Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Conflict Is Normal. Here’s How To Keep It Healthy And Avoid Disaster. | Amanda Ripley

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

Amanda Ripley is a New York Times bestselling author, a Washington Post contributing columnist, and the co-founder of Good Conflict, a media and training company that helps people reimagine conflict. She has written three award-winning, nonfiction books about three very different subjects: High Conflict, The Smartest Kids in the World, and The Unthinkable. In this episode we talk about:The key differences between healthy conflict and high conflictFive key steps for getting out of or avoiding high conflictWhy it's a golden age for so-called conflict entrepreneurs; and how to spot them in your orbit‘Looping’ – a key technique that changed Amanda’s life (and Dan’s)How to set good boundaries while not giving up on peopleOne of the most reliable antidotes to all forms of bias, something called contact theoryThoughts on how to interact with the news and social media during a presidential electionThe very good reasons to avoid humiliating your opponent. She calls humiliation the nuclear bomb of emotionsAnd much moreRelated Episodes:Fight Right: The Science of Healthy Conflict | Drs. John and Julie GottmanHow to Repair the Damage After a Fight | Dr. Becky KennedySign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://happierapp.com/podcast/tph/amanda-ripley-843Additional Resources:thegoodconflict.comDownload the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://app.tenpercent.com/link/downloadSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey gang, how we doing? I think many of us consider conflict to be a bad thing. We want to avoid it at all costs for some of us. Today's guest really changed my mind about this. Her argument is that conflict is both inevitable and necessary and done well can even be healthy.

Of course, as we all know, it's very easy and very seductive to do conflict poorly. The term for that, according to today's guest, is high conflict. And high conflict can lead to all sorts of intractable and devastating situations. The good news is that healthy conflict is a skill. So today we're going to talk about how to practice it and how to avoid the briar patch of high conflict. My guest is Amanda Ripley who has literally written the book on the subject. Her book is called High Conflict and she has gone on to co-found a media and training company that helps people reimagine conflict.

That organization is called Good Conflict. Prior to her book on conflict, she wrote two other books, The Smartest Kids in the World and The Unthinkable. In this conversation, we talk about the key differences between healthy conflict and high conflict, five steps for getting out of or avoiding high conflict, why this is a golden age for so-called conflict entrepreneurs and how to spot them in your orbit and actually how to gauge whether you might be one in certain circumstances.

We talk about a concept called looping, which is a key technique that really changed Amanda's life and mine. How to set good boundaries while not giving up on people. One of the most reliable antidotes to all forms of bias, something called contact theory. Thoughts on how to interact with the news and social media during a presidential election. The very good reasons to avoid humiliating your opponent. She calls humiliation the nuclear bomb of emotions and much more. Amanda Ripley right after this.

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Visit audible.ca, audible.ca. Amanda Ripley, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Dan. Pleasure, I'm excited to talk to you. This is subject that hits close to home for me. So let me just start on a definitional tip. Can you describe the difference between healthy conflict and high conflict?

Sure. Yeah, so high conflict, which is sometimes called intractable or malignant conflict in the research, is the kind of conflict that escalates to a point where it's no longer about the facts. It becomes usually an us versus them conflict. It feels like there is no hope for the other person or the other side.

And our brain behaves really differently in this kind of conflict. We make a lot of mistakes. So all of our existing biases become much more pronounced. And it's sort of conflict for conflict sake, right? It's the kind of conflict that becomes a perpetual motion machine where it feeds on itself. And no one can really remember how it started, right? But it's the kind of conflict where eventually you start to mimic the behavior of your opponents. And the most diabolical part is every high conflict I've ever studied or been in, you eventually harm the thing you went into the fight to protect, whether it's your kids or your country, usually without knowing it. That's the really

heartbreaking end game of high conflict, is you destroy the thing you care most about. And healthy conflict? So healthy conflict, I feel like it's kind of a misnomer in a way. Maybe we can brainstorm a better name for it because I sometimes call it good conflict and that's okay. But basically, it's not without discomfort, healthy conflict, right? So I don't want to suggest it's like everybody's great. It's not.

Conflict is a clash, right? It is friction. And so there has to be resistance and conflict's really essential for all of us to get stronger, to challenge each other, to be challenged. Like there's no other way to live in the modern world without conflict. But the kind of conflict really matters. So healthy conflict, if you look at the research, it's really interesting. You can actually tell without even hearing the words if it's healthy conflict, if it's

two strangers or a married couple arguing about something they care a lot about. In healthy conflict or good conflict, people ask each other more questions. They experience anger, frustration, sadness, all of those things, but then flashes of curiosity, understanding, even humor, and then back to anger, frustration, sadness. So it's like a galaxy of emotions instead of just one or two. So you can see it graphically when researchers at Columbia studied more than 500 difficult conversations between strangers, you could see this movement. And I think you can feel that, right? You can feel that there's movement in a conflict. And you can also feel in high conflict that you are stuck and that you are

having the same hostile negative emotions over and over. It's almost boring, right? Because you feel like you know what's going to happen next. Whereas in good conflict, you're not quite sure. I have so much to say about all of this. Oh, good. I want to just signal to the listener that we're going to go deep on both sides of the coin here, high conflict and healthy conflict and how to get out of one and into the other. Big on operationalizable advice. So we're going to get into that. But let's just stay in the uncomfortable part of the discussion here with high conflict for a second. So you've described it as both a trap and also as something that's magnetic.

So it's not just like a trap that you can randomly fall into, it pulls you in too. Can you say a little bit more about this? Yeah, there's a lot of paradoxes, right, in high conflict. And one of them is that we want in and we want out. There's a way in which it pulls you in. There's something very appealing about high conflict, particularly in times of anxiety or uncertainty or threat. And so there's something

very magnetic about knowing for sure who the enemy is, who is good, that's your side, you or your side, knowing that you are better than, right? And having a sort of clean line between us and them. That is what psychologists call splitting. And people do it when they are afraid or uneasy. And then sometimes leaders feed into that, right? Offer them splitting as a explanation for all of their problems or ills. So it is something that is appealing and it feels good. There's an energy to high conflict, to that righteous superiority, to the sense that you are fighting on the side of all that is good in the universe. Curtis Toler, who was a fairly high ranking gang leader

and now does incredible work interrupting gang violence in Chicago for Chicago Cred, he says that he estimates that about 80% of people who are in high conflict, and now we're talking about violent conflict, want to get out, like quite desperately, if only they knew how, like they don't feel like there is a way.

And I would say that has been my experience working with people stuck in other kinds of high conflict, like members of Congress and their staff, like nonprofits who have gone to war with themselves over unionizing or other things. There is this kind of misery for most people in high conflict. It's not really why they got into politics or into journalism or whatever it is. And it is a little bit of a slow death by a thousand cuts for your soul, right? Physically, mentally, spiritually, it is very hard to live in high conflict. It's easy to visit, but to live there is very taxing.

