at the top of the page. it is a pleasure to have the chance to talk with you >> amanda it is a pleasure to talk to you about what is a fascinating book to explore what you call the invisible hand of our time but when i was reading it almost seemed more like the background of our daily lives. and that is a challenge of what you label high conflict

and you define it as distinct and then to have a true us versus them. spending some time talking with you today or some of the markers and the concept forward? but i would just start by asking you to talk a little bit what got you interested in this particular topic? that in so many days we are living through but to be

thought about in a way that most ofut us never stop to think about and process as the stories in full. >> thank you to the aspen institute and everyone. i'm so glad to be back talking about this is an appropriate back story that yes, four years ago as a journalist i felt i had to do something that it was a so easy just to make the political worse but that there was something of an understanding of what was t going on and that's a problem. so we spent and that scale of

individuals and the study of conflict as a system. and then clicking everything else in place. and then to make everything makes sense. and those who have been through ugly conflicts getting to a better place. and the environmental activist in england and regular frustrated democrats in new york city and republicans in rural michigan. it is a good conflict.

that is encouraging and patterns of what happens so the book is how more of us can do the same. >> you talked a little bit about the context of defining this and the realm that that most naturally and those intractable divorces and to help viewers and listeners understand the framework so you talk about how this appears and high conflict as the mysterious force for people to lose their minds or

gain vendettas. i am so struck talking about just in the context spirit that is a phrase where high conflict comes from those who work in the world psychologist and lawyers refer to high conflict divorce as one which is negative exchange in a hostile environment and the conflict is the destination. it doesn't go anywhere. there's s no movement if those could be categorized as high a conflict so itit turns out there is high conflict politics, companies and people so it is a useful way to understand the special

category of conflict in which there is not progress were you are just stuck and there is a distinction between good conflict and high conflict that helps me to get out of the mindset that we either have to have bipartisan unity will be on each other's throat just like in a marriage. you don't have to get along all the time. you have to verbally or emotionally abuse each other. >> so you have a quote to help clarify for me where the president of germany to say

with that social rage and it really does seem like a part of the challenge we are wrestling with where the names change that the outrage doesn't. and i'm curious as you dove into this looking at the roots , when did america lose its mind? when did politics take over from a natural tension from policy and philosophy into something that's much more i can? >> the interesting thing is

most of the research on polarization dates back around the eighties in the aftermath and with those institutions to say that adversarial tradition so there is this adversarial us versus them mindset. and that they could reliably target the whole country fox also does good reporting that most of the time to get that niche audience and then to design a lot of the

institution to incentivize high conflict in the important thing is we can design. they are not a god we can design them and you see that in your life or have been in a church or synagogue those cultures that deal with conflict differently maybe people avoid it so top-down but that doesn't work great usually but other places where it is combustible and out of control. and then to have rituals and policies in place to make us healthier.bl just as we are high on —- hardwired for conflict still

of human history is about good conflict. >> so talk about reducing high conflict is breaking out of the binary and the idea that you cannot reduce a situation whether political or personal to the idea there are only two sides are two possible solutions. if you say institutions don't come from god then you talk about and then naturally setting up to not reduce things to political parties or political binaries so what you

saw to teach us how to do politics better. >> it's funny i didn't know anything before i started to work on it but the book was about casting a wide net. and then to be enshrined in what they do. so the concept is we are all connected. there is no us or them so the idea is to be very interdependent and the sec with a pandemic and many other things. and then the prophet mohammed believing all religions come from one spiritual force starting in the mid- 18

hundreds and spread just about everywhere 150,000 and parents in the united states small but global so essentially this is one form of politics each spring of the 17000 and gathers together so it is close to appear democracy but here is the twist. everything about these elections is designed to reduce the odds of high conflict. once you are in it it's hard to get out it's very magnetic. that the ideal is to stay out of it. so no parties allowed no

binary categories people cannot campaign for position even if they wanted. you cannot discuss the person just which qualities are most needed. and then a sober process after each person writes down the names of those of character who lead the community at that moment and then the nine winners are announced or celebrated and it is considered a duty not a victory. then once they make decisions for those conflicts that arise, they have other traditions in place to keep the ego in check but they do things like if you could pose

an idea once i propose it it soundsli small but how humans work in that binary with the high conflict. >> youou mentioned the pandemic. and then to spend some time talking about a writer for the atlantic and i wrote a piece at the start of the pandemic from the atlantic last year. continuing to chew over in my mind whether i got it terribly wrong. and i was thinking a lot about

in the context of your book. so in the first year of the pandemic way back in the beginning with the unique spirit in america. in that moment of unity and desire to work together as americans that i saw as unique moment in american history. a lot of my own history writing and thinking about the unity after 9/11 and then to feel like we were in the same moment in the beginning and middle of march last year where you thought individual americans making these choices aboutic the pandemic closing the

business when government said schools are closing ahead of the government telling us to. >> and that spirit of 2020 that america is coming together. it has felt less like a united nation in the face of the pandemic. succumbing back into the frame of high conflict a question that seems like americans got the response to the pandemic right and then politics semester that. how do youdo think about in your own high conflict range?

