interested in supporting our mission tried to encourage you to subscribe manhattan institute newsletters and consider making a donation and there are links in doing so on the screen i think you again hrishikesh joshi this was great. >> think everyone for your question the really thought-provoking. >> in june amanda who had been the final editor of all of robert carroll's book world an essay in the new york times the focus was on jon gunther in the 900 page book that he wrote 75 years ago. called inside usa and his opinion, gunther was probably the best reporter in america ever had. we wanted to find out more about this publishing success story so we call the canadian freelance writer can to talk with him about his 1992 book, called

inside, the biography of jon gunther. >> on this episode of footnotes, listen in cspan.org/podcast or wherever you get your podcast. >> weekends on "c-span2" are an intellectual feast, every saturday you find events and people of exploring our nation's past and on sunday, book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors, television for serious readers pretty to learn, discover, explore. weekends on "c-span2". up next investigative journalist amanda ripley publisher thoughts on how people can engage in conflict resolution. by the aspen institute in this

run 45 minutes. >> amanda is a pleasure to get the chance to talk with you about what is a fascinating book exploring what i thinkoo you cal the invisible hand of our time but when i was reading, it almost seems more like the background of you of our daily lives. and that is a challenge of what you label high conflict. as you define it distinct from theth conflict are sort of a natural conflict 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 in diving a little bit into some of the

markers in the investigative work that you did to bring this book and this content forward and i would just start by asking you to talk a little bit about what got you interested in this particular topic. and in some ways, but i found sort of fascinating about reading itt was that it isn't so so many ways that we are living through and so many stories in her daily life right now. i thought about anyway that most of us never stopped to actually think of and process as these daily news stories unfold. amanda: thank you and to the aspen institute into everyone joining us today. i'm so glad to be back with you all in talking about this and it's like an appropriate back story when you get back to that

but yes, four years ago, i felt like as a journalist i had to do somethingo differently. i felt like it was so easy as a journalist to make up political conflicts worse even if you didn't intend to breed some people intend to but most don't and yet you are. i just like there was something that i needed an understanding about what was going on in the country and that's a problem. so i spent a lot of time with people who study conflict of all kinds, personal, political, professional and skilled individual and the study of conflict as a system particularly retractable conflict to me really clicked everything else in the place. there's a lot of forces that got us where we are but that is a sort of overlay, suddenly made everything make sense in a distorted kind of way. so then the question became, all right what do we learn from

people who have been through really conflict and got into a better place. and i spoke with a and full people in california, a former gang leader in chicago environmental activist in england, regular frustrated democrats in new york city and regular frustrated republicans in rural michigan. in the whole goal was to see how did they get from high conflict which is this really unpleasant toxic distractive kind conflict to good conflict because the problem isn't conflict it turns out. it can feel that way but the problem is the kind of conflict in all of those people did make that journey which is incredibly encouraging and they were patterns and what happened for the second and third and the book is really about how they did that. and help more of us can do the same if we want to. garrett: can you talk a little bit about in the context of defining the realm that this

sort of most macro which comes to mind which is very intractable divorces and i wonder if just to help the viewers and listeners sort of understand the free market, you talk about how this appears and divorce cases and you know you talk about high conflict as this mysterious force that incites people to lose their minds. in political views or gangs and dentists. i am so struck in the story of oothe book as you began to talk about this in the context of divorce. amanda: if yes and that's actually where the phrase high conflict comes from. there are people who work in the divorce world and it colleges where and they refer to a high conflict divorce is one in which

there are pervasive negative exchanges in a hostile environment where the conflict is the destination so to speak pretty like that conflict does not go anywhere there's no movement. at about a quarter of american divorces each year could be categorized as high conflict in this like 200,000 divorces. so it turns out that there are also high conflict of politics, i conflict companies in high conflict people so i think it's a useful ray to understand with a special category of conflict in which there is not progress. were just kind of stuck. it is something that you really, there is a distinct difference between good conflict in high conflict. so think it helps for me, it helps. or get out of minds and if this is narrowing confines of the idea that wef either have to he bipartisan unity or get each

