BROADCASTS.com

Amanda Ripley is a New York Times bestselling author, an investigative journalist, and the co-founder of Good Conflict, LLC. She writes for the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and Politico, and she spent a decade writing about human behavior for Time magazine in New York, Washington, and Paris.\nListen in as Amanda and Traci explore what High Conflict is (and how we get out) drawing on research, insights, and experience across astronauts on space missions (yes, really!), the Israeli-Palestine conflict, intimate relationships across political divides, gang warfare, and racism.\n\xa0\nEpisode Timeline\n[00:09] Intro\xa0\n[0:58] Meet Amanda\n[3:44] Amanda\u2019s journey to becoming a writer - and how she\u2019s not like Stephen King\n[8:14] Journalism, Conflict Entrepreneurship, and our need to matter\n[10:17] Gossip: the art of creating intimacy through a common enemy\n[11:46] Conflict in space missions (NASA studies with astronauts)\n[15:09] \u201cUs versus them\u201d and dehumanization\n[15:50] Curtis Toller\u2019s story of gang rivalry\u2026 and redemption\n[19:38] The paradox of internal and external conflict\n[22:00] The \u201cexhausted majority\u201d who want less toxicity in politics\n[23:40] Sidewalk Talk\u2019s Wish you knew Me project, designed for couples who have conflict around politics or vaccines\n[27:12] Bringing Black and white communities together in the wake of George Floyd\u2019s murder\n[29:20] The impact of positional power on the need to be heard\xa0\n[31:38] The art of political speech\n[33:35] Social media and automatic responses\n[39:32] Friendship, stereotyping, and how a lack of listening shuts down conversations\n[41:35] Learning to dialogue differently around issues of righteous callout\u2026 like racism, vaccines, mask-wearing.\n[45.09] Amanda\u2019s message to the Sidewalk Talk volunteers\n[47:14] Closing\n[48:01] Outro\nResources Mentioned\nHigh Conflict: Why we get trapped, and how we get out (Amanda\u2019s book)\n\xa0\nStandout Quotes\n\u201cyou'll never get out of external conflict until you work on the internal conflict\u201d (Amanda)\n\u201cI feel like that's why we're in this situation. We'd rather just continue othering.\u201d (Traci)\n\u201cMeanwhile there's this \u201cexhausted majority\u201d... who really want major social change and they want less toxicity in the conflict. So both at once they don't necessarily want moderation or centrism, but they want less toxicity, less dehumanization.\u201d (Amanda)\n\u201cThere\u2019s something like 40 million Americans who stopped speaking to someone in their lives over the 2016 election.\u201d (Traci)\n\u201cSo we're not marrying, dating, or living next to or working with people of other political persuasions is a big problem.\u201d (Traci)\n\u201cyes, you shouldn't let people get away with saying racist things. And what do you say in response? Like, where is the skill, the craft, the learning, the education, the nuance of sophistication emotional, intellectual around what you say, how you respond to that?\u201d (Amanda)\n\u201cWe could make lasting change that really solves racism in America or dehumanization of any kind by developing the capacity to dialogue differently.\u201d (Traci)\n\u201cWhen you really listen to someone, even if you disagree, there is something that opens up. There's an opening that happens in your mind and in your heart. And most people who experience that kind of opening across a big difference want more of it. It's almost like a drug, like a very good drug.\u201d (Amanda)\n\xa0\nConnect:\nFind | Sidewalk Talk\xa0\nAt sidewalk-talk.org\nOn Instagram: @sidewalktalkorg\nOn Twitter: @sidewalktalkorg\n\xa0\nFind | Traci Ruble\nAt Traciruble.com\nOn Instagram: @TraciRubleMFT\nOn Twitter: @TraciRubleMFT\nOn Facebook: @TraciRubleMFT\n\xa0\nFind | Amanda Ripley\nAt https://www.amandaripley.com/\xa0\nOn Twitter: @AmandaRipley\n\xa0\nSUBSCRIBE TO THIS PODCAST\nOn Apple Podcasts\nOn Google Podcasts\nOn Spotify\nOn YouTube