>> there was an opportunity so there really was a coming together covering a lot of disasters and terrorist attacks but there is a golden hour after a terrible catastrophe or doing to come together to help one another and it is an amazing experience so what has to be harnessed and sustained we saw late march of 202090 percent of americans said they believe they were all in it together up to 3 percent fall 2018.

it's hard to remember but they passed the first federal stimulus bill by the vote of 96 / zero quantitatively absolutely you were correct people are wired to sort between us and them and expand the definition of us under certain conditions and under a big shock to make us encompass the whole world overnight there is a huge opportunity in conflict to use the shocks at home or at columbia university because high conflict is the system of parts that are self-perpetuating. when you add a big shock to the system. death, violencee, it can up and temporarily those systems.

but you have to seize that opportunity at the national level. on the one hand i would say that was not seized at the national level but that variant around the world and around for the country. also the duration of this particular kind of cataclysm is important it's hard to sustain that feeling and when it goes on and on with no chance to recover and this is why for future pandemics from as psychological as well as biological point of view to really start strong with very

clear consistent messaging to try to frontload the reactions to make it shorter. it isal fundamentally too much to ask for humans. so i think both are true. it was an opportunity and a moment. but we had a pre-existing condition which is high conflict and that does not go away. so in a a hyperpolarized society so what youe see is the news media is growing relentlessly negative. there's a lot of reasons for that butnk i also think that

even when the caseload went down, you didn't see a huge change in tone and emphasis there was a study done comparing thety negativity of major us news accounts during the pandemic to international news accounts ofs the pandemic us coverage was much more negative even more than the science journals coverage. a lot of different things are happening that wayne you have this level of high conflict is difficult to seize those opportunities. >> i will shorthanded here. and those have the most

combustible people in the group or the loyalty and so i wonder if you could talk about the way you call fire starters. what are the things that cause people to be the source of. so then many people may have heard of that very quickly randolph mccoy from the big sandy river in west virginia these two families for generations have been farming the land and randolph mccoy

and it must have been stolen from his farm in the we could convince him to drop it so then toan organize a trial and then that was a great experience for him but but the problem is that hatfield and ivmccoy's and a full year and a half after the trial getting in a fight with the witness who testified against them in athe big trial and they beat the man to death so this is when he s became combusted the rosa stabbing in the supreme court case and women were b and 80 people were drawn.

so. >> one but it's been made salient by these leaders. . . . . it's thatot collective that fes

true and it's our perception so this group identity particularly when there are two, something about binary, our particular political system of a win or take all system where the two-party system is designed for high conflict based on what we know for human behavior. those oppositional groups doesn't bring out our best as humans i think is fair to say. >> one of the things i was fascinated or curious to talk to you about, what does america do the lessonsns you have laid outn the book? book? we are locked into this conflict in our politics and most of us

don't want to be there and i think that is sort of another part of your book is talking about how the conflict hollows out the middle. that's something that's consisted in politics and war zones. what advice do you have to what advice do you have to the country as we wrestle with where we are right now? collective lee thing that goes to what we were talking about is to make significant reform to the systems and make third parties possible. there's no reason we have to speak to this formula. we know from the research others have done about polarization that countries that have

multiple parties and things like representation tend to be less polarized and have less trust. it feels more fair and it is more fair which changes everything and lowers the volume. some states have already moved in this direction and others are trying actively. it's operating at an individual level and. it's operating at an individual level and. they need to change what they are doing and it's also been captured they are people,

companies, platforms who intentionally exploit conflict for their own end. it could be for profit but often i find it's for attention for a sense of meaning and come artery in the social media or news it puts distance between you and them if you want to stay out of high conflict. that's something we know is very effective and the people i follow for the book including this politician who found themselves caught in this cortex one of the things he did is to start relying on different

people, he moved away from the sort of black-and-white, good and evil and move to somebody else the saw a lot more nuanced humanity among the people he disagreed with and we have to take a more current example. he moved across town to help him get out of the conflict. when things went bad as they always do, and his cousin he was very close to who was brutally murdered, he didn't know how he had done it. he couldn't react the way that he normally would because of the distance that he had created so everything you can do to slow down conflict is very important. at the individual level and also the collective level.

