The One Thing That Makes Difficult Conversations Easier

The silence in the room didn't feel scary. It felt almost warm and welcoming because I knew that people were listening with intention. The more vulnerable the storyteller was, the better an audience member or listener can empathize with them. We've gotten to the place where we see the other as an enemy and stories help to bring the full dimension of the human being back into the room. Hey, it's Julie and this is Top of Mind where we tackle tough topics with nuance and an open mind. We're out to become better citizens, kinder neighbors and more effective advocates. Empathy gets tossed around so often these days, incorporate and self-help speak. It's begun to feel to me anyway like an empty buzzword. We demand it of our politicians, our partners, our managers, our friends. Empathy is important, of course. Societies don't hold together very well without the ability to share, understand and care about other people's experiences. But the term empathy feels to me like it's become more of a catch-all for condemning anybody who doesn't care enough about what we care about. And when we say someone lacks empathy, it is a real insult. Instead of saying we disagree with their priorities or their behavior, we declare them lacking a key piece of wiring that makes care and connection possible. We're saying they've got a defect that makes them less human in a way. But I have recently learned about some science that has opened up a whole new way of thinking about empathy for me, about what it is, what we get wrong about it, and most importantly, how we can have more of it. The way that I think about empathy is a lot of this boils down to prediction. Me trying to predict what is in your mind or in your heart, what you're feeling, what you're thinking. Garrett Cardin is a professor at the WIU. Professor in the Communication Disorders Department. He studies autism. Right now, all of our research is really focused on trying to understand the connection between autistic and neurotypical people and how to overcome this thing that we call the double empathy problem. The double empathy problem. Yeah, so autistic people and neurotypical people often don't connect very well. And for years and years and years, this was attributed to a deficit in empathy on the part of autistic people. But more recent research and theorizing is challenging that idea and showing that autistic people actually empathize very well, especially with other autistic people. And neurotypical people tend to empathize very well with other neurotypical people. But when you mix the two neurotypes, if I can use that word, in the same interaction, we have a mixed neurotype interaction, that's where you see a gap in empathy. The more similar you and I are, the easier it is for me to predict what you might be thinking or feeling. That makes total sense. I grew up in the same place. If you're the same gender, if you're the same age, the same, I don't know, race or lifestyle, right? Like it's just going to be easier for me to channel your perspective. Exactly. And the opposite is also true, right? The further apart our minds are maybe, we call it our cognitive environment. Okay, so it's like you and I, everybody, all humans take in sensory information, we allocate our attention in different ways. Like, you know, you might, if we're in a room, or if we're looking at a piece of art or something like that, you might look at one thing and I might look at another. We also feel we have these emotions. So all of that combined makes up a cognitive environment. The closer our cognitive environments are to each other, the easier it is for me to predict and vice versa. And the further our cognitive environments are from each other, the harder it is for me to predict what you might be thinking and feeling. So the double empathy problem, does that only apply to neurotypical and autistic people? I don't think so. I think it applies to any two people or any two groups that have a hard time seeing each other's minds, for example. So a weird way to say that, but that's kind of how I see it. Like, this being able to see or experience the cognitive environment of the mind of another person in my mind is a big part of empathy. How do you get two minds that naturally have a hard time seeing each other to see each other? Guys, this is a, this isn't an effect that is the first of its kind. On a winter morning in early 2025, in a large meeting room on campus at BYU, Garrett Carden and a team of students, set out to see if they could solve the double empathy problem with a surprisingly simple intervention. Storytelling. So there's really good data to show that when we read or listen to or watch a story, even fictional, we empathize with the characters. Right? Like, how many times have you cried in a movie or been reading a book and laughed out loud or whatever? Like, we empathize with the characters. So it follows that if the story is autobiographical, that we might empathize really well with the storyteller themselves. So I came across this opportunity to put on an autistic story telling event where we would have five autistic people stand on stage and tell their stories from their lives to a live audience. The audience of 80 or so people would fill out a survey before the storytelling started so that Carden's team could get a small peak inside their minds, their level of autistic traits, how they process sensory information and emotion and how connected or warm they felt toward autistic people. So, I think without further ado, I'm going to kind of get out of the way. But I'm going to put the QR code and put on some soft music while we kind of make the last preparations. We'll spend about 10 minutes doing that. Okay, and then we'll get to the core. In addition, we invited three of the audience members, two neurotypical and one autistic person, to wear these brain scanning headbands. They use a technology called functional near infrared spectroscopy or F-nears. The