other's throats really like this are nothing only two choices. and just like in a marriage, you don't have to get along all of the time and you also don't have to you know, verbally emotionally or physically abuse each other. so there's like a lot of space in between that. garrett: one of the things that you suppose london sort of helped clarify for me, a lot of which are talking about where yu quoted the president of germany saying that we are experiencing permanent indignation, is not the kind of social rage. normally does seem like part of the challenge of your wrestling with in our politics where the names matter or the name change but the outbreak does not. and i am curious as you trace

this back as you sort of dove into this and look at the roots of this, when did america lose its mind. like sort of like when it american politics tip over from a natural tension over policies and the philosophies into something that is much more again today to very bitter sports rivalry. amanda: i think interesting thing is that for the most of the research polarization dates back to roughly around 80s, in the aftermath of watergate and vietnam and other things brought down the trust level and a lot of our institutions and also i would say the adversarial traditions of the news media. many reporters still think there

breaking break every date so there's this adversarial us versus them mindset the bills and of course, you find that there were media outlets that figured out the talk to and reliably not target the whole country but use fear and grievances and anger, not all of the time. but much of the time in order to get a sort of a niche audience back in back to back and that it would grow and grow growing that other media. and that's what we have social media firearms we designed a lot of our institutions to incentivize "high conflict". and that certain thing about that is that you can design our institutions communities on them, they're not from god. so we can design them to incentivize conflict and you see that in your own life. we probably all work at places are been a church or synagogue or neighborhood where there was

cultures that dealt with conflict youes differently. maybe's in some people avoid it. top-down have the leadership deals with it. that doesn't work usually. but also it's very common in other place where conflict is combustible partied like it is out of control and destructive to the thing that their organizations are and another places that have traditions and rituals and policies in place to make conflict healthier. so it is possible to tap into this so we are highly wired for high conflict and also for good conflict i i would say most of human history, is about good conflict. or we would not have gotten to this point. garrett: one of the things that you really talk about is being key to reducing high conflict is breaking out of the binary. and the idea that you can't sort of reduce a situation whether it is political or personal or

professional to the idea there only two sides and only two possible solutions. and when you say that the institution still come from god, you actually do talk about one state that you saw and learned about in the context of naturally setting up a system that does not reduce things to political parties or to political binaries. i wonder if you could talk about the high status what you saw as being able to teach us about how to do politics better. amanda: it is funny because i didn't know really anything about this before i started working on this but the book was really about it are there examples of institutions they do conflict better. institutionally and sorta been tried and what they do.

and high faith is really interesting. the concept of it is that we are all connected, there is no us for them. sort of fundamentally foundational he the idea is that we are very interdependent so in some ways, particularly appropriate for this moment in history when we are so interdependent as a result of the pandemic and many other things. so the idea is that it's revered for jesus christ and mohamed are all major religions come from one source and started in the mid- 18 hundreds and iran has spread everywhere and there's hundred 50000 appearances in the united states, the largest community in india. it's pretty significant, small but global faith there are no ministers, no medical leaders to run thanks. so howru did they make decisions and what they do is this is essentially one form of politics, each spring everyone

in each of the 17000, the high locations gather together to elect leaders. so it's close to pure democracy operating in some 221303 countries but here's the twist. everything about these elections is designed to reduce the odds of high conflict. in theh thing about high conflit is that once you are an income is very tricky to get out. very magnetic and lots of psychological and sociological reasons for that but the ideal is to stay out of it. like don't let it start. so the high elections are no parties allowed read no binary categories, people are not allowed to campaign her position even if they wanted and you can even discuss who would be the best personn you can always discuss the most qualities and then you do the election basically sober process after prayer the person writes down the names of my people who they think of the e experience in

character at that moment. your secret ballots in the nine winners are announced, no celebrating it. it's considered the duty. not a victory right and then once they have these people and places they have to make decisions for the community and deal with conflicts that arise in budgets and all that sort of thing. have other traditions advice toh keep the ego in check and keep high conflict less, one of which they meet with consultations and they do things like, you propose an idea, and amanda brings the table tonight it was i proposing, it is no longer my idea so it's little things a salesman but actually play into how humans work and particular in conflict. and help reduce the odds of the kind of binary versus the dynamic. so it's kind of interesting.

