not vote. there are now up to 30 30 hof debate remaining on the bill prior to the final passage vote. if all the time is used and not yielded back the final vote will take place early tuesday morning at 3:11 a.m. eastern time. after completing the infrastructure bill majority leader schumer announced the senate would then take up the democrats $3.5 trillion budget resolution through the reconciliation process. we may see some discussion on that today. watch the senate live at noon eastern here on c-span2. >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's stories and on sundays booktv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more, including comcast.

>> comcast is partnering with 1000 community centers to create wi-fi enabled a list of zones so students from low-income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. >> comcast, along with these television companies, supports c-span2 as a public service. >> amanda, it's a pleasure to get the chance to talk with you about what is a fascinating book, exploring what i think you call the invisible hand of our time, but when i was reading it, it almost seemed more like the background music of our daily lives, and that is this challenge of what you label high conflict. basically as you defined it, distinct from group conflict or sort of natural conflict but the

type of conflict that resolves into a true us versus them. and so i want to spend a little bit of time talking with you today about that, diving and will a bit into some of the markers and investigative work that you did to bring this book and this concept forward. but thought i would just start by asking you to talk a little bit about what got you interested in this particular topic. in some ways what i found sort of fascinating about reading it was that it is in so many ways what we are living through in so many stores in her daily life right now, but thought about in a way that most of us never stopped to actually think of and process as these daily news

stories unfold. >> thank you, garrett, thank you to the aspen institute and everyone joining us today. i'm so glad to be back with you all talking about this. watergate feels like an appropriate back story, , wee cn get back toy that, but i mean four years ago i just felt like as as a journalist i to do something differently. i felt like it was so easy as a journalist to just make our political conflicts worse, even if youou didn't intend to. some people intend to but most don't, and yet here we were. it just felt like there was something i wasn't understanding about what was going on in the country and that's a problem, right?t? of time with people who studied conflict of all kinds personal, political and the study of conflict as a system for me clicked everything

else into place. there's a lot of forces that got us where we are but that as an overlay made everything makes sense in a distorted kind of way then the question became what can we learn from people that have been through these conflicts and have gotten to a better place, so i swallowed a handful of people including a politician in california, a former leader in chicago and environmentalist in england regular frustrated the democrats in new york city and republicans in rural michigan. the goal was to see how they got from high conflict which is this unpleasant destructive kind of conflict to the big conflict. the problem is the kind of conflict and people did make that journey which was encouraging and there were

patterns. in the context of defining the realm of what came to mind which was very intractable divorces and i wonder if just to help viewers and listeners understand this framework if you talk about in divorce cases, you talk about it as a mysterious force for people to lose their mind in political views and i was so struck. the story of the book as you

begin to talk about it in the context. >> that's where the phrase high conflict comes from. there are people who work in the divorce world, psychologists, lawyers and it is the destination so to speak. in about a quarter can be characterized as high conflict so that is like 200,000 divorces. it turns out that there are also high conflict politics and companies, so i think that it is a useful way to understand the special category.

there is a distinct conflict. for me it helped me get out of the mindset of narrowing the confines of the idea that we either have to have bipartisan unity or be at each other's throats. like those are not the only two choices. just like in a marriage you don't have to get along all the time and you also don't have to, you know, verbally, emotionally or physically abuse each other. there's a lot of things in between that. you quote the president of germany saying we are experiencing a kind of social rage and that really does seem

like part of the challenge we are wrestling with in our politics today where the names matter and change but the outreach doesn't and as you traced this back and look at the roots of this, when did america lose its mind, like where did the american politics move from the natural tension over policies and philosophies into something that is much more of him today to a better sports rivalry? >> it dates back to roughly around the 80s in the

aftermath of watergate and other things that brought down the trust level of a lot of our institutions. and also i would say that it boosted the adversarial positions of the news media. many reporters still think they are so there's a kind of adversarial and then of course you find that there were media outlets and things like fox news they could not target the whole country. much of the time to get a niche on the coming back would grow and grow and other media outlets have figured that out and have social media platforms, so we have designed a lot of our institutions to incentivize the high conflict and the important thing about that is we can