Yeah, like I can feel it in my body as you're describing it. Because not only because- Isn't this fun? Isn't it fun to have me at parties? Yeah, exactly. Yes, by the time this comes out, what I'm about to say will be public. Although as we're recording it, it's not public.

But I've been in a nearly three-year long separation process from the meditation app that I co-founded. I'm definitely not going to characterize the mindset of my counterparties, my now former co-founders. But I know in my own mind, I lapsed in many ways into high conflict. It's just been unbelievably difficult to deal with. So when you're talking about all the downsides of high conflict, I'm just putting it through that lens, just to say.

I appreciate your sharing that. It's probably not easy to talk about and also sharing it with your own experience as opposed to assuming. That's hard to do, I think. Do you get that sense of being pulled in and also wanting to get out? Yes.

Tension, yeah. Yes. And again, I don't know if it ever became high conflict on their side. I just know that as I look at and we'll get into it, you've got some questions you can ask yourself to diagnose whether you're engaged in a high conflict in any aspect of your own life right now.

And so as I look at those questions, many of them are no, like it didn't for me get that far, but it got pretty far in my own mind. And you know, sleeplessness for example, or carrying on an argument in my own head, because one of the things you usually do in your book is talk about how there's the external aspect of high conflict, and then there's the internal aspect

of high conflict. When I'm referring to high conflict in my own experience, it's really the internal side of it that I see myself in when you describe high conflict. Yeah, and I'm glad you said that, because I think that is where we need to start always. And I resisted this for a while because I'm later to understanding meditation and mindfulness than you are. And I'm in some ways allergic to things that feel too kind of woo woo. And this might be my old school journalism persona getting in my own way,

which I think you can probably relate to. But I think I have come to realize that the only starting place with conflict is internal. If you can at least get into, try to stay in good conflict in your own head, because there's a lot we can't control outside of our heads, right? But if you can at least do that, and this is what I tell people who are really stuck in conflict that's way out of their control, right? Even civil war level conflict. If you can work every day, a lot of the practices that you talk about on the show to stay in good conflict in your own head, you will be less miserable and make fewer mistakes, sleep better at night, and you'll be able to see

when there are openings in the conflict where you could actually do something useful. They won't fix everything, right? But it'll destabilize the conflict system that you're in. You'll be able to see those. And you really can't see them when you're trapped in, and you're sort of bewitched by high conflict. Bewitched, yes. I keep thinking about Al Pacino and The Godfather III saying, I tried to get out and they sucked me back in. And it just speaks to the bewitching,

or as you say, magnetic nature of high conflict, even if it's just internal. And I wanna be clear, there's so many things that we talk about on this show that really helped me pull myself out of nosedives, not always, but maybe sometimes several weeks too late. And we'll get into that for sure, because we're going to talk about some very practical things

that we can do. But let me just stay at a higher level just for this beginning part of the conversation. Let me go to the question that I was describing earlier, which is this kind of diagnostic that we can run. How does somebody listening to this show, especially since this is coming out in the middle of the 2024 presidential election, know whether they have crossed that line between good or healthy

conflict and high conflict? Yeah, so these are like 10 ways to know. There's a few cues that at least for me have been really helpful because I can now catch myself sometimes two weeks too late, as you said, but sooner than I ever did before. There's some kind of high level cues like language to listen for, like do the people in this conflict, including you, use sweeping or grandiose or violent language to describe the conflict even if it's not violent? Are rumors or myths or conspiracy theories present? Do some people withdraw from the conflict altogether,

leading to the appearance of just two extremes, right? Does the conflict seem to have its own life, its own momentum? Those are all signs because there's, you know, high conflicts can be violent or not. They can last for decades and decades or much less. There's not just one form it can take, but one thing to pay attention to is the language you use and also the language you use in your own head, right? So I write in the book about Gary Friedman, who's an incredible conflict mediator and expert who introduced me to meditation. But he ran for office really late in his career, late in his life, thinking he could, as a conflict expert, do some good. So he ran for a local office in California. And as he put it, it took about an eighth of a second before he fell into high conflict. And one of the things that I noticed in talking to him about this was that he described his election

victory, because first he won, as an unprecedented landslide, which was an odd way to describe the results of an unpaid volunteer community election. But you see, you can hear the grandiosity in the language. He and his advisor started talking about good people and bad people. This is another sign that you're using splitting language. Another sign is that he felt like there were rumors being spread about him all the time, and maybe there were, right? But that's another sign, right? Also, the kind of flexible people in the community stopped coming to the town meetings because it had gotten so ugly. You're left with two binary extremes or it certainly feels that way, just like you see on Twitter or in politics. Any time humans get into this false binary sense that the whole world can be split in two, we make a lot of

mistakes. The conflict also seemed to have its own momentum. Everything he did to get out of the conflict made it worse. This is probably the lesson I've had to relearn over and over again myself is that in high conflict, anything you do, any intuitive thing you do to get out of the conflict, will probably make it worse. So you have to do counterintuitive things, which takes some preparation and practice. You can't just do it under stress,

that's not gonna happen. So these days days most of my time is spent doing trainings and workshops for people who are stuck or trying to not get stuck in high conflict. And most of what we do is practice the counterintuitive moves. And those are really powerful, especially today. Like we're just living in an age of conflict. And so a lot of our institutions are designed to cultivate high conflict. So that means you have to be countercultural. And that takes a little bit of practice. Just a note to the listener, we're going to get into the practices. But again, just staying at a higher altitude for a few more minutes. A couple more questions.

You referenced that we're living in an age of conflict or high conflict. What's going on in our culture that's making high conflict more of a salient feature of our lives? I think a lot of things you and your listeners already know about when it comes to the ways our news diet has become very fragmented, when it comes to the ways our news diet has become very fragmented when it comes to the ways social media really incentivizes dysfunctional conflict, right? Anonymous conflict, contempt,

politics, our winner-take-all binary system with two parties is a recipe for high conflict in many ways. And we know that countries that have proportional representation or multiple parties tend to be less polarized on average. So there's a bunch of things that are happening once, but I think that's all kind of granular. I think high level, none of us know exactly what's causing this, but my best guess is that the ambient level of anxiety and fear is such that people are splitting in a way they didn't in the past. And they're very vulnerable to people, leaders, pundits, politicians who exploit that fear and anxiety. And part of that fear and anxiety is manufactured. And part of it is the pace of change is wild. Like it's just easy for us to forget. But when the typewriter was invented, it took a century and a half for it to become like every day. So now things are changing at a speed socially, economically,

physically, all kinds of ways, spiritually, they're changing at a speed that as Christa Tippett says, mammals weren't really designed to live in that level of change. So I think that's part of it. But I'm curious if you have things you would add to that. I co-sign on everything you just said. And I would add at least one more thing, which is a lack of social interaction. I like to use the deliberately provocative and somewhat annoying term of love, a lack of love. Everything in our culture militates against social interaction. It's individualistic, which of course predates the cell phone, individualism does,

but then cell phone and social media, which we should put social in scare quotes, drive us further and further into our own little worlds, over schedule kids, making all of that even worse. We know this, it's not complex. We just know that the nervous system is girded by healthy interactions with other people and live a longer, happier, more successful life if you've got positive relationships. And you take that away, especially with a global pandemic, and the results are pretty clear.