garrett: and you also mentioned the pandemic and that was the subject actually wise to spend time talking with you about. your writer for the atlantic and i wrote a piece at the start of the pandemic were last year that i have continued to chew over in my o mind about whether i got it terribly wrong. and i was thinking a lot about it in the context of your book in your writing on high conflict. and i learned about, about march the first year of c this pandem, lay back at the beginning. and what i saw as this unique spirit in america, the sort of national moment of unity and desire to work together as

americans that i saw as you know, unique moment in american history. a lot of my own history writing focused on 911 and speaking about the unity that the country had after 911 it, never forget united we stand in sort of feeling like we work in the same moment in the beginning in the middle of march last year. and you thought individual americans making these choices about the pandemic, closing or businesses ahead of when the government told them to and schools closing ahead of the government telling them to. at that moment, i sort of was celebrating. the spirit of 2020 in america this coming together. and then of course, every week

since then, it is felt less like a united's nation in the face of this pandemic. and i sort of keep coming back to in a frame of high conflict, this question of sort of how seems like americans got the response to the pandemic right and then politics misted up. in sort of how you think about in your own high conflict frame, the america that you have lived through in thiss last year. amanda: i think we right then and there was opportunity to created to last longer l than it did and we know all of the world, not just in america, there was a real coming together. and like you i covered lots of disasters and terrorist attacks and there is the sort of golden

hour after a terrible catastrophe ordering when is a very strong human hole to come together and help one another. you can really feel attendance an amazing experience. i think it's one of our great powers and society. but it has to be harnessed and has to be sustained, we saw in late march of 2020 the 90 percent of americans believed that we were all in it together and up to 63 percent in 2018 paul, as i remember but the u.s. senate passed that massive first 96 - zero on the stimulus bill. so you're quantitatively absolutely were correct. people are wired into us and them and were wired to expand our definition of us under certain conditions. a big shock like a pandemic, the

make us encompass the whole worl overnight. so there's a huge opportunity in conflict to use those chocks and at columbia university writes about this a lot, shocked because i conflict is a system with interlocking diabolical parts that are self perpetuating in the motion machine. when you have a big shock to the system, could be the t latter event be a death, violence or a new common enemy like. a virus. the shock because it can append it temporarily some of those interlocking systems. but you have to she's that opportunity right. which is usually the leadership at the national local that level. so on the one hand i would say that opportunity was not seized critically have the national level lots of variants around the world around the country on that. i would certainly be in some

places and in some towns. and it's also true that the duration of this particular kind of cataclysm is important. it's very hard for humans to sustain that feeling when he goes on and on and there's no chance to recover. more another thanks. and this is why looking forward for future pandemics, and so important probably to, psychological and social logically as well biologically to really start strong and united and clear, very clear consistent messaging that is been tested in real time to try to frontload the reaction so that you can make it shorter. it is fundamentally too much to ask for humansum who are social creatures who need socializing and ritual and interactions especially children. just that we need food and water is too much to ask for us to go

on the song. so i think both are true. it was a huge opportunity and there was a moment but we had pre-existing condition. for this pandemic which was extreme polarization and high conflict so that doesn't go away. when these kind of things happen and i would say blessing that i will say is one of the things that we start to see is the news media becomes relentlessly negative. on all sides of the spectrum. there's a lot of reason for that but they also think that does not help us. because even when the caseload went down, and the vaccines started look like they were going to work you didn't see a huge chinatown and emphasis of a lot of the headlights. comparing the negativity of the major u.s. news accounts during the pandemic to international accounts of the pandemic.