design the two incentivize good conflict and we see that. we've all worked at places where in a church or synagogue or neighborhood where there were cultures that dealt with conflict differently. maybe some places people avoided it and that's top-down how the leadership deals with it. but also it's very common and other places where conflict is combustible and destructive. it is possible to tap into and i would say most of human history is about good conflict or we wouldn't have gotten to this

point. >> one of the things being key to high conflict is breaking out of the binary. the idea that you can't sort of reduce a situation whether it is personal, political or to the idea that there's only two sides and two possible solutions. when you say the institutions don't come from god you talk about the states you talked about in the context of naturally setting up a system that doesn't reduce things to the political parties or political binaries and i wonder if you can just talk about the behind the scenes what you saw it being able to teach us about how to do politics better. >> it's funny because i didn't

know anything about it before i started working on this, but the book was about casting a wide net saying are there examples that do conflict better institutionally in sort of enshrined in what they do and the behind the scenes is interesting. the concept is we are all connected. there is no us or them foundation only. the idea is we are very interdependent so in some ways it is appropriate for this moment in history when we are so interdependent as we are seeing in the pandemic and many other things. so the idea is with the prophet mohammed and believing all major religions come from one's spiritual force starting in the 1800s and ears on has spread 150,000 with the largest community.

anyway, what's interesting is it's pretty significant, small but global and there are no ministers or clerical leaders to run things. essentially it is one the form of politics. each spring everyone in the 17,000 locations gather together to elect leaders. it's close to a democracy operating in 230 countries. but here's the twist. everything is designed to reduce the odds of high conflict. the thing about the conflict is once you are in it it is tricky to get out. there's a lot of psychological and sociological reasons for that but the idea is to stay out of it like don't let it start. so they are no parties allowed. people are not allowed to campaign for a position even if

they wanted. you can only discuss which qualities are most needed and then it's a pretty sober process after prayer each person writes down the name of people they think have the experience and character to lead to the the communityat that moment ande winners are announced. there is no celebrating. it's considered a duty, not a victory. and then once that they have the people in place and have to make the decisions for the community to deal with the conflicts that arise and all that they have other traditions in place to keep the ego in checked and conflict less likely one of which the meetings are called consultations and they do things like if i bring to the table and idea, once i propose that it is no longer my idea so these

little things sound small but actually play into how humans work and how to reduce the binary dynamic that we know tends to lead to the conflict so it's interesting. >> you also mentioned in the pandemic i wrote a piece at the start for the atlantic last year that i've continued to chew over in my mind about whether i got it inherently wrong and i was thinking a lot about it in the context of your book and writing on the conflict in the pandemic

way back at the beginning, what i saw as this unique spirit in america was a sort of national moment of unity and desire to work together as a unique moment in american history. a lot of my own history writing was focused on 9/11 and thinking about the unity that the country had after 9/11. never forget united we stand. we thought the individuals making these choices about the pandemic and closing their businesses that had a win and the government told them to

close. at that moment i was sort of celebrating the spirit of 2020 that america is coming together. i keep coming back to the high conflict this question it seems like americans got the response to the pandemic right and then the politics misted up. how do you think about this conflict frame of the america that you've lived through in this last year?

>> there was an opportunity for that period to last longer than it did. i know all over the world not just in america there was a real coming together. like you i cover lots of disasters and terrorist attacks and this is always true that there is a sort of golden hour after a catastrophe or during when there is a very strong pull to come together to help one another and it is an amazing experience and i think one of our great powers but it has to be harnessed and sustained. we saw in late march of 2020 that 90% of americans that they believed were in it together, 63% in the fall. it's hard to remember but the senate passed the stimulus bill by a vote of 96-0.

