books how