the u.s. coverage was much more negative even more negative than the science journal pandemic. a lot of different things happening, the bottom line is when you have this level of high conflict, it's very hard exceeds those opportunities. garrett: any talk a lot about it and all sort of shorthanded here as toll the cousin problem thate are in some way sort of all in conflict scenarios beholden to the most combustible people in the group or multi- circle and you talk a lot about sort of the competing groups and loyalties and competing ideas and identities and i wonder if you could talk about the way you end up calling them fire starters, what are the things that cause people to be the source of high

conflict. amanda: so aerobic cousin comes from the story of the hatfield and mccoy. many people may have heard of. very quickly, 1978, randolph mccoy visited hatfield's farm along with that the big sandy river between kentucky and west virginia these two families and live peacefully side-by-side for generations. farming land, and randolph mccoy thought that he recognized one of the pigs on floyd hatfield's farm and how they had had been stolen from his arm and nobody could convince him to drop it. so mccoy complained to the authorities organized a trial and mccoy lost that trial and was a great experience for him but he let it roll off and everybody moved on another problem was this conflict because the hatfield and mccoy's

and many relatives all over the area. so for a yearea and t a half afr the trial to mccoy's nephews got into a fight with a witness who had testified against mccoy in the trial and the beat the man to death. so this is the moment the feud became sort of combusted it a high conflict morphed into an intractable one and there was of course the next decade there was a stabbing vigilantes shooting, or case, you know women were beaten and 80 people got drawn into the feud across the region. and i explained this to say that one of the conditions that reliably seem to lead into high conflict in every case that i looked at our powerful group identities that are made by leaders. so this is because when we experience collective emotions, this geometrically compounds the conflict. you don't personally have to be

attacked or insulted or humiliated but somebody in a row, is attacker insulted or humiliated,he the feels if you like is happening to you. in wins a pretty your group do something amazing and powerful, you feel like just like sports fans, they denigrate studies on sports fans were after the team wins, the vessel games, they feel like they are more likely to be able to do amazing feats personally. i kept the games and which is clearly not true right. but the collective emotion feels true it's as true and it is our perception as of this powerful group identity particularly when there are two like when there's something again about the binary, this is where our particular political system of a winner take all system where there are two parties is really designed for high conflict based know about human

behavior in conflict. so this powerful oppositional groups, it doesn't bring out our best conflict instincts as humans. i think it's fairnk to say. garrett: amanda, one of the things that i was fascinated or curious to talk to you about is like what is america do with the lessons that you have laid out in this book. we are locked into this high conflict in our politics. most of us do not want to be there. ith think that is sort of anothr part of your book is talking about how conflict hollows out the middle. that is something in politics and war zones and what advice do you have to the country as we

wrestle with where we are right now. amanda: was a collective level, macro level, one thing that close to what we were just talking about is the brian areas to make significant reforms to our electoral system intimate third parties possible. the founding fathers did not want there to be parties let alone just to and there's no reason that we have to stick with this formula and we know that others have done about polarization that countries have multiple parties and things like rank choice voting tend to be less polarizing 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 injustice. so some states have moved in this direction rank choice voting made in alaska and every

session there is a a bill in congress to make this happen. so this kind of thing that you can tangibly get behind it just makes a lot of sense. and the other thing that i thank you so important to realize is how much is also operating on an individual level. as also operating on so that the people in power, you can change what they're doing and they have also been captured by high conflict so i want to talk very particular about the individual things people can do not just them but everyone pretty things i've done in my life. another precondition is the presence of entrepreneurs. they are people companies, forms who intentionally exploit conflict for their own end and it could be for profit but often i finden that it is for attenti,

a sense of meeting income camaraderie or power. so becoming aware of who those people are in your own life or in your social media peter in your news, and try to keep distance between you and them if you want to sort of stay out of high conflict. and it's very effective and the people follow the book including this politician who found himself caught in a vortex of high conflict, one of the first things that he did was to start relying on different people for political advice pretty moved away from the seasoned veteran political organizers that were advising him that sort of saw the world as a black and white and evil and those kinds of words. in the mood to somebody else's a lot more nuance in humanity among the people who he disagreed with. and take a more extreme example,

aren't gang leaders that i spent longtime within chicago, he literally moved across town toim help them get out of the conflict. and so people can find him and when things went bad as they always do, and his cousin was brutally murdered, he didn't know who had done it like he couldn't react. the way he normally would and retaliate because of that distanceld he had created so everything that you can do to slow down conflict, that's very important in at the end of the level but also at the collective level. garrett: and then the last question before i open it up to the audience, you start by saying this book grew out of basically where you saw yourself in journalism and the stories that you are covering and sort of wondering where they came from and why they were so challenging. since i wonder how this book