F-nears shoots light into the brain but it's not invasive. There are no probes poking into the head in case that's what you're thinking. And based on the amount of light that comes back out, we can tell how much blood flow is happening in those parts of the brain. So, Cardin says there's not one empathy center in the brain but there are a few places where empathy type stuff happens. The prefrontal cordisies, okay, so the very front of your brain, almost right above sort of the bridge of your nose. And then he says, back behind your right ear. There's an area called the temporal parietal junction. That seems to be related to certain bits of empathy. And kind of throughout the whole brain are what's called mirror neurons. The idea is that when you do an action, these neurons are activated. And when you see a person doing that same action, these neurons are also activated. Okay. Like how seeing somebody yawn makes you yawn. So, to supplement the survey responses that they're collecting from the audience before and after the stories, Cardin's team has strapped sensors on the heads of three audience members. They look like sweat bands with wires snaking down into backpacks that beam brain activity data to a laptop in the back of the room, operated by a guy in a tie-died sweatshirt. My name is Jacob Hatcher. I am an undergrad at BYU and I work in the Neural Inquistics Laboratory with FNERS. And so we are able to do it simultaneously, record from all devices at the same time, and see live feeds of their brain activity. And the team is looking to see if the brain activity of those audience members syncs up with the storyteller on stage, who's also wearing a headband. So we're seeing here what's yellow, we're staying completely stable, and what's green, we're getting less blood overall over time, and when it turns more red, more blood over time. And by pairing that brain activity data with the survey answers, the team hopes to learn if sharing personal stories solves the double empathy problem between autistic and non-autistic individuals. And I have to tell you a dirty little secret. Garrett, Carden again. One of our storytellers did not show up on the day of the event. And we scrambled. We were like, we need to fill up the time, and we promised five storytellers, so what are we going to do? So in this particular case, one of our neurotypical storytelling workshop facilitators, who had developed their own story, but who's neurotypical stood up and told one of the stories. But that actually introduced a really, really interesting element to the study, because then we had four autistic storytellers and one neurotypical storyteller. And that gave us the ability to do same neurotype matchups and cross-neurotype matchups. Interesting. And afforded us the ability to really test the effects of the double empathy problem. Well, that was a lucky mishap then. I kind of think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm kind of disappointed that I didn't think of it myself beforehand. The first storyteller to take the microphone on stage is Zanza. She talks about being underestimated because of her autism. confidence in her own abilities. I'm sitting in a car with my sister, my mom, and my brother, who's just a little bit younger than us. It's my twin sister. They're talking about college. They kind of both have a lot of ideas about what they're going to do. But I don't feel like I have any talents to speak of, or at least if I have any, my twin is a whole lot better at than I am. So, you know, it's hard to find a point. Eventually, my mom finds a break in the silence and decides to give her opinion as she always does. She turns around and goes, "Well, it's okay, you don't need to worry about college because you're never going to accomplish anything. Only your siblings will." I feel devastated. Next storyteller is Julie. "Well, this is a lot more people than I thought." She talks about being diagnosed with autism as an adult and learning to advocate for herself. I attended a family event. I wore my earplugs. I contacted my extended family ahead of time and told them they were not allowed to touch me without asking. Even for a hug. I told my parents that if I got overwhelmed, I would go sit in the car and I wouldn't tell them I would just leave. I also brought my fidget ring for emotional regulation. And for the first time that I can ever remember, I actually enjoyed my family. I learned a lot about myself. But the first and most important thing I've learned about me is that as I advocate for myself, I can help others advocate do the same. As a result, we can create a more accommodating world for everyone. Benjamin gets up next. He talks about failing the driver license test and struggling to feel independent. Now, I'm 18 and after two years of trying to get my license, I don't have a license. One thing that does make me feel really independent is camping. I mean spontaneous, leave from my house. Everything I need in my pack, you know, super self-sufficient. He launches into a story about roping a buddy into an ill-fated, last-minute camping trip. But there's snow on the trail because in all my spontaneity, I forgot his winter. You know, we go another mile and the snow gets deeper. It's up to our hips. So we decide to turn around. I feel silly that I have to call my twin sister to come pick us up in the gold mini van that she can drive and that I can't drive. And yeah, she takes us to talk about one of my favorite places to help us cope with the loss. She often takes me there because of addition, not being able to drive, I also cannot cook. He meanders through a few more anecdotes that keep the audience laughing. He talks about starting a line of quirky t-shirts and lands on an optimistic note. I have amazing creative gifts and because of my autism, I'm uniquely capable and noticing trends and other patterns and people love my t-shirts. Well, I can't do stick shift. I do have skills that I can leverage to succeed in the future. The audience