Yeah, that's right on. And it reminds me of when you put social media, social in air quotes, it reminds me of Esther Perel talks about AI, artificial intimacy, right? So like the way we feel like we're in constant touch, we feel, but it's a kind of veneer of connection and it's very thin, but it's enough to keep us coming back, speaking of the paradox of something being magnetic and repulsive. I think that's how most of us feel about our phones, right? Like it pulls you in, you want in and you want out. So it's a very ambivalent relationship, much like with conflict. The other high level question I wanted to ask you about was, and you referenced this earlier, but what does high conflict do to the brain? Yeah, so when you are in a state of high conflict, you literally

lose your peripheral vision. Interestingly, this was also true in states of extreme duress. My first book was about human behavior and disasters. And you literally get this kind of tunnel vision. If you're in a gunfight or terrorism attack, you cannot see and some people literally lose 100% of their vision or their sense of hearing, which is wild. The same phenomenon happens in high conflict, less dramatic, right?

But you do lose peripheral vision and you start missing things. So you start missing opportunities because you're making a bunch of assumptions about the threat to the other person, the other side. The same thing happens with couples who are fighting, right? So we know that couples experience spikes in cortisol when they fight a stress hormone, right?

But so do political partisans after their candidate loses an election. Cortisol injections become recurring, which we know that cortisol impairs the immune system, degrades memory and concentration, weakens muscle tissue and bones, and accelerates the onset of disease. So it is a kind of poison,

like a low key poison that you're sipping off of when you're in this mindset. Is it ever right to engage? We're running down high conflict here. We're demonizing high conflict, but is it ever right, high conflict? Sure, I think there are times where getting in that mindset of kill or be killed can be incredibly energizing

and motivating. It can bond people together. That kind of mindset of us versus them thinking can be incredibly galvanizing. Many social movements are built on this, but you know what? Many social movements have died on this too. It's the problem because you start to demand purity. You start to demand a kind of orthodoxy in the movement. You start to imbue everything with sort of moral meaning. And then you turn on each other eventually. It's very hard to build a social movement

on an us versus them mindset and not eventually use it on yourself. So I think the times in which it's a good idea are very rare and you wouldn't wanna do it for very long. For all the reasons we've discussed. That lands for me. One of the things you say in the book is that you sometimes hate being the person

in the conversation counseling others against my conflict because you feel the pull too. And your point, I believe, is the point that you make to your interlocutors in these cases is, like, it's not about morality. It's not about our cause is just, I agree with you. It's really just about what actually works. And good conflict or healthy conflict is more likely to get us to the goal.

Yeah, I am very pragmatic at this point. But it is counter to my nature sometimes, because I'm kind of like one of those people who was a born fighter. I can get passionate about things. I used to really like to argue. I liked to make my case. And, you know, I think we all learn these habits as a kid, right, how to respond to conflict. And my way was always to kind of lean into it, not to avoid it.

And I guess what really is difficult to communicate sometimes right now is that I am not suggesting for a second that any of us avoid conflict. Those are not the options. The options are not just avoid conflict, pretend it's not there, hope it'll go away, put my head in the sand, or do what we've been doing, like go to war, counterattack, assume we understand the other side, particularly in politics, right? I'm talking about now. Those are not the only two options. So that is itself a false binary, right? And trying to communicate and find new creative ways to name this is a big challenge. But what I'm trying to say is, yes,

we need conflict. We need more conflict, but it needs to be the kind of conflict that makes us stronger. Just like when you go to the gym and lift weights, you need resistance and friction, and it's unpleasant and you don't always want to do it, right? It doesn't feel great, but you emerge from the gym stronger. And that's what good conflict does is you walk out of there feeling like you understand yourself, the other person or the world a little bit better. And I think for me, that's become a much more exciting goal than resolution or compromise or bipartisan unity. Like none of that is actually that interesting or useful. But understanding is very powerful. It lets a little light in, right? And we can see opportunities when they arise. You've done a great job of

helping us understand the number of pros and massive number of cons to high conflict. So let's get a little bit practical here. You talk about five steps for either avoiding or getting out of, which is harder, high conflict. And the first of the five steps is, and this is your term here, investigate the understory. What does that mean? Yeah, so every conflict has the thing

that it seems to be about, and then the thing it's really about, right? So think about any recurring fight that you had with a significant other or that you see in the news, immigration, guns, abortion, right? There's a surface level conflict, which is about to build a wall or not build a wall or how many people are coming in under which, but underneath that, the fuel, the engine of that conflict is the understory, the thing it's really about.

And it's usually about one of just four things. So that's the good news. It's not an infinite list. And if you can identify, I'll share what those are, but if you can start to identify what the understory is, starting with yourself in any conflict, but also with others, then it gets interesting. Because then you can actually stop having the wrong fights about the wrong thing with the wrong people and have the right fight, like the fight you most need to have. Because now you know what

you're fighting about. Those four understories that are most common are respect and recognition, care and concern, stress and overwhelm, and power and control. Underneath all of those is often fear, like a very primal fear. And that's the case with many debates about immigration, crime, other things. And this is how I got started on this path is I felt like traditional journalism was not touching the understory of the controversies that we were covering, right? It was just we were stuck covering the same old tired scripts back and forth to change slightly from week to week, but not fundamentally because we were never talking about respect, power, fear, right? Those things that are really underneath it. Yes, I'm interpolating back through my journalism career and that all sounds right. So investigate the understory, that's one.

Two is reduce the binary. Yeah, so that is like the opposite of splitting, right? Trying not to form unnecessary groups, even in your own head. I noticed in the pandemic, I would catch myself doing this. It was amazing how much it would change from week to week, or even when I would travel for work. If I was in Florida, I would have a different set of groups and binaries in my head versus in Washington, DC, where I live. But I would catch myself at first being very, for example, when my son's school shut down and it

shut down for what I consider to be quite a long time. At first, it was like we were all one. We were all on this team together, worried about this virus, trying to be supportive. And then in time, when school didn't reopen, I felt myself forming groups. It was us versus the teachers who didn't want to go back, or us versus the teachers unions and lumping people together, which is natural and not totally untrue. But here's the thing, there's a lot of complexity in there. There were teachers who were torn about whether to go back. There were teachers who were afraid for medical reasons. There were teachers who desperately wanted to go back. When you start creating those groups, you miss all of that complexity. And it's easier, right? It's easier

to know what's right and whose side to be on. But it's also harder because then you can't make any progress on the problem. You can't start to actually meet people where they are, talk in ways people can hear, understand the nuance of people's struggle. So anything you can do to avoid that splitting, even in your own head, is really, really helpful. The third is to marginalize the fire starters. And then there's a lot to say in this category. So let's start with what you mean by fire starters.