so quantitatively. and we are wired to expand under certain conditions and big shocks like a pandemic can make us encompass the whole world overnight. there is a huge opportunity in conflict to use those shocks. in the interlocking diabolical parts of the machine when you have a big shock to the system it could be weather events, it could be a new common enemy. when you have a shock it can upend temporarily some of those interlocking systems but you have to seize that opportunity

for both levels. that opportunity wasn't ceased. it's also true that the duration of this particular kind of cataclysm is important and hard for humans to distain that feeling. this is why looking forward for future pandemics it's important probably. you can make it shorter.

it is fundamentally too much is fundamentally too much to ask for humans are social creatures who need rituals and interactions especially children just the way they need food and water is too much to ask for uso on this long. so i think those are true, it was a huge opportunity there was a moment that we had a pre-existing condition for this pandemic which was extreme polarization and high conflict. so that doesn't go away. when this kind of things happen and i would say the last thing i will say about this that is in hyper polarized society, for the things that we talked to see is that the new media is become relentlessly negative. at all sites, and all sides of the spectrum and that is a lot of reasons for that but i also see that doeso not help us because even when the caseload went down and with vaccine started to look like they were getting worse, you didn't see a

huge change in the town in the emphasis of a lot of the headlines. there was a study done on this by the way by comparing the negativity of major u.s. news accountsts during the pandemic o international news account of the pandemic and yes coverage which was much more native even more negative than science journalists coverage of the pandemic. so a lot of different things happening with the bottom line is when you have this level of high conflict, is very hard to seize those opportunities. >> and you talked a lot about it and help shorthanded here as the rogue cousin problem. in some ways we are all in conflict scenarios beholden to the most combustible people in the group or loyalty circle and you talk a lot about started competing groups and loyalties

and competing identities in this. and i wonder a if you could talk about the way that you end up calling the fire starters sort of, one ofat the things that cae people to be the source of high conflict. >> so it comes from thehe storyf the hatfield and mccoy's. which many many people may have heard of. but very quickly, in 1978, randolph mccoy, hatfield's farm and along the big sandy river on the border of kentucky and west virginia come easy families have stood equally side-by-side for generations farming the land and land off cook mccoy thought that he recognized one of the pigs on hatfield's farm. unless had been stolen from his farm and nobody could convince him to drop it.

so mccoy complained to the authorities and organized a trial. mccoy lost that trial and that was not a great experience for him but he let it roll off and everyone moved on with the problem is is huge conflict because the hatfield and mccoy's and many roads have followed in for a year and a half after the trial, to mccoy's nephew is in a fight with a witness testified against mccoy and the big trial. the beat the man to death. so this is a moment that the feud became sort of combusted and became a high conflict law dispute and an intractable one in there course of the next decade, there is supreme court case in shootings and women were beaten and 80 people got drawn into the feud from across the region. unexplained yesterday that one of the conditions that reliably seemed to lead to high conflict in every case i have looked at

our powerful group identities, that are made salient of life leaders. so this is because when we experience in collective emotions, is geometrically compounded the conflict. you don't personally have to be attacked for or insulted or humility to admit if somebody group is attacked or insulted or humiliated company feels that we humans process this the same parts of the brain that processes pain it feels like it's happening to you. and when someone in your group do something amazing and powerful, you also feel pride it just like sports fans have done these great studies on sports fans when there teams win in the methanol games, they feel like they're more likely to be able to do amazing feats personally, gains or whatever which is clearly not true right but is that collective emotion it feels very true, it as true is our perception and so this powerful group identity particularly when

there are two like i think there is something again about the pioneering in the summer our particular political system and winner take all system work there are two parties is really designed for high conflict based on what we know about human behavior in conflict in this powerful oppositional groups, it does not bring out our best conflict and states and has humans i think it's fair to say. >> amanda, one of the things that i was curious to talk with you about in this is like, what is america do with the lessons you have laid out in this book. we are locked into this high conflict in our politics, you know, most of us do not want to be there. and i think that is sort of