applauds enthusiastically, but silently with jazz hands as they have been instructed and then it's Emma's turn. I hate diet cook. Now, Emma is the happy accident in the experiment. She's the neurotypical teller filling in at the last minute. And she talks about learning to cope with a rare disease that affects her diet. It essentially means that I'm sugar intolerant. Now, this is not just like, oh no, I can't have brownies or cookies. Sugar is in everything. So I can't have fruits or vegetables. I max out at about five baby carrots. Okay, that's how much sugar I can have. I lost a bunch of energy because malnutrition is the worst. I couldn't drive late at night because I would fall asleep if it was too late. And one morning, as I looked at myself in the mirror, I realized that it wasn't just the sugar intolerance that was causing my problems. It was my lack of ability to advocate for myself, to take care of myself. There were things that I could be doing and probably should be doing, but wasn't, because I was letting this new diagnosis beat me up. The final story of the day comes from another autistic teller, Natalie. She talks about food too. I have arphid, which is avoidant restrictive food intake disorder. For me, it means I have a hard time with textures of foods and I've had it my whole life. She describes how going to a residential treatment program for disordered eating helped her. I am more tolerant of a lot of foods after residential, but I still have a hard time with it. And kind of the culminating thing that I had recently that kind of made me proud about connecting with people. I was invited to a UVU event where there was food. Before I, UVU is another university in town. And I show up and I'm like, "There has to be something I like, right? There's something there wasn't, except bread. I love bread. They had rolls. So I got this roll. I was so excited. I picked it up, but it was covered in flowers. I merely dropped it. Why would they cover bread and flour? I don't know. The texture was horrible. I got all of my hands, not a fan. But I was still able to connect with other people. I had a great time. I didn't eat there. The bread sat awkwardly on a plate. But I just had a great time just talking with people. And I can connect with people outside of food. So thanks. After one more round of jazz hand applause, the audience takes the final survey. The F-nears headbands are put away and the event ends. Fast forward a year and a half. The results are in. And Garrett Carden has come to our podcast studio to share them. It's hot off the presses. And it's not published yet. So I'll say that. But we're anxious to get these data out there so that people can use them and benefit from them. And I can show you a picture here. He grabs his laptop to show me some charts of the results. We think that our evidence overall is suggestive of the fact that the stories worked in facilitating empathy between the audience members and storytellers. Okay. This first chart is pretty straightforward. Before the stories, the audience was asked how they felt about their relationship with the autism community on a scale of 1 to 5. And the average answer was 3. So neutral. After hearing the five storytellers, the average moved up to 4. A whole step of improvement in how they felt about their relationship with the autism community. Nothing had changed except the stories. It's not like they went and had lunch and talked to me. We didn't put up a bunch of slides that talked about autism in general or provide sort of general education about autism. All that happened was they listened to these stories. So the next picture that I'll show you gets at the individual storytellers themselves. Okay. So this is a measure called the inclusion of other in the self. It's a measure of how close or empathic I'm feeling with another person. Does that make sense? And you can see here that they jump up to about, you know, four and a half, some a little higher, some a little lower. But statistically speaking, they all significantly jumped up after each story. So in addition to feeling warmer toward the autistic community in general, audience members also felt more empathy for each of the five storytellers individually after hearing their stories. Now the really interesting thing is storyteller number four. Yeah. That's Emma. Okay. The neuro-typical. Yeah. So you would expect. Not autistic. You would expect her bar to be. To be even higher because most of the people in the audience were also neurotypical, not autistic. That's right. And we know that empathy comes more easily when people have similar cognitive environments. But the closeness measures between the neurotypical audience and Emma, the neurotypical storyteller, we're not better. It's like just basically the same as everybody else. Right. A little lower. Exactly. But I noticed that there's one storyteller who does stand out on the chart showing how much empathy the audience felt. So who's number three there? Number three is our high school student. It's Benjamin. He told that story about going camping in the middle of winter and having to bail out and struggling to feel independent because he can't pass the test to get his driver license. And I think actually his story is a really good example of this effect that we, that I started out with down this road, which is I had a driver's license as soon as I turned 16. He didn't. So that part of our lives is very, very different. And for him, that drove this feeling of, I need to, I want to feel more independent. I had that feeling for sure as a high school student. I think it's a natural drive that most kids that age have. So if I can understand his need by drawing on my own experience, then all of a sudden I'm starting to empathize, even if the circumstances are very different. And Cardin's team also noticed a pattern in the types of stories that evoked the most empathy. The more vulnerable the storyteller was, the more personal information that they shared, the higher these