>> last question before i open up to the audience you started by saying that this book grew out of basically where you saw your self in journalism and the stories you were covering and wondering where they came from and why. i wonder how this book changed the way that you do your journalism. i know it changed the way that you talk to your family because you talk about the way that you try to listen differently around the dinner table. but when you are out doing your job, how do you write differently and explain differently now that you understand this background? >> the rules of engagement for journalism and anything don't apply the same way. they just will not work and

often backfire. for me i had to develop a new set of rules and engagements. it's hard. i'm still figuring it out and working with the solutions journalism network that the trainsthe newsroom to help themo this. you have to complicate the narrative that the audience has going into a polarizing issue and that requires knowing what that narrative is and it will be different for different audiences. figuring out if it is true and using history or different locations or a broad lens to see what is happening to help your audience have a full more useful view of either of the conflict,

the other side or themselves so that is how i now try to measure success. is the story going to help illuminate anything about this conflict and if not, i am not going to do it. it's easier said than done but i think many newsrooms and editors particularly at the national level have fundamentally underestimated the desire and ability to handle complexity and i think most americans want something different than what they are getting. there is an opportunity to do journalism differently particularly in the conflict and to be useful when we are not being as useful as we think. >> did you change your mind as

the book unfolded and the research unfolded? what surprised you about your research? >> many things. i think one thing i had different conflicts in different categories. i thought polarization was a thing. i don't think that's very helpful. everything i've seen human behavior in different kinds of conflict whether it is the war or political at a fundamental level is not that different so i am trying to be less sideload and how i look at the research and storytelling. i've 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'm saying you can't be passionate or have radical ideas and i think that we need to get more nuanced and how we think about these things because you can have really radical visions and movements for social change without being in high conflict. so, some of the differences between good conflict and high conflict are telltale signs and you can see them all around you. one is there's still curiosity. there might be moments of surprise. you experience a range of emotions. in high conflict everything feels clear more than it probably is and you begin to generalize.

that lack of humility and complex that he is quite dangerous. but the most chilling part in every story that i followed is everyone involved in high conflict eventually begins to mimic the behavior of their adversary. eventually you run into the fight to stop. the politician that goes into politics to make it less inclusive made it less toxic and inclusive and there's a million examples like this. this is the warning about high conflict. if you want to change the world, this is important. are there any 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? who does this on this level that you seem? >> it's 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 the news media and other places to figure out who are the conflict entrepreneurs and may be most interesting who is not anymore. the system incentivizes especially at the national level it incentivizes just like

twitter so we have set up every incentive and again it's all fixable and changeable but we are asking people to be something different. i have some theories but i want to use some data. the example i would cite in our modern society the flip side of it would be a question here from lawrence. what is the role of technology and encouraging high conflict and sort of how much of this is basically the tool that we are using to live in the digital age

versus something that is new to our society? >> any attention economy is going to plague to the high conflict. so, whether it's news media or social media. anything that makes money off of seizing your attention. the cheapest way to do that is to fear and indignation. so, that is sort of the way to the bottom that we have seen in many different industries. so i think that is definitely accelerated. that said, we focus a lot on the social media which is important to focus on and reform, but this started way before social media and some of the most, some of

the people that are most captured by high conflict in their rhetoric and the sort of estranged family members in the research are not on facebook and twitter. so, if you look back where do you see a lot of this starting from the technology point of view it's from cable news. so to cast a broad net when we talk about the way technology has incentivized the conflict i think that is true and it is not just social media. >> another question here from elizabeth but i will play with a little bit. her question is how do we help kids develop the muscle to avoid conflict and i will personalize it a little bit also by saying

how do you parent differently now that you understand high conflict? >> it's tricky because i have a teenage son and he's living in the world and reading the news and very easy for him to slip into sort of sweeping generalizations about good people and bad people, and i get that and i don't want to just be the person like let's look at the full picture but i've also found that if i try to connect to his own life or family that can be helpful how do you and think about how would we overlay that. it sounds complicit but i think that it's quite complex to try to make that connection.

i do this and all my interviews now, this is what has changed most for me personally and professionally i do this technique and there's other forms of it out there but when someone is telling me something that they are bringing any level of emotion to the first thing people want is to be heard and they almost never get it. it sounds like what you're saying you can't go back to school in person even though your teacher is vaccinated, i'm making this up, but you first acknowledge that you heard them

and then you have to ask if you got it right, like it's a genuine curiosity. you have to be genuine. when you do this, it is amazing what it unlocks in people, even people that are different from me with political venues and life experiences once they feel heard and they don't mistake for the agreement by the way, they don't think i agree, once they feel like you are really trying to get them, they open up and the research shows they acknowledge more ambivalence and complexity but it gets stifled in the high conflict and they are more open to information they may be don't want to hear. often with parenting once you've done it, the issue is over. if you don't have to do anything else, you don't have to fix it, argue it or make the case. you just make sure and everybody

can move on. it is an incredible skill that we should absolutely be teaching kids to finally answer the question. >> thank you for such a relevant and timely book. if you are listening and watching, you can pick up a man does book anywhere that you buy books but particularly through our partners at politics and prose here in washington and use the code special ten and check out for an extra discount. i want to thank the aspen institute for sponsoring the book series and most of all amanda thank you for putting such an interesting book together about backdrop and

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