another part of yourou book is talking about how conflict hollows at t the middle. that is something that's in the politics and in war zones. and what advice do you have to the country as we wrestled with where we are right now. amanda: so a collective level at the macro level, onee thing that we're just talking about about the pioneering is to make significant reforms to our electoral system and make their third-party possible the founding fathers did not want there to be parties let alone to and there's no reason that we have to stick with this formula. we know from the research that others have done about authorization that countries that have multiple parties and things like rank choice voting tend to be lessta polarized and

have more trust in the system is more fair and feels more fair and it is more fair which changes everything and lower the volume and the sins of injustice when you relate so some states have already moved into this direction. and others are trying to actively there is session and a bill introduced in congress to make this happen. as of that is the kind of thing that you can tangibly get behind and just makes a lot of sense. and the other thing that i think is important to realize is how much of this is also operating at an individual level and it's also operating on relief so the people in power need to change what they are doing and they have also been captured by high conflict so i want to talk quickly about some of the individual thanks the people can do, not just here but everyone and think that i have done in my own life.

and another precondition of high conflict particularly as the presence of conflict entrepreneurs. they are people companies platforms, how intentional will he exploit conflict for their own and and it could be a process. and often i find it is for attention and for a sense of meaning and to moderate and for or for power. so becoming aware of who those people are in your life or your social media feed or in your news diet. and try to keep distance between you and them if you want to sort of stay out of high conflict. that is something that we know that the people i followed in the bucket, including this politician who found himself caught in agh vortex of high conflict, one of the first things that he did was to start relying on different people from political advice and he moved away from the seasoned veterans of political organizers have been advising him lose all the

worldrt sort of black-and-white good and evil, men in war fights. in those kinds of words and the conflicts entrepreneur and moved to symbiosis a lot more nuance and humanity among the people who disagreed with. and take moreit extreme example, for the gang leaders that i spent a lot of time with into cargo, he literally moved across town to help them get out of that conflict he was an which was many years long vendetta. so people can find him and when things went bad as they always do, and his cousin who is very close to his brutally murdered, who done it so he could react. the way he normally would in retaliate because of that distance that he had created. soan everything you can do to sw down conflict. that's very important in the end of, but also at the collective level. >> and in the last question before i open it up to the audience, fuchs started by

saying this book grew out of basically where you saw yourself in journalism and the stories that you are covering sort of wondering where they came from and why they were so challenging. and so i wonder how this book changed the way that you do your journalism. i know it changed the ways that you taught your family and because we talk about the ways that you try to listen differently around the dinner table. when you're out doing your job h any report differently and he ranked differently and he explained differently. now that you understand the backdrop. amanda: yes of the rules of engagement for journalism than anything, do not apply the same way in high conflict they just will not work and often will backfire. so for me i had to develop a whole new set of rules of engagement that were to be useful in high conflict and

is hard like i am still figuring out and i'm still interested in suggestions and working a lot with a solution journalism network which is nonprofit in trades newsroom to help them do this a well to help you cover controversy in ways that illuminate rather than just exasperate the conflict. in one of the sort of overarching ideas from the research is that you have to obligate the narrative that your audience has going into a really polarizing issue that requires knowing what that narrative is, different for different audiences. and figuring outco where are the places where that narrative, is it true or very limited and using either history or different locations or a broader lens, wider lens of the problem to see what is really happening to help theo audience have a richer and fuller more useful view of either the conflict, the other side or themselves. so that's how i sort of tried to measure success and is the story

going help illuminate anything about this conflict and if not, i am not going to do it. so it's easier said than done but i actually think that many newsrooms and editors now not all, but particularly the national level a fundamentally underestimated their audiences desire and ability to handle complexities right now and i think that most americans want somethingt very different from the news that with her getting so i think there is a huge opportunity for june viewing journalism generally in conflict and to be useful to people at this moment war were not being as useful as we think. garrett: switching over to questions from the audience here. this is from richard. did you change your mind on any principles or theories as this book unfolded in the research