measures were. So it's not like somebody can get up and just tell any old story. It seems like the more they share about these deep needs, for example, or the more they open up this window to their minds, quote unquote, the better an audience member or listener can empathize with them. Yeah. Did you see any of the mirroring? in the like F-nears data, the brain scanning data, how did that work out? - Okay, so these are a little more complicated. I have to say that this one story slam provided us a very small sample size. So we are doing more story slams now with the same technique, but what we can say with this small sample, I think is pretty interesting. - The sample is small 'cause they only had three audience members with brain scanners on to neuro-typical one autistic, but they were able to measure the mirroring in their brain activity with five different storytellers, one of whom by Lucky MissHap ended up being neuro-typical. So they've got four possible scenarios to compare. Neurotypical audience listening to a neuro-typical teller, neuro-typical audience and autistic teller, autistic audience and autistic teller, and autistic audience and neuro-typical teller. Let's start with the same neuro-type matchups. So this is autistic audience and autistic teller, neuro-typical audience with neuro-typical teller. When Cardin's team charted the level of synchrony happening in the front part of the brain between the teller and the listener, the data for those matchups looks like a nice smooth rainbow. Boris says Cardin. - What if I use the word arc? - Okay. - What does that make you think of? - Like a story arc. - Like a story arc. - Like you're building to something and then there's this thing that happened and then how's it gonna resolve? - So it was fascinating to us just looking at the data that the pattern of coherence between a storyteller and a storyteller was actually an arc. - At the start of each story, the synchrony between the teller and the audience is lower. Then as the story ramps up, the tension and obstacles intensify, you see the audience and the teller getting more in sync. And then the synchronization tapers back off as the story wraps up and the teller shares insights on what the story means to them. - So then we noticed that the same neuro-type diads actually dropped more precipitously at the insight moment than the cross-neurotype. The cross-neurotype people actually stay up in their coherence. - Okay, just translating that quickly. The synchrony or coherence, he's calling it, between the teller and audience members with the same neuro-type brain, followed that smooth rainbow arc over the course of the story. But the cross or different neuro-type parents show a strange uptick in synchrony at the end that makes that arc look like a donkey kicking out its hind legs rather than a nice smooth rainbow. So just when the story is winding down and you would expect the audience to be mentally checking out, the opposite happens with a storyteller who's got a different brain neuro-type. - We think it's because it required more effort for them to cross that empathy gap and get there with the storytellers. 'Cause again, empathy is about being able to predict what someone else is feeling or thinking. And if you share a lot of similarities with someone telling a story on stage, you don't have to work as hard to predict what the storytellers' conclusions will be. - And our future studies will test that and help us understand exactly what we're looking at here. But I do, I really believe that if family members, clinicians, teachers, anyone who is interacting with, in this specific case, a neurotypical teacher or clinician or family member interacting with an autistic person or vice versa, if they can get down to these stories about needs, whatever they're trying to accomplish in those interactions can improve. But I also think that there are broader implications which are that any two people who have a hard time seeing each other's minds, if they can, intently listen to each other, get to those deep needs, see the humanity in each other, through stories or through some other means, maybe artistic or whatever. That whatever they're trying to accomplish can improve if they're trying to connect in society or if they're trying to overcome a political divide or a racial dispute or whatever it might be. And I know this is very simplistic, but we have to be able to see the shared humanity in each other. And I think that's really at the core of all this. - Professor Cardin, thank you so much for your time. - You're welcome. - Pleasure. - Garrett Cardin is a cognitive neuroscientist and audiologist. He's a professor in the communications disorders department at BYU. One thing I did not tell you about that story slam experiment is that those five storytellers were carefully coached on how to craft and tell their stories for maximum impact. They followed a framework developed by some colleagues of Cardin's at BYU. And we'll get that recipe next here on top of mind from the BYU radio podcast network. I'm Julie Rose. - Hey, top of mind listeners, Julie here. So you probably got me in your earbuds right now because this is not the kind of show that your kids are just dying to listen to with you, right? But BYU radio does have a podcast. The whole family can enjoy it together. It's called the Apple Seed. It's a storytelling show. These are award-winning storytellers from all over the nation who come into the Apple Seed storytelling studio and share experiences about gut feelings that paid off, small acts of kindness. Even the occasional mishap, like dying your eyebrows the wrong color. So gather your whole family for great adventures that just might spark stories of your own that you can share with the people you love. Tune into the Apple Seed on BYUradio.org or your favorite podcast app. - There are three key parts to each of these stories, what we call transformative stories. I met up with one of the architects of the training the autistic