So fire starters are the four conditions that seemed to be present in every high conflict that I looked at from small time political conflict, like we talked about earlier with Gary to gang violence in Chicago to civil war in Columbia, every time these four things were present to different degrees. So they're sort of like tripwires that lead to high conflict that you want to watch out for. The first and probably most powerful is humiliation, right? When people feel like they or their group was up on high and has been publicly brought low. Evelyn Lindner, who studies conflict and war, she calls humiliation the nuclear bomb of the emotions. And it is a sure way to supersize a conflict, right?

If you humiliate someone, even if you didn't intend to, right? This is where it gets tricky. But you can see where obviously social media and other things make humiliation at scale really easy and tempting. But humiliation is a big one. Nelson Mandela says there's no one more dangerous than one who's been humiliated, even when you humiliate him rightly. So humiliation, false binaries, which we've talked about that splitting of the world into us and them.

Corruption, when you can't trust institutions or each other, whether the corruption is real or perceived doesn't matter, right? Because that's when people take conflict into their own hands, right? They take vengeance into their own hands. And then violence is much more likely. And once you get violence, you get more violence and it's very hard to interrupt, right?

The last fire starter is the presence of conflict entrepreneurs. So these are people or companies that exploit and inflame conflict for their own ends. And you can see this in all kinds of ways. And you see literally war profiteers, right? People who trade in weapons, but also every high conflict divorce, divorce lawyers will tell you there's someone on the perimeter who's kind of fueling the conflict. And as soon as it seems like they might come to an agreement, it comes right back to life. So

someone, maybe it's a lawyer, maybe it's a sister, maybe it's a boyfriend, whatever, somebody is fueling that conflict. So mediators, the good mediators out there know they have to figure out who are the conflict entrepreneurs here. And can we distance the couple from the conflict entrepreneurs or if not, can we bring them into the room and understand them better, which is again a very counterintuitive move. But it's important to at least recognize conflict entrepreneurs in your orbit and try not to be one. I have a bunch of follow up questions on these fire starters.

Let's start with conflict entrepreneurs. I have a bunch of questions about this, these fire starters. Let's start with conflict entrepreneurs. A bunch of questions about this. But let me pick up on the last thing you said. How do you know if perhaps you are being one? Yeah, you think you're trying to be supportive, but you're actually fanning the flames of something. Yeah, I mean, I every day, like, just think about this. It is very easy to be one. There's really a golden age for conflict entrepreneurs right now. There's a lot of incentives, you get a lot of attention, you get paid to be a conflict entrepreneur right now. One way to know

is if you literally feel delight at the suffering of others, if that is maybe the only thing that gives you relief. Usually hardcore career conflict entrepreneurs have some internal pain that they have not been willing or able to deal with, and they are spreading it around. So I'm talking here about people who are really doing this for years and years. Curtis Toller, who I mentioned earlier from Chicago, he witnessed and experienced a lot of violence as a kid growing up on the South Side. And he talked about how later when he would do violence to others, he would see his stepdad's face in whoever he was trying to hurt. His stepdad killed his mother. So there's a way in which that pain, if it has nowhere to go, it will start seeping out. And it is one way to find relief is to cause

other people pain and to incite and inflame conflict. That's a kind of extreme case. But I think when you are on social media piling on or delighting in some absurd or embarrassing or foolish thing as someone else said, if you seem to really get motivated by humiliation, if you frame everything as disrespectful, right? Those are all signs that we might be treading into conflict entrepreneur territory. And it's tricky, cause I don't want to demonize conflict entrepreneurs, right?

Because then we're just back to the binaries. But I will say that there are some really incredible people out there who are doing God's work when it comes to preventing violent conflict, who were themselves once conflict entrepreneurs, including Curtis, right? So just because someone is a conflict entrepreneur now doesn't mean they always will be. But that old cliche hurt people hurt is true. And the old addendum to that healed people heal is also true. I know you don't want to demonize conflict entrepreneurs. So maybe this question will help.

If I feel the temptation either online or IRL to be a shit stirrer, and I'm cloaking it under righteous indignation or just being a supportive friend or a good citizen. Why is it bad for me to engage in this kind of entrepreneurship? Yeah, I mean, I guess in the short term, it's not bad, right? There's a lot of rewards.

You can maybe, it forms a connection, right, to your friend that makes you see that you're on their side, right? There's a solidarity that comes with this. I think there's attention, there's power, there's a sense of belonging that many people are seeking quite desperately and not getting in normal social interactions. So I think in the short term, it's not necessarily bad for you. I think in the long term, we are right back in high conflict, right? This is a world in which you are going to harm the thing you care most about. And we've seen this again and again with politicians and pundits and CEOs who get into high conflict. They end up, if not burning

down their own house, then like leaving it quite charred. An extreme example would be, and it's not even that extreme because it's fairly common, adult siblings who go to war over the estate of a deceased parent and spend the entire estate down in lawyer fees. It's not that uncommon, right? So there's an example of how high conflict and this kind of perpetual inflaming of conflict eventually comes home. How do you know if you're engaged in some sort of conflict in your life, you're in the middle of a divorce or you've got a work thing going on or whatever it is,

how do you spot the conflict entrepreneur in your orbit? Yeah, it's the person who seems to come alive when things are going badly, right? Who seems to not come with compassion or accompaniment but with a kind of excitement. And sometimes this is most obvious on TV news, right? Where there are people who their best ratings and their best memories are when terrible things were happening, right? Where there are people who their best ratings and their best memories are when terrible things were happening, right? Because then they could really hold court with blame and paranoia

and fear. Fear is very powerful. But one of the interesting ways to tell if somebody is acting as a conflict entrepreneur is they start to use the other fire starters, right? So conflict entrepreneurs will frame everything as a humiliation and split the world into good and evil using the false binary, right? And describe everything as corrupt. Really nobody can be trusted if you listen to a conflict entrepreneur long enough, except for them and power, right? So I've found that once you see it, you can't unsee it. It is a helpful frame because otherwise it's very easy to just fall under the spell of conflict entrepreneurs.

You know, they can be funny. They can be charismatic. They can be compelling in many ways. Coming up, Amanda Ripley talks about the rest of her five steps for getting out of high conflict, how to avoid the siren call of humiliating your opponent, and a concept called looping, which is very similar to reflective listening, which I talk about a lot on this show. Buried in the depths of the internet is The Kill List, a cache of chilling documents

containing hundreds of names, photos, addresses and specific instructions for their murders. Kill List is a true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those whose lives were in danger. Follow Kill List on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more exhibit C true crum shows like Morbid early and ad free right now by joining Wandery Plus. I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankenbaum.

And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we're exploring the life of Marilyn Monroe. From a tough childhood growing up in foster homes, she became one of the most photographed and famous stars of the 20th century. But off camera, the real Marilyn was shrewd, vulnerable, funny, and also full of surprises.

I've just come back from Hollywood. I was reminded how omnipresent Marilyn Monroe's image still is. You can barely turn a street without seeing a billboard or an ad imitating her image. It feels like she is still with us in the most visual way imaginable. She is so important as a cultural figure.