changedd the way to do your journalism. i know that it changed the way that you talk to your family because you talk about the way that you try to listen to frontally run the dinner table. but when you are out doing your job, like how you reported differently and write to differently and how you explain differently now that you understand the backdrop. amanda: yes, so the rules of engagement from journalism than anything, don't apply the same way in high conflict, they just will not work and they will often backfire. so for me i hadn to develop a whole new set of rules of engagement read they would be useful the high. you know, it is hard like i'm still figuring it out and i'm interested in suggestions and i am working a lot with a solution journalism network which is a's newsroom to help them do this as well and help how you cover controversy in ways that illuminate rather than just

exasperate the conflict. one of the overarching ideas from the research is that you have to complicate the narrative that the audience going into a polarizing issue now requires knowing what you narrative is, going to be different for different audiences. figuring out where the places where that is true or limited in using either history or different locations are a broader lens, wider lens of the problem to see l what is really happening to help your audience have a richer fuller more useful view of either the conflict of the other side when themselves. so that's know how sort of try to measure success.cc is the story going to help illuminate anything about the conflict and if not, i'm not going to do it. it's easier said than done but i actually think many newsrooms and editors now not all the particularly the national level

have fundamentally underestimated their audiences desire and ability to handle complexity right now and i think that most americans are very different from the news than with their getting. so think there's a huge opportunity to do journalism differently jiggly in conflict to be useful to people at this moment when we are not being as useful as we think.l garrett: switching over to questions from the audience here at this one is from richard predict did you change your mind on principles or theories as the smoke unfolded and research unfolded. what surprised you about your research. it. amanda: oh man, many thanks. and i think that one thing that i changed my mind about was that i had sort of docketed different conflicts in different categories and i now think like

about polarization was a thank you. i don't think that's very helpful like i think everything that i havehi seen human behavir in different kinds of conflict whether it's getting conflict or political conflict, the behavior as a fundamental level is not that different. so i am trying t to do less and overlook the research and i look at storytelling. and the other thing that i would say is i have become much more suspicious of my own righteousness. when it flares up. i want to be careful because sometimes people say it sounds like i am saying that you can't passionate or you can be angry we can have radical ideas. ni think we need to get more nuance and we talk about these things because you can have really radical visions and movements for social change and we need those things.

without me in high conflict. so at some the differences between good conflict in high conflict are really telltale signs you can feel them in you see them already and what is in good conflict, there is still curiosity's and there might be moments of surprising new experience of range of motion is not just to emotions in high conflict, it is much more, everything feels really clear like much more clear that it probably is. and you begin to generalize about many millions of people that you don't know and will never meet. so that lack of humility and complexity is quite dangerous just for the country. though it is but also the chilly parts about high conflict is every story that i followed was that everyone involved in high conflict eventually begins to mimic the behavior of their adversaries.

you eventually did the things consciously are the two into fight to stop. so the politician who goes into politics to make it less toxic and more inclusive, he made it more toxic and less inclusive. there's a million examples like this. so this is the morning 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 end up risking the thing hold most dear. garrett: are there any national political leaders are state-level political leaders that you see as the embodiment of the good type of conflict that we wanted w to be encouragg like, who does this well on this international level that you have seen. amanda:t is funny that you shoud say that because of hard work on

right now, a project of actually ranking or quantifying members ofan congress and other have 500 profile leaders, just in politics but news media and other places to figure out like were the conflict entrepreneurs in ways that we can measure and who are then directors pretty and maybe most interesting, used to be an entrepreneur and is not anymore. so this is hard because our system incentivizes especially the national level, reallyy incentivizes entrepreneurs just like twitter does. so we have set up every incentive and no distance really at this point and again, it should be fixed and changed but we are asking people to be something different than what they're rewarded for being for many years. thank you so a great question and i'm working on it and i do have theories but i wanted to