storytellers went through for that empathy experiment. - My name is Kennedy Kleinman. I'm from a small town in Southern Utah and I'm an English major. - Recently graduated from BYU and now working on her masters. So the three parts of a transformative story are first. - The need, which is the heart of the story and then complications are the second part of these stories. And these are things that arise that keep you from meeting your need. And from these moments of complications come insights. And these are not resolutions or solutions that fix everything. These are not fairy tale endings, but insights come from gaining different ways to see the world, to see ourselves, to see our need. And so each of our storytellers will have a moment of insight. - Need, complications, insights, which is actually pretty similar to the structure that storytellers and writers have taught and talked about forever. But Kleinman says there are subtle differences. Often a need rather than being a human need is described as a want. And complications are described as obstacles or things like that. - Conflicts. - Conflicts. Yes, and insights are often described as resolutions or solutions. So this needs complications and insights is fairly unique to us. - And she says it's what drives the potential for a story to spark empathy and connection between the teller and the listener. In fact, it was struggling with a deep need of her own that brought Kleinman to storytelling in the first place. - I had attended another institution and transferred to BYU at 22 years old and I started over from scratch with my credits. So as a freshman at 22, next to a lot of 18 year olds and I just felt really disconnected from a lot of people on campus. I also work full time and that keeps me off campus quite often. And so I was just yearning for this way to connect to campus and also to feel like I could contribute something. I just remember all of my classes my first year sitting next to all of these people that I felt like I wanted to know but I wasn't sure how to get to know them and I wasn't sure if they wanted to get to know me. But in this storytelling class, we were almost forced to get to know one another. - It was called the Art of Transformative Storytelling. They looked at models like the Moth Radio Hour and did their own story slam as a class. Kleinman talked about a traumatic childhood experience. She had never shared publicly before. - I was really nervous about being so vulnerable but I also knew that each of those students were having a similar experience of being vulnerable. And so if the silence in the room didn't feel scary, it felt almost warm and welcoming because I knew that people were listening with intention. And that was where I really caught the bug of storytelling. - She joined a research team that got a grant to develop storytelling workshops which became the basis for regular story slam events on campus designed for research and for building connection between students. - A first workshop is all about needs. We give them a series of questions like what is something you're struggling with right now? What is something that you are afraid to talk about with other people or what is something that you feel like makes you different from other people that they don't understand? And then at the end of that time, after sharing with their peers and with us, they all develop a need statement. And that's really the foundational aspect of these stories. And then the next week, they come back and we work on scenes. And so what we have them do is write down a bunch of different scenes and these are all scenes that connect to their need in some way. either times where it was met or was not met and what that felt like what it looked like. We tell them to use their senses to get as in-depth as they can. And we usually have them write down 10. And they don't end up using 10 in their final story, but they're all on sticky notes. And that's the second workshop. And then the third workshop, they come back with their sticky notes. And they're ready to take these scenes and to narrow them down into a story structure. And then we work on tightening that structure, adding more detail, taking out some detail in other places, and then crafting that insight statement that comes at the end. And the first thought is always to say, "I realized this." But we really try to get them to not say that, to show it in a different way. And so often they'll say, "I still struggle with this, but now I look at it differently or I act differently." And that's a really effective way for them to share their insight, because they recognize that it's not all tied up and fixed and happily ever after, but that they've gained some sort of skill or viewpoint that has changed it for them. And then our fourth workshop is just like a dress rehearsal. And they come with their stories memorized. And it's really impressive and fantastic especially because you look back a few weeks and they showed up and they didn't really know much about stories and they didn't feel like they had a story to share. And now they have this memorized story ready to share at an event. And so for the storytellers, it's kind of this therapeutic practice where they look back on their life and see how this through line has shown up. And then they dictate it. And they're able to dictate the insight that they may have been subconsciously experiencing, but actually saying it out loud and pinpointing that exact insight can be a transformative experience for them. So this need complications insight framework leads to storytelling as a kind of therapy, storytelling as a tool for connection, and as we heard earlier in the show, storytelling is a mechanism for overcoming the double empathy problem between individuals. And Kennedy Kleinman thinks it can be modified to work in lots of other settings. I helped with a storytelling workshop that was really condensed. It was about an hour long, maybe less. And there was this group of about six women who