And Marilyn Monroe is one of those people who I've seen millions of times, but wish I'd known more about. So I'm really excited to be talking about her life, her times, and her legacy with you, Afua. Follow Legacy Now wherever you get your podcasts. Or binge entire seasons early and ad free on Wondery Plus. Meditation is not just a quick fix for everyday challenges. It's a practice that can change your life.

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so you can give more to every part of your life. Go to happierapp.com and start meditating in a way that fits you. Let me go back to humiliation, just to remind listeners or reorient listeners, we're talking about, we're on, to zoom all the way out, we're talking about the five steps to either avoid or get out of high conflict. We've talked about investigating the understory, reducing the binary, and we're now digging

into the third, which is to marginalize the fire starters. And one of the most problematic fire starters, per per Amanda is humiliation, which has been called the nuclear bomb of emotions. When you're in a conflict, humiliation seems like the best possible outcome. So how do you avoid the siren call of humiliating your opponent? Yeah, right.

It feels like winning, right? Like it feels, yeah. William Urie, the negotiator, he has this great quote where he says, there's no winning a marriage. And that's something I try to remind myself of is like, we can get separated as a country. We can even get divorced, right? Let's talk about politics, but we have kids together at the end of the day. And just like in a marriage, if you go to war with your ex, who is going to suffer the most? It's always kids. It's kids who are suffering the most from our

political polarization right now. It's kids who are suffering the most from the level of fear and distrust. So noticing the cost is important. For me, I just try to remove the audience. That's like a blanket rule. If you are in a conflict with someone, try not to have an audience because it's hard to humiliate someone if there's no audience, but it's less likely. It's the public nature of it. Any great teacher who teaches adolescents will tell you, do not go to the mat on something with an adolescent if the whole class is in the room, right? Like that's a bad idea.

So you wanna have a private conversation later so that they can save face, right? So that they don't feel what teenagers need and want more than anything else is respect. And that's how they're wired. So if they feel disrespected and degraded and treated like they're nothing, sooner or later they will make you regret that decision.

There is a price to pay for that. Okay, so I think that probably is the answer. If you're engaged in a high conflict or any kind of conflict, and you're laboring under the delusion that the humiliation of your opponent is synonymous with winning. It's a Pyrrhic victory. That person is gonna go out and plot revenge indefinitely. Yes, exactly. Okay, so the fourth of the five steps to either avoid

or disentangle from high conflict is to buy time and make space. Can you say more about that? Yeah, so one of the tricks and traps of high conflict is that things start to move really quickly. And everyone I've followed who works in difficult conflict is in different ways just trying to slow the conflict down. You can feel this even when you get an argument with your kid or your partner, right? Things start to spiral and then it's very hard to interrupt that. There's different ways to do this. But one way is literally something

you just did, Dan. This is probably the best way. So I was kind of going on and on about humiliation and what to not do and blah, blah, blah. And you listen to what I said, like really listened and distilled it into your own language, and played it back for me to see if you got it right. There's different techniques. We like to teach the one called looping for understanding, which is something I learned from Gary Friedman, but it's something that is a way to show the other person

that you are trying to understand them, even if you disagree, right? And it has the secondary benefit of slowing down a conflict because it's literally pausing before you offer your response to make sure you're understanding what the other person's saying. And it sounds so simple, but I will tell you it is the thing that has fundamentally transformed how I move through the world more than anything I've learned in the past 20 years. It changes every interview I do. I use looping now, every conversation that has

any emotion in it with friends, family, anyone. It's a very helpful way to stay present and temporarily suspend your ego and try to understand the other person. And it is amazing how differently a conversation can go when you do that. Thank you. That was a great example. Like, I could feel that you were actually saying it better than I was, and I was like, yes, exactly. And that's when you know that you've looped someone, is they say, yes, exactly. Yeah, I play the little game of how many times can I provoke people to say the word exactly.

I feel the exact same way you do about this technique. It was taught to me as something called reflective listening, but it's essentially the same thing as looping. And listeners to the show have heard me yammer on about it endlessly, just to briefly draw a line under what you just said. It's so simple and yet has been one of the most transformative techniques I have ever learned. And I'm a guy who, like, goes on 10-day long silent meditation retreat.

I do lots of hardcore stuff to get better at life. And this technique, I don't wanna get into the losing game of comparing it, but it's just shocking how impactful this little technique, which involves no meditation, no nothing, can be just a circuit breaker on high conflict. Instead of waiting until the other person shuts up so I can say my thing, I'm forced to listen to them, communicate back to them

that I understand them, that relaxes their nervous system. I am no longer in a reflexive mode. I'm in a much more thoughtful, mindful mode than I can say what I need to be heard. Yes, exactly. I'm so glad to hear you say this because it's hard to explain it in ways that people will believe.

It is a game changer. I mean, I just did this with a group of a few hundred people at a public workshop that we held in Ohio with Richland Source, an incredible media company up there. We did a little looping exercise. I demonstrated it. We had some fun, and then everybody turned to a stranger and they tried looping each other. We've had good conflict.

My business partner, Helene B. and Judy Hofer, she's trained over 1,500 journalists. We've trained another 1,000 non-journalists together in looping. And the first thing you notice is that people are generally very bad at this at first. And we were too, to be clear. They so want to commiserate or offer advice

or ask a follow-up plot question before they loop, right? And it is very hard for them not to do that for a lot of people at first. And then the second thing they don't always do is check if they got it right. You know, and I definitely guilty of this. Like I'll be like, I see. So you felt betrayed by the government.

And I feel like I'm so proud of myself for like summarizing everything they said that I never say, is that right? But the beauty of checking, even if you just do it with your voice, right? So you felt betrayed by the government, right? Or something like that. Some doubt, humility, openness that I might be wrong.

It is amazing what that does because then people feel like, okay, I'm not sure that's quite right, but I'm going to keep trying. This person's trying. And that is something people almost never feel. People almost never feel like they're understood or like anyone's even trying. And it is a fundamental human desire. And if you can give that to people, it's like walking around and handing out cupcakes all day.

You're just guaranteed to be a good vibe machine. So true. That cupcake thing is not actually random. A buddy of mine has his wife actually would go into the office with homemade cupcakes and just hand them out all day. And so I've never forgotten that. Yeah. And it's like the least you could do. Like now when I interview people for a story I'm writing, it's transactional. We interview a bunch of people, a lot of it we don't use. Maybe we don't use what they wanted us to use. Maybe we don't get it quite right. There's just misunderstandings and neglect all through the system. And so now it's like, okay, well, if I can at least loop this person, even academics, if it's not even emotional, I'm just interviewing them about their research. Do you know how grateful they are that someone's trying to understand them? And even if I don't

quote them, at least I've given them that cupcake, right? Like that mini bite-sized cupcake. And that's not a small thing. Okay. We've worked through four of the five steps to avoid or disentangle from high conflict. The fifth is complicate the narrative. or disentangle from high conflict. The fifth is complicate the narrative. Say more. Yeah. So this comes out of something I learned when I was specifically writing about how journalists could cover conflict better based on what mediators and other conflict experts know. And that's that in an age of high conflict, simplicity becomes cliche, right? It's different than in a sort of normal time where typically we want things to be simplified for us so that they're understandable, right?