data instead of my intuition predict. garrett: i have no shortage of examples and i would site has conflictn entrepreneurs in our modern society but the flip side of it would be really a project that i look forward to reading. in the questions here from foreign. what is the role of technology encouraging high conflict. in sort of how much of this is basically the tools that we are using it to live in the digital age. versus something that is i actually new to our society. amanda: i think that any attention of the economy is going to play 25 conflict so whether it is news media or social media, anything makes money off of seizing your

attention literally the cheapest way to do that is through fear and active nation. so that is part of the race to the bottom that we have seen in many different industries. so i think that is definitely accelerated. that said i think we focus a lot on social media which is definitely important to focus on and perform but this started way before social media and some of the most are some of the people who are most kind of captured by high conflict ined the rhetoric and in their way the sort of strange family members in the research are not on facebook and twitter. so if you look at back when you see a lot of this starting from

technology is with help printed talk radio and cable news. something is important to really has a broad net when you talk about the ways that technology has incentivize high conflict. i think it through and not just social media. garrett: another question here from elizabeth. and i will play with his little better question is, how we help kids develop the muscles to handle complexity and avoid high conflict. and i will personalize it a little bit also by saying how you parent differently now that you understand high conflict. amanda: yeah, it is tricky because i'm a teenage son and is living in the world, he's reading the news and very easy for him to slip into the

sweeping generalizations about good people and bad people and i get that. and i don't want to just be the person is always like, well you have to look at the full picture. [laughter] but i also found that if i tried to connect into his own life or our own family, that can be helpful like how do you resolve contact among your friends rated soccer game or inner family. and think about how we overly that. it sounds maybe too simplistic but actually make its quite complex to make that connection. and the thing that i do which you mentioned and do the small of my interviews is the probably think that is change must for me personally and professionally is that they view this technique moving which i described above. in the set of forms of other so when someone is telling me something that bringing any level of emotion too, can be low-level emotion. but if somebody said the mic is

upset about something happening in the world or in his life, the first thing that people want is to be heard.. like there's a time to research on this. that is what people want and they almost never get it. so once people feel heard we do this by showing them like proving beyond a doubt that you have heard them, not by just nodding and smiling but actually say it sounds like what you are saying is, you feel like is fundamentally unjust that you can't get back to school in person even though your teachers vaccinated. i making thisch flsa freighted u first acknowledged you for them and then you have to ask you got it right, denying the right like genuine curiosity. you cannot take it coming up to begin genuine and when you do do this it is amazing what it unlocks in people. even people are very different. political opinions and views and life experiences and ideas.

and they don't mistake for agreement, they don't think that i agree, once they feel like you're really trying to get them, open up in the research shows this, is a less extreme things afterwards and they acknowledge more ambivalence and complexity. and this die filed in high conflict memo open to information they don't want to hear. and often in parenting, once you have done it, the issue is over. if you don't have it's amazing, you don't have to fix it, you don't have to argue it, you don't have to make your case. you just make sure you felt hurt and everybody will move on to incredible. so incredible skill that we should absolutely be teaching kids to finally answer the question. garrett: thank you for joining us. this is such a wonderful and relevant and timely book. if you're listening and watching watching out there, you can pick amanda's book anywhere that

you my books but particularly through our partners in politics and prose in washington and use the code special tenant check for an extra discount. and want to thank the institute and i want to thank you master for sponsoring the book series and personal, thank you amanda for putting such an interesting book together about the background music of our modern times. a. amanda: thank you for having me, i enjoyed the conversation. >> weekends on "c-span2" on intellectual fees, every saturday american history documents american stories, and on sunday, book tv brings you the latest nonfiction books and authors.

"c-span2", it comes from these television companies and more including media. >> the world changes and media, was ready and internet traffic sword and we never slowed it down. businesses may virtual and we powered a new reality. media, we are built to keep you ahead. this media, come along with these television companies supports c-span to the public service. c-span job .org is c-span's online store, there's a lot of c-span products browse to see what is new in your purchase will supported nonprofit operation a short time to wear their congressional directory with contact information for members of congress and the biden administration go c-span shop .org. >> tonight we are thrilled to help with this book breaking the social media is him.