were work friends and they had worked together for 10 years. And they all sat down and wrote on these papers, their stories, and briefly shared them. And they were really hastily constructed because of the time constraints, but the meaning was still there. And when they shared their stories, they shared things that even though they had been sharing an office for 10 years, they didn't know these things about one another. And they mentioned to me that they felt like they finally knew one another, even though they had spent all of these hours together. So I think it's transferable to any of these sorts of communities that we have, like in the workplace, a team building exercise in any institution really can benefit from storytelling. There was even someone who approached me about doing storytelling workshop at a family reunion. We crafted a little curriculum for that together. And it's something where even if you know someone and you've known them for a long time, they can still tell a story that will surprise you. So I think in any institution, in any community, in any group, there are small ways for storytelling to be integrated and to be valuable. Kennedy Kleinman just started her master's program in English at BYU and continues to run storytelling workshops on campus. Beyond building empathy and belonging, even just sharing personal stories off the cuff can transform your toughest disagreements. And your vulnerability in that moment calls to my vulnerability. Like your willingness to share that now says to me, I feel safe enough to take a step towards you, towards something more meaningful. How to draw stories out of others and find your own is next on top of mind. This is the BYU Radio Podcast Network. I'm Julie Rose. We will be right back. Hey friends, I have a quick recommendation for your podcast Q. Do you remember that movie that you had on VHS or DVD and you watched it so much that you wore it out? Well movies didn't just entertain us. They also shaped us. And on the new BYU Radio original podcast called Voice Over, movies that move us. Film Studies PhD Heather Bigley talks with guests about movies that have shifted their perspective, sparked self-reflection, even stirred their souls. They unpack the scenes that stayed with us long after the credits rolled. You can listen to Voice Over, movies that move us, now on BYU Radio or any podcast app. Conflict Flattens people. These deep divides just make people one dimensional in terms of how we see each other. Right? I'm telling a story about you the moment you walk in the room. And our work is to help people tell their own story. My name is John Sarouf and I'm the co-executive director of Essential Partners. Essential Partners has guided thousands of groups through conversations about the toughest issues. Guns, immigration, racism, gender and sexuality. They've done lots of work with universities dealing with deep disagreement around free speech and diversity. Churches too. And sometimes it's a community divided over any of the many things that drive a wedge between neighbors in America today. Housing, homelessness, crime, policing, parks, roads, the list goes on. And every dialogue, Sister on Sarouf, starts with stories. It also brings back curiosity. Right? Now you've told me a story I want to know more. I want to know more about your grandmother, your uncle. That curiosity is a connection. I'm also beginning to build trust because I also loved my grandfather. On that platform, right, we can begin to have conversations about the facts and the policies and the things that were concerned about that really is a different conversation than the ones that would have happened if we haven't spent time building connection and curiosity with each other. The origin story of essential partners is a pretty amazing example of this. In the 1980s and early 90s, a group of therapists in Boston were trying to figure out how to bring estranged family members back to one another. And the question was, how do you get people who haven't spoken in years or communicate only through anger and explosions to sit in a room and talking away that brings them back into relationship? And meanwhile, says Theroux, some of those family therapists in Boston were also looking around and noticing lots of political and social division. Abortion was the issue tearing Boston apart at the time. And our founder, Laura Chasen, was actually watching one of these televised programs where you've got two people on one side who are pro-life and two people on the other side that are pro-choice and a moderator in the middle. And we still have the clue. Well, Michael and the guy makes certain that about a minute and 40 seconds, all four of them are sort of yelling at each other. And the moderator is waving his arms and says, we have nothing here. We've got nothing here, but I just want to know is it the moment? And she has this epiphany. She says, well, of course you have nothing there. You have set it up to have what you just got. So, you know, you invite people to one of these news programs and you know people are performing and they have brought with them all of their talking points and all of their guttures and nobody's listening to each other because that's not the job when you're debating someone on television. You're not there with a sense of reflective space to really deepen into a relationship. You're not in relationship at all, right? The other side is the enemy. They've set it up with one group on one side and one group on the other. So now, what would you do differently? Well, first of all, you talk to every person in advance. What do you want out of this? What are you coming to? Everybody's preparing for a conversation that they're going to go to. They can either prepare for a fight, you know, in a debate where they can prepare to come with their best selves, with their stories, with their desire to understand the other. Our job is to help them understand they're not coming to a debate. Then you sit in a room in a