We want stories to be simple. But in a time of conflict, a runaway conflict like we're in, you really wanna be suspicious of simple stories, as the economist Tyler Cohen once said. Like it's simplicity blinds us to what's going on and it deadens us to curiosity and questions. There are things that are not complicated in this world.

I don't mean to suggest, oh, everything's complicated and we should equivocate over everything. No, there are things that are simple. There are things that are wrong. There are things that are awful. But people are complicated. That's the thing. It's very hard to find a person who is not at all complicated. So you want to be asking different questions of other people in conflict and also of yourself. So we crowdsourced a bunch of questions

from journalists all over the world and some of our favorite ones to ask to try to complicate the narratives in our own heads and other people's heads are literally, what is oversimplified about this conflict? Where do you feel torn? What's the question nobody's asking? What do you want the other side to understand about you? These are the kinds of questions

and we have a bunch of them, 15 questions to ask in conflict that you can download for free on our website, that just open us up a little bit and get us off of our normal talk tracks. And that's just one way to complicate the narrative and inject a little curiosity where there was none. How common is it for people to actually pull themselves out of high conflict? You talk about a few stories in your book and you've referenced them here,

but in the wild, does that really happen much? I think it's impossible to do alone. So Curtis Toller, when he left gang violence, the gang conflict, as he said, you can't replace something with nothing. Like you need another identity. And so usually when people leave high conflict, whether it's violent or not,

it's usually because there's been some, whether it's violent or not, it's usually because there's been some kind of shock to the conflict system, something that has temporarily interrupted the conflict, whether it's a snowstorm or in the case of a high conflict divorce, a sick child, right? Or gang violence, someone gets shot and no one visits him at the hospital. That's a moment where the plates are spinning in the air after the January 6th insurrection was a great opportunity to interrupt the conflict. But you're waiting for these moments and then seizing them. And I think that's

something that it's easy to think, oh, I'm just supposed to wait until there's a snowstorm and then we can stop this conflict. But you really want to be preparing for that shock way in advance. Because if you don't prepare, then people have nowhere to go. So I would say most people who try to leave high conflict end up going back to it because they have nowhere to go. When they do leave, it's usually because of their kids or their family. So I would say that's the most common pattern I saw in people voluntarily leaving high conflict because they didn't want their kids to have to live this way.

You see the cost of the conflict on themselves and the people they love. There needs to be a path out. So what I'm always trying to encourage people to do is to not sever ties with people you care about, like in your family, disagree with you on politics or other things. They're going to need somewhere to go, as are you, if you ever decide this isn't working for you, right? So it's not going to work for everyone. Not everyone should stay in relationship with everyone, obviously. But if you can stay

in relationship, you should. This is an interesting, and I think we may want to pause here for a while, because I suspect some people listening to this are thinking, yeah, don't I need to draw boundaries? But you, Amanda, are telling us you haven't used these words, but I believe you have used these words, never give up on anyone. How do we balance these two imperatives to stay connected because we have kids together and also to draw boundaries because this relationship

is manifestly unhealthy for me? Yeah, I mean, I think you can have both, right? Like you can have guardrails and you can prepare for those conversations really carefully, which you should, and you can have limits. These are gonna be small doses conversations, right? And there's gonna be rules of engagement

that ideally you work on with the other person in advance. So you don't just go expose yourself 100% to whatever is going on here, but you're still in relationship, right? So there's still a tie. One way to do this, and this is what Curtis has taught me, is to issue the invitation. You actually have to be transparent about it, to say, you know what, I know we've had this fights in the past over politics and I kind of

hate it. I don't like feeling this distance between us. I don't like giving all this power to politicians we don't even know. And I just wonder if you would be interested in doing these conversations differently. So you're literally issuing the invitation. And you might have to issue the invitation multiple times, but what we found is that just issuing the invitation slows down the conflict, right? And signals 10% vulnerability, which is good, right?

Like a little bit of vulnerability, like I'm losing sleep over this. I don't like the person I am when I'm in this mindset. And I'm wondering if you feel that way too, right? When you do this, you don't know what the other person is gonna say or do, right? But it is good conflict in your own head, at the very least, right?

You're issuing the invitation. I don't think we should underestimate the benefit of good conflict in your own head. I'll tell you one piece of advice, and I've talked about this publicly, one piece of advice that I got from my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, who was a consigliere. That's probably not the right term because usually in mob movies, consigliaries are like your wartime advisor and Joseph is not warlike at all. But he was an advisor and friend for me and he's played that role for 15 years, but in particular during these last couple of years when I've been in this separation process

from what used to be the meditation app that I co-founded. He one night when I was talking to him on the phone, gave me a pair of mantras to use when I was getting into high conflict in my own head. And again, some listeners will have heard me say this before, but I think it bears repeating because I have to repeat it to myself all the time. The first is dead end. As he said, you've thought about this enough.

And this isn't compartmentalization. If you change the channel on this talk track, this inner conversation that you're having with yourself or with your co-founders or whatever, that's, it's no longer denial or compartmentalization. You've been having this in your head for years. It's a dead end. There's nothing more to be gained.

And so that's very helpful. And the second one was love no matter what, which again doesn't mean the Buddhist understanding of love. It's not like you have to invite the other person over for dinner. It's not like you're approving of their behavior, but it's basically just understanding. And I know that's a key word for you, understanding. They have reasons for what they're doing,

even if you don't agree with them. And if you came out of that womb, those reasons would make perfect sense to you. And you'd probably be doing the exact same thing. Or as Joseph says, everybody's just acting out their stuff. And so I found this double-barreled approach to be very useful for me. I say all that just to get your reaction.

I love those. I feel like we should create a collection of mantras for people who are in, or trying to get out of high conflict or stay out of high conflict. I especially love dead end, cause it's so short. It's like easy for me to remember.

Cause you're under stress, right? When you need these things. So you're not going to be doing a lot of higher thinking and love no matter what I feel like I could aspire to. I don't know if I'm there yet, but I'm going to aspire to it. I feel like that's right. But one of my favorites that the Zen Buddhist teacher and poet Norman Fisher told me about is this what he says before he goes in to talk about politics with his cousins who he disagrees with. But he actually is quite good at this. His mantra is, we are all going to die one day. Right? Just to remember, everyone in this room is going to be dead. So relax. This is not the end, but there will be an end,

and no one will be spared. So kind of puts you all on the same team, which is part of what I guess we're trying to get to here. Yeah, I like that. It's the great equalizer death. I just want to make clear, it's not like I, the love no matter what thing is aspirational for me too. It's just like prodding the mind in the right direction. Right, it's like a ping distant in your brain. Remember this. It's a North Star.