"breaking the social media prism" he's a professor and a professor of public policy at duke university. emerging fields of commutation social science features fundamental questions of social psychology, political polarization and technology using large-scale social media platforms. in-depth interviews in the latest machine learning. new york times, washington post, later under regulate lectures government business and nonprofit sector, struggling to go back polarization. his award-winning book, anti- oomuslim organizations begin in the mainstream was among the first to explain how social media has bribed political extremism in using the tools of data science. in the conversation jonathan is a social psychologist at new iayork university school of

business. he teaches phd from the university of pennsylvania from 1992 and he taught for 16 years into the department of psychology at the university of virginia. in the author of the happiness hypothesis finding modern truth in anxious wisdom and new york times bestsellers the righteous mind righteous people are divided by politics or religion. and the american mind of good intentions about ideas for setting up a generation for failure. author. sweden more than 100 academic articles in 2019 invested into the american academy of arts and sciences and chosen by prospect magazine by one of the top 50 thinkers. housekeeping us before we begin, because we will be doing an audience q&a so with that if you have any questions, you can drop them in the chat harp at them to

begin a feature at the bottom of your screen. and with that, let's move to please join me in welcoming jonathan and chris to the stage. >> okay will thank you so much and thanks for getting us through these technical difficulties. it is about 720 and a friday night here in the east coast so i told chris that i would be drinking and i invited him to have a drink. i'm trying these new alcoholic eliminates which are good and the way but they are too sweet. what are you drinking it. chris: now you're talking about a very polarizing product jon. i would not touch the stuff. [laughter] >> this is one of the finest local beers in north carolina. >> when if you open up to the camera so people can see. >> is my dirty little secret. [laughter] >> so i'm really pleased to be

doing this with you. and i can socket the audience a little bit of crab and then we hear from you about their your stories. will try to make this whole thing useful to people. fighting about things that everybody is under the about the kind of freaking out about in many cases. so chris for f the audience her, chris is setting about one of the hottest topics and biggest questions that we are all facing. which is basically what the heck is happening to us and us in social media doesn't have something to do with it printed there's something going on there. so i read some of chris's research and have been in correspondence and we had a conversation by zone printed and knew that he had this book coming up and asked me to and i read it and i loved it. something only my blurb biggest but i o think about the book mit so important.

he's done some of the best research in the polarizing effect of social media in this important accessible work shows that if you want to understand what is going on line, then do not focus on people's exposure to information rather you should keep your eye on people's quest for status and their sense of group identity read pardon me. and the book is rich with insights for anybody to use social media and its essential reading for anybody was to improve it. so chris wanted to tell us going back grad school but how is it that you came to study this topic and write this book. it's almost astu if like buyinga bit coin and tesla a year ago. it. chris: so short, the first me say thank jon for doing this. his real treat in an honor to be

here. i first got into this during a moment in history which was reimported. for the firsti time, these suppressed in party lot but rather time i started graduate school. always reached the point where between 40 and 50 democrats per the percentage in the republicans, according to some surveys are willing to use violence to achieve political and so i think that we really have reach a crisis point. and i think that you put your finger on it when you say, what is the role of social media and you know, when i set out to investigate some of the prevailing narratives on the popular ideas p about what divis us on social media, shocked to discover that there really wasn't a lot of evidence to support ideas like echo chambers and - they're all over the place not printed. exactly. in the upsetting thing or mpimportant truth that i discovered in this book i thank you so that it is really us,

social media users are driving the problem. even if wese forget platforms fr every single policy change that many of us would like to see, probably wouldn't move the needle a lot. jon: okay i hope i can push back on you later without okay we will get to that read i hope you're not letting him off the hook and not. chris: no absolutely not. it. jon: these conversations tend to be kind of scattered like a lot of things these days, people use one word and they think it means one thing but other people in the country argument because mature the water part. i think that everyone for clear about what exactly a social media. obviously there's lots of different kinds one of the kinds of matter in our polarizingan features of it, is a tiktok is rented,