circle. I had a circle is really different than two sides of a table. There's no head of the table. There's nobody that's first, right? And you would just burst them. You wouldn't have all three pro life on one side and all three pro pro choice on the other side. You'd have one and then the next really deliberately thinking about how are we going to shake up, disrupt what the old conversation looks like. And then you're going to ask a whole bunch of different kinds of questions than you would if you were starting a debate You would begin to build connection between people so instead of saying so tell me you know What are the three or four reasons why we should ban or shouldn't ban something? You'd say first could you share a little bit about how you came to care so much about this topic like what what was your Story that brought you to this place So just as Laura Chasen and her family the Arabi colleagues in Boston were developing this framework to have different kinds of conversations They got a real-world chance to test it There was a shooting here in Boston to reproduction clinics and It really shook the city of Boston and The cardinal cardinal law at the time of the archdiocese and the governor at the time governor weld Got together and said we need to bring the temperature down on this conversation and they reached out to Laura and to public Conversations project and they said would you help our leaders of the pro-life pro-choice movement have this conversation? Six women three on each side of the abortion debate agreed to meet secretly began as a series of four meetings turned into 150 hours of conversation over a five and a half year period They talked in secret for almost six years and when the six women finally went public about their meetings They talked about how none of them had actually changed their views on abortion But it changed our hearts a few years ago I had a chance to speak with Barbara Thorpe one of the women who participated in those talks We'll put a link to that episode all about the abortion talks in Boston in today's show notes the whole story is pretty incredible But here is what Barbara Thorpe told me about the impact those talks had on her we were We were no longer too dimensional. We were no longer this caricature of you know Pro-life or pro-choice and that's what drew me back, you know and as I was So just taken with the opportunity to get to know these women who I would never have had on my own initiative in a very very personal way Obviously we talked about the issues, but we also shared our lives with each other and That was you know It's a real gift The women came to care for one another as friends because they knew each other's stories and They became even better advocates for their own views on abortion because they'd spent so much time really listening to how the other side thought and felt Most importantly, they changed the way they spoke about the other side in public statements the temperature of the abortion debate in Boston cooled down The essential partners framework for constructive dialogue had proven itself Here's John Saroof again. There are sort of three questions that the our founders devise that really helped shape How we do our work The first question is share a story that would help me understand how you've come to the place you are on this particular issue the second is could you Share a value or what conviction of yours is at the heart of the matter for you, right? And we want to bring in a heart right not just what the what the five talking points is But what's at the heart of the matter for you and the third one and this is brilliant is Where do you feel pulled in different directions, right? You hold one value But you probably hold some other values too and this is the moment that people are allowed in a dialogue to say yes I truly care about the right to carry a gun or the right to choose about my body and I also understand that there is this other You know position out there and I am worried that XYZ whatever the thing is so now I'm not just one-sided So the moment that you on the other side might say yeah, but what about this? What about that? I've already said yeah, I get it So give me an example then of how Like how long does this take and how to and does it and you know, okay? Does it actually lead to Actually agreement on something. Yeah, I mean action that I can actually yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I mean Look one of the things that we New from the beginning 27 years ago was that there are some issues that we will not come to agreement about But we still have to live together We still have to to exist in the same neighborhoods the same institutions and communities so Just having our relationship Survive even if we don't agree is worth something because you and I may differ over whether to build an elementary school In this part of the city or in that part of the city But if we divide our relationship based on that and based on every difference that we have The ability for us to collaborate on all the things that we need to collaborate on in a community and share Resources social capital would diminish, right? But the truth is that there is so much more agreement to be had If we spend time learning about each other Right, that's the other thing is that I speak differently when I trust you I speak differently when you're asking me questions about my stories and my cares and concerns Then if you are challenging me and trying to gut you know questions with me I'm not gonna give you much. I'm not going to get complex with you If I'm feeling under attack It's in the complexity that now we begin to see yes, we both care about this thing. Yeah So you I mean you facilitate and organize and spend a lot of time very carefully structuring these Dialogues is there any of this that is applicable? Do you think to kind of the interpersonal? I guess I think about like how do I how do I deploy stories? Yes, my like secret weapon for the disagreements that I