Difficult Conversations, with Kern Beare
Talking to people we disagree with can be fraught with fear and anxiety — triggering our fight/flight survival drive. We fight by arguing to win, or we flee by avoiding the conflict altogether. But to resolve our differences, we need to move beyond this ancient instinct and access our capacity for connection, creativity and compassion.
Join Kern Beare — founder of the Difficult Conversations Project and author of Difficult Conversations: The Art and Science of Working Together — as he explores how we can have conversations that can actually heal divides and change hearts and minds.
For more about Kern and his work, check out his website: www.difficultconversationsproject.org.
Difficult Conversations, with Kern Beare
"A liberal walked into a gun shop...." A conversation with author Jon Karpilow.
Talking to people we seriously disagree with can sound like a recipe for a bad headache and high blood pressure. But does it have to be? Might it instead be a recipe for understanding, connection, and even friendship? To find out, my liberal cousin Jon Karpilow spent seven months working in a gun shop in rural northern California. In this podcast he shares why he did it, what he learned, and if he'd ever, ever, do something like that again. (Spoiler alert: Yes, he would.)
Jon's book, A Liberal’s Search For America - Tales From The Gun Shop, on which this interview is based, is now available on Amazon.
"This collection of short stories depicts the personalities and events in this rural, conservative slice of America, and reminds us of how friendship can overcome ideological-based animosity when each of us makes an effort to engage and listen to those whose beliefs differ from our own."
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Kern Beare is the founder of the Difficult Conversations Project and the author of Difficult Conversations: The Art and Science of Working Together. He also facilitates a workshop based on his book, which is free for non-profit organizations and community groups.