unfolded. what surprised you about your research. amanda: yes, oh man, many thanks.i i think one thing that i change my mind about was that is sort of bracketed different conflicts in different categories. and i now think like i thought polarization was a thing like political polarization. and i do think that is very helpful like i think that everything that i have seenev human behavior in different kinds of conflict whether it is gang conflict or political conflict. the behavior, and a fundamental level is not that much different so i am trying to be less solid and how i look in the research and how i look at storytelling. the other thing that i would say is that i have become much more suspicious of my own righteousness. when it flares up. and i want to be careful here because sometimes people say, it sounds like i am saying that you

cannot be passionate or you cannot be angry or can't have radical ideas. i think we really need to get more nuance and how we talk about these things because you can have really radical visions and movement for social change and we need those things. without being in high conflict. some of the differences between good conflict in high conflict are really telltale signs and you can feel them in yourself and see them all around you and one is in good conflict, there is still some curiosity, the moments of surprise, youou experience a range of emotions, not just to emotions. in high conflict, it is much more, everything feels really clear like much clear that it actually is and you begin to generalize about many millions of people that you don't know and will never meet. so the lack of humility, that lack of complexity, i come to see is quite dangerous not just for the country, and the way

that it is but also the most chilling part about this, every story that i have followed was that everyone involved in high conflict is eventually begins to mimic the behavior of their adversaries. you do the things eventually consciously or not that to win into the fight to stop. so the politicians who go through the politics to make it less toxic and more inclusive, they made it more toxic and less inclusive. there's a million examples like this. so, this is the warning about high conflict is that if you want to change the world, this is important. make sure that you cultivate good conflict because otherwise you will end up risking the thing you hold most dear. garrett: are there national political leaders or state-level political leaders that you see as the embodiment of the good

type of conflict that we want to be encouraging it like who does this well on the national level that you see. y amanda: is funny that you should say that because i'm trying to work on right now, a project of actually ranking or quantifying members of congress and other high-profile leaders. not just in politics but in the news media and other places. to figure out like the conflict entrepreneurs in ways that you measure and who are the constant interrupters and maybe most interesting, who used to be a conflict entrepreneur is not anymore. so this is hard because our system incentivizes especially at the national level, really incentivizes entrepreneurs like twitter does. so he said up every incentive from this. and again, not all should be

fixed and changed but we are asking people to be something different than what they have been awarded for being for many years but i think that is a great question them working on it. i have theories but only some data instead of my intuition. garrett: i have no shortage of examples netiquette side of conflict entrepreneurs in our modern society. but it could be the flip side of it be really pressing project about how her reading. question here from warren, what is the role of technology in encouraging high conflict. and how much of this is basically the tools we are using to live in the digital age. person something that is actually new to our society.

amanda: yes and i think that any attention is going to play too high conflict so whether it is with the media or social media, anything that makes money off of seizing your attention, literally the cheapest way to do that is through fear and indignation. tso that is a race to the bottom that we havee seen in many different industries. so i think that has definitely accelerated it and that said i think we focus a lot on social media which is definitely important to focus on and reform it started way before social media and some of the most or some of the people who are most captured by high conflict.

their rhetoric and in their way they've the estranged members and the researcher not on facebook and on twitter. and he looked back, you see a lot of the starting from a technology point of view is with talk radio and cable news. so i it's important to really cast a broad net when you talk about the ways that technology has incentive for faced high conflict and i thank you so true not into social media. garrett: another question here from elizabeth. i will play with a little bit of a question, or question is how do we help kids develop muscles to handle complexity and avoid high conflict. in a personalize it a little bit also by saying howdy parent differently now that you understand high conflict.

amanda: it is tricky because i'm teenage son and is living in the world, he's reading the news and it is very easy for him to slip into this sort of sweeping generalization about good people and bad people and i get that. and i don't want to just the person is always like, well let's look at the full picture. but i also have found that if i try to connect to his own life or own family, that can be helpful like how to resolve conflict among your friends printed soccer game or interfamily. and think about how would we overlay that really sounds maybe too simplistic but i actually think it is actually complex to try to make that connection. and the thing to do which you mentioned and i do this and all of my interviews now to predict and this probably change most