Yeah, exactly. But I am curious, like when you think about this struggle, stay in good conflict to avoid high conflict for yourself and these mantras and all of your practices, I think I'm imagining have been helpful. Have you ever noticed like, it always feels unique. This is not like all the stuff we talk about on the show, right?

I know for me, I'm like, well, this is different. And that's also becomes like something I notice when I'm doing that, when I'm like, well, this is different. And that's also becomes like something I notice when I'm doing that, when I'm like sort of justifying in my head while like why this is different. That's maybe a moment to pause. I don't know. A million percent, absolutely. That is, I think, that's certainly a fallacy

that I can see having surfaced in my own mind. Yeah, it's amazing how creatively our brain will work to justify, right, this kind of thinking. And when it hurts, when we went over those understories, like respect and recognition, power and control, care and concern, and stress and overwhelm, did any of those particularly resonate for you or is there one we're missing?

No, no, no. And again, I'm just characterizing my own mindset because I wouldn't do that for my co-founders who I just, I've said this publicly and I'll restate it. I know them to be people who are well-intentioned, high integrity. So I'm only going to speak about myself, but I would say respect and recognition probably for my understory. Right. That's the thing. And sometimes it's probably other things, but like that's the kind of root conflict internally. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think so. Maybe some power and control, but I guess it depends how you define power, but I don't actually really love having power per se. Now I'm the CEO of my own thing and I like, I don't really love that. I like a more collaborative approach. Even though I have been accused correctly in the past

of having a sort of hierarchical approach to things. I picked up some bad habits, having spent 30 years in television news, which is not often the most enlightened place, although it's getting better behind the scenes. And so I think I brought some of those bad habits into my other parts of my career. Having said that, like for me,

there are aspects of power and control that played a part in this situation, but for me, it wasn't really the driver. It's not the most salient of the different, yeah. Like I've often told journalist friends, like there should be a respect and recognition beat at every news outlet. It doesn't solve anything, but it is helpful to notice it.

Do you know what I mean? To notice that's what this is really about. So that at least we can let other things go, right? I was talking to a politician, a member of Congress who was having a conflict with someone from the other political party. And they just seemed like they were like dug in on something that didn't make sense.

Like it was not in their something that didn't make sense. Like it was not in their interest to be opposing this initiative. And so she started thinking like, what is the understory here of this conflict? Right? And she went through the list and she thought, I wonder if they feel humiliated, even though I cannot think of a single goddamn reason they should feel humiliated. I wonder if that's it." And so she asked this other politician to have lunch and they did. And sure enough, this other politician felt like they'd been disrespected. No one had consulted them on something that they felt that they were an expert in and it was festering. And so she just apologized and restored that sense

of respect and recognition in a genuine way. And then they closed the deal and got something done, right? For the people who they are supposed to serve. And so often we will end up stuck in never ending silly conflict that feels like mystifying. Like, why are they doing this? Coming up, Amanda talks about one of the most proven antidotes to all forms of prejudice, something called contact theory, and we talk about some advice for

interacting with the news and with social media during a presidential election. presidential election. gorgeous Davey in a bar. Think less holiday romance, more recruitment for a drug cartel. She agreed to team up with another young Brit, fly to Spain to collect a drugs package, then head straight back. However, only at 30,000 feet does Michaela realize she's not on the way to Spain. She's heading for Peru.

And when they get there, they find out it's not a small drugs package, but 11 kilograms of cocaine. The summer holiday turns into a spell in a Peruvian prison and a story that becomes an international media sensation. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and ad free on Wondry Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app. I'm Matt Lewis, host of the Echoes of History podcast where every week we'll be delving into the real life history that inspires the locations, characters and storylines of the legendary Assassin's Creed game series. Join us as we explore the streets of a Viking colony, scale sand dunes in the shadow of

the Sphinx, witness world-changing revolutions, and come face to face with history's most significant individuals. So, whether you love history, games, or just a good story, Echoes of History has something for you. Make sure to catch every episode by following Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by HistoryHit, wherever you get your podcasts. My plan going into this conversation was to talk about how to get out of and or avoid high conflict and then to talk about the skills that are involved in good conflict or healthy conflict. You've actually covered many of those skills organically within the conversation. We talked about looping.

We talked about focusing on understanding as opposed to agreement or finding some sort of solution. Or persuasion, right. In the book, you talk about something called the contact theory. Can you say a little bit more about that? Yeah, so contact theory is just basically the commonsensical idea that if you put people who are very different together and under the right conditions, they will be less prejudiced towards each other and other people like them afterward.

This sounds kind of obvious, but it's not. It's been studied. I think there's been 500 different experiments studying contact theory all around the world. So it's like very well studied. Basically, what we know is just the way humans are wired to be social creatures. When you put them in a room together and have equal footing, this is important, right? You can't have a huge hierarchy in the room. You create some kind of shared identity, ideally, like something they're working on together, a problem they both care about, and they have a meaningful encounter, then they do tend to be less contemptuous and biased towards each other and people like each other afterward. And in fact, it's the most proven antidote to all forms of prejudice, including racism. Like there's not

another great way, which people don't like to hear, right? This is what the evidence shows, that this is the way. You can't just do it in a haphazard way. You don't want to just throw a bunch of Israelis and Palestinians together and send them to summer camp. That isn't necessarily what this should look like. It needs to be thoughtful and there needs to be a lot of effort put into the power dynamics before, during, and after. But this is the way to help us get along with each other. And the good news is you can also experience it vicariously. So when people hear someone on your show that's very different from them, right? If they feel you connecting to that person and they start to understand that person a

little bit better, they will experience vicarious contact theory and they can therefore, they don't literally have to be in the room with everyone all the time, right, which would be unrealistic. But this is where storytelling and journalism and media is so powerful is that we can help people experience that vicarious contact theory. Couple of other helpful tips. rhythmic breathing. Yeah, it's funny. This comes up in like, different ways in every book I've written. But when

I was hanging out with special operators who were like Navy SEALs and Army Rangers for my first book, they would use what they called combat breathing, right? Which is there's a million forms as you know better than I, but often it would be the sort of box breathing where you breathe in for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. But the same is true for the same exact reason in conflict, right? It is the best known way to consciously calm our nervous system is through our breath. So the trick then is to obviously practice it, do it all the time, anytime you feel stressed so that you can do it automatically in real life under stress. Another recommendation is distraction.

Yeah, it's funny, it sounds so small, but I'm starting to think distraction is a very powerful force. I'll give you an example. I have one child and he just left for college. So my husband and I are sort of wandering around the house, wondering what to do with ourselves. A friend of mine, her child also left for college.