encounter in the tense situations in my daily life It's it is absolutely the secret weapon us asking for a story at you know in the moment when somebody is With you when you're in a in a disagreement Just stop and say Ah, could you could you help me understand how you've come to this like I really want to know Tell me tell me a little bit about like when you first started to believe what this you know this thing that you believe like I Tell me that story Who was there what you know? What was the impact on you where what what? It is it is the way out there really is asking for each other's stories is the way sort of Towards each other and out of this stuck place that we're in I wherever I am I ask for stories I ask it of my kids. I don't say how was your day? I say you know tell me a story about Somebody somebody you met today that you that you hadn't met before And that's just a really different question and guess them thinking and then they then they begin to give you details about their life Details is what we want about each other's lives. It's what gives us richness So yeah, absolutely and and if somebody isn't asking you and you're in your in a disagreement and argument I was just gonna say that like it's all good. Well, and good if I'm the one being like tell me you how you know Tell me a story and give me some detail and what was it like and how did you feel? Yeah, and then I'm like okay now ask me ask me ask me Yes, yes, don't even don't even wait don't even wait to be asked just say can I can I tell you a story Nobody says no to that Nobody says it's not a good story. I always worry. I'm like. Oh, it's just gonna be kind of it's a dumb story It doesn't have a good a good ending. It doesn't have a good like you know It doesn't have to be actually one of my colleagues Bob stains will say stories did to say a story puts too much sort of pressure on somebody right for the very reason that you're talking about we think of stories is having to have this sort of You know three three act structure and there needs to be a dark night of the soul and then a climax and I right No, no, no, we're really just share an experience certain experience that sort of in your life or tell me about a person like tell me about a person in your life that Has really shaped who you are and and the things that you care about I mean people love talking about the people in their lives So if I were to ask you Julie Is there a person in your life that really led you to want to do this work of asking people questions and and learning about the world? Who's that who's that person in your life that that was sort of really shaped that that desire for you It kind of stumps me But I could tell you about a couple of people right my dad who he we loved And he loved for me to ask him questions and then he'd say, like, well, let's go look it up. And we'd go on down to the encyclopedia. And then when the web came out, he would look things up on the web. And anytime we'd be like, I wonder what that word means. And this was before the smartphone, right? And he'd go look it up and print it out off of our dot matrix printer and then say the origins of this word are, and we'd kind of nerd out about it. So I'm sure there's some curiosity related to my father and kind of how he gave me the thrill of learning something and knowing that we can go find the answer. Like, it exists. Let's just go dig it up. So that's it. That's it. That's the story that now I see you in a really different way. And I see you as a younger person. And I have a sense of your connection to your father. And I have-- I'm imagining in my own life that big dictionary that we had in our living room where I grew up, that my father used to take me to when I had a question about a word and we would go. So now you and I are connected. That little story, your father and that search for meaning and my father and the big dictionary that was sitting on this table, dusty old table in the corner, now we have a connection through that moment. And that will change what's possible for us. Yeah. Gosh, John, I just had a rush of emotion thinking about my dad. Yeah. That happens too. Yeah, that's really interesting. And I guess I'm trying to imagine. Right, so what that would facilitate if, at some point, I felt like I had to have a really tough conversation with you because of something that happened in our work interactions or I don't know. Right? Right? And that's a really valuable thing. Now, we don't ever want to force people into vulnerability because I can have the opposite reaction and not everybody wants to go there. So every question is just an invitation. Every question we ask is an invitation for somebody to be known a little bit more to the extent and in the way that they want to be known. And your willingness to take that step then allowed me to take that step. And now we're just a little deeper into a real conversation where we begin to care and get curious about each other. John Serruth is the co-executive director of Essential Partners. This has been really, I've really enjoyed speaking with you. Thanks for your time today. Thank you. I love being a love your show. I love listening to it. And thank you for the work that you're doing in the world to invite these ideas into the world. And thank you for coming along today as we dug into this. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you're not already following my other podcast, Uncomfy, you might want to give it a try. It's a weekly conversation show where people share their stories of learning to lean into those uncomfy moments when it's a little awkward or tense. But they do it for the sake of staying in community in relationship with other people, even when we are really different. Just look for Uncomfy on your favorite podcast app. Top of mind is a BYU radio production. Today's episode was produced by me, Abby Caris, and Alex Larson, with help from Samuel Benson and Maggie Mathis. Kit Merrill is our audio engineer. I'm Julie Rose. We'll talk soon.