And so in advance of this, she decided that we all needed to do with ourselves. A friend of mine, her child also left for college. And so in advance of this, she decided that we all needed to do a triathlon at the end of September, group of us, all women, all of whom have kids leaving for college. And her idea was that this would create a distraction. She is right, like 100%. This morning I was at the track with them and we were sprinting and it was terrible and wonderful. And you know what I wasn't doing? Wandering around my house feeling sad for that hour. So yeah, intentionally focusing your brain on something else in the midst of conflict can be really powerful. It's a way to slow down the conflict. Curtis, the gang violence interrupter, he sometimes imagines the young men he works with as they looked when they were little kids, toddlers. And he tries to literally talk to them, not as if they're toddlers, but with that kind of

vision in his mind. Another woman who does a lot of difficult conversations with strangers, if she finds herself reacting to someone, she will look for something about maybe it's their pink shirt, a flower in their beret or I don't know what it is but just some small thing or the fact that they're wearing high top tennis shoes whatever like sneakers. Just distract your brain from the threat signal that may not be appropriate to the moment. A few other questions and this is these are related to the current election season and just to say to people who are listening in the future,

these are relevant anytime, but I think particularly relevant at the moment in which we're recording this and releasing it. What's your advice in the middle of a presidential campaign about how to interact with social media? Well, the obvious answer that comes to mind is to not interact with social media, but I'm not sure that's the right answer. To the degree I can, I'll just speak for myself, I try to interact on social

media with things that help me stay in good conflict as opposed to high conflict. And you can feel it when you start slipping. So certain platforms I think are better at that than others. I don't use X these days, not just for that reason, but just felt like while there was a lot of great interactions I had and a lot of things I learned that I really miss from X, it also just didn't seem set up for healthy conflict, right? Whereas I find on Instagram, there is healthy conflict or at least healthy distraction. There's a lot of distraction on Instagram and that is its own beast, right? But depending on your feed and what you're encouraging the algorithm to serve you can be more energizing than draining. And just noticing your

fear response. I think that's important is to when you're scrolling your phone or reading the news, noticing when you start to, I mean, you're good at this, but like, I think for most of us, we have to sort of notice, get better at noticing when our heart rate starts to go up and when we start feeling that fear response. And it's gonna be different times on different days, which I think is surprising to me, but it depends on what else is going on in your life, right?

But as soon as I feel that, I'm trying to just put the phone down now. It just doesn't serve me. So I don't know. What is your answer to that question? Because I've been a journalist for a long time, I've never really engaged in warfare on social media. So I've never gotten into fights with people I don't know

because I wasn't really allowed to. I was a journalist. I wasn't supposed to be expressing my opinions per se. So I never had that habit. I would say avoiding that seems like a good idea. Generally speaking, the social media I actually use the most is TikTok, which makes me sound like a 15 year old boy, but- Actually I think it's a 15 year old girl.

Or girl, yes. Or anywhere in the middle. Yeah. It's that I find it entertaining. I've taught the algorithm to just feed me animal videos and the middle. Yeah. It's that I find it entertaining. I've taught the algorithm to just feed me animal videos and comedy clips. Yeah. And so I don't, it's not polarizing at all.

It's a 15 minute break. And I know TikTok has been described as digital fentanyl and it's totally addictive, but maybe this is because I'm old or because I have a mindfulness practice, but I noticed like after a little while, like I'm done with it anyway. So. Yeah, the attraction fades. But if I noticed like after a little while, like I'm done with it anyway. So yeah, the the

attraction fades. Yeah. But if I need a break during the day, five, 10 minutes of that is pretty reliable. It's not social at all. I do find that if I look at Instagram too much, that will make me unhappy. It's not positive distraction. It's mostly like a FOMO inflammation mechanism. But if I'm looking at just funny clips that I like, yeah, I mean, there's, there's a lot of good content out there that does make you feel good feelings, you know, very quickly.

So I think it's maybe it's more of a distraction. Maybe they should call it distraction media instead of social media. So what about traditional news media, or just news at all, whether it's coming from traditional outlets or influencers or whatever. I know you've written about how you have really reduced your news intake and talked a lot about how the news business should rethink itself in order to meet people's needs. But I want to ask the question from the other side, from the consumer standpoint, what do

you recommend for those of us who want to stay informed without losing our damn minds? Right. Yeah, well, I can tell you what I've come to because yeah, I did start to realize I used to consume a lot of news content and I enjoyed it. I felt like energized. I felt curious, you know, more curious after I read three newspapers than before.

And at some point that sort of flipped for me and it became really draining. Like I was less curious, not more. And lots of reasons, potential theories, some of which are my stuff and some of which are the way the world and journalism has changed. But whatever the case, what I've come to as a working everyday practice is that I definitely don't start my day with news, just like I'm trying not to start my day with email. Like things that really amp up your nervous system in a negative way, you don't want to do like first thing, right? I push it towards the end of the day when I've already sort of lost all hope, so it's fine. Like there's nothing I can read. And so I'm not squandering that energy early in the day.

And I will now try to really stop myself and read stories that are actually encouraging of some progress that's being made in the world. Cause I've noticed that my brain will skip those stories and go to the next threatening story. So I'm trying to kind of interrupt that. I found a few new sources, thousands of readers have reached out with their own suggestions, which has been really helpful. Believe it or not, The Christian Science Monitor is a great weekly magazine to read that this is built into their DNA. Like they are all about covering news rigorously all around the world in a clear-eyed way, but doing it with an eye out for hope and dignity, which is unusual, right?

But it's not actually a religious news outlet, even though it sounds that way and has a connection to the church. I mean, I just suggest people check it out because I do find that. I will bring that with me and read it. I actually get the print edition of that and I will read it at lunch. And I do emerge feeling more informed, but also a little more hopeful, a little more engaged with the world. And so that is great. And there's others, but I think generally trying to find news outlets where you feel like they are rooting for humanity, it's not obvious, right? But it's subtle, you sense it. Is this news outlet rooting for humanity or not? Are they delighting in suffering even if they're not seeing it that way, it's not intentional?

There's just subtle cues that you can pick up on. And to me that matters a lot now. Like you and I both know that what is decided to be news is arbitrary and it's not actually the whole picture by a long shot. So trying to find ways to get a bigger picture and widen the aperture on the world is a struggle. And I hope one day there'll be more options, but that's where I'm at right now. Hmm. This has been such a great conversation. I know we went into it thinking we might be able

to talk about your prior book, Unthinkable, which is about who survives disasters and why, but conflict sucked us in as it's want. Before I let you go though, can you just tell everybody where they can find out more about you, your website, remind us of your books, anything you've put out into the world

that you think people might benefit from. AmandaRipley.com is where you can find info on all my books and my writing. And for all the conflict stuff that we talked about, thegoodconflict.com has a bunch of free downloadable resources that I mentioned, the questions to ask in conflict, looping, cheat sheet, a bunch of things that might be useful to people who are struggling. And we actually are very excited because we have our first digital course that is launching this fall and we'll teach looping and investigating the

understory and all those things. And you can take that at your own pace. So we're thrilled to be launching that very soon. Thanks for asking. Congratulations, that's awesome. All right, Amanda, thank you very much. Thanks for having me, Dan, I really enjoyed it. Pleasure. Thanks again to Amanda Ripley. Don't forget to check out her book, High Conflict.

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