Crystal: [00:00:00] I’m Crystal DiMiceli, and welcome to the Forces for Nature show. Do you find yourself overwhelmed with all the doom and gloom you hear of these days? Do you feel like you, as just one person, can’t really make a difference? Forces for Nature cuts through that negativity. In each episode, I interview someone who is working to make the world more sustainable and humane.

Join me in learning from them, and And get empowered to take action so that you too can become a force for nature.

Welcome to another episode of the Forces for Nature EarthX conference series, [00:00:45] where I bring you behind the scenes of my experiences during that week and up close and personal with some of the incredible presenters. One of my favorite people to follow regarding climate communication is a woman named Katherine Hayhoe.

She’s brilliant and down to earth, and seems to know how to connect with audiences who want nothing to do with the words climate change. She’s a scientist, but she also makes people know that she’s a devout Christian. She does her work for the world through that lens.

And I thought about her while at EarthX because one of the people that I met was this lovely Christian gentleman, and I qualify him like that because he wore his religion like a badge of honor. He talked about his church and the [00:01:30] Christian podcast that he hosts, and we had some great chit chat here and there throughout the event, always leaving me with some nugget to think about.

For example, after the far left accidental keynote that took place that I told you about in the last episode, he, like many people, was very agitated. He said to me that when people say, facts don’t lie, and the science is settled, that those have become trigger words. Whether or not they’re right in those statements.

You immediately shut off many people. Alarmist talk so rarely converts anyone. And he brought up a few points like what happened to the predictions and the science back in the [00:02:15] day when they were saying things like we were going to run out of arable land and run out of food. There was even a minute when there was talk of global cooling and an upcoming ice age.

What? He was saying, if science was wrong then, you can’t blame people for being skeptical about the science now. And he wasn’t saying this denying the current science himself. In fact, he said that it drives him crazy the way that we treat the earth. The Bible states that we’re supposed to be stewards of the land and let the land rest.

But instead, we’re basically just raping and pillaging the land left and right over and over. But he also said [00:03:00] that it’s a really tough pill to swallow when the save the world message is being brought to us by individuals who have giant mansions on the coast and fly in private jets. I get that, but I also disagree.

Because does that then mean that the only voices worth listening to are the ones that live off the grid, naked in the woods, picking berries for dinner? It’s a slippery slope, but I heard him and I get it. And I really appreciated our interactions because it was a window into perspectives I hadn’t thought of.

We have different reasons for wanting to take care of the earth. His more religious and mine more secular, I guess. Guess you can say. But [00:03:45] despite having different ideas on how to get there. Our end goal is the same. I would never have learned that if we didn’t have these conversations. And speaking of conversations, my guest today, Manu Meal, is the founder of BridgeUSA, an organization that’s doing critical work in addressing this extreme polarization we see today in the United States.

He’s got his work cut out for him. At a time when so many of us feel that the country is divided into two shouting factions, BridgeUSA is creating spaces where young people, college and high school students, can come together to have real, productive conversations. [00:04:30] These aren’t debates to score points or prove who’s right.

They’re about listening, understanding, and collaborating across differences. Manu and his team recognize something really profound. Democracy doesn’t work if we can’t talk to each other. Think about it. How do we solve complex problems like climate change, criminal justice reform, or economic inequality?

If we’re only screaming from our corners, what’s happening today is that a small vocal minority, about 15 percent on the far left and 15 percent on the far right, are dominating the national conversation, while the rest of us are What [00:05:15] Manu calls the hopeful majority are left out. What BridgeUSA does is give that hopeful majority a voice.

They build student led chapters across the country where people from all political backgrounds come together to discuss real issues in a meaningful way. It’s about getting past the headlines and outrage cycles to find common ground and real solutions. Manu says it best. You can’t change people’s minds by hitting them over the head with the same argument.

Instead, it’s about understanding someone’s lived experience. And that’s where real change starts. In this episode, we talk about why this work is so urgent right now. With protests erupting on college [00:06:00] campuses and an ever growing sense of division, and the U. S. election right around the corner, Manu is offering a different path forward.

It’s not flashy or easy, but it’s absolutely necessary. In a time when it feels like we’re more divided than ever, BridgeUSA is showing us that we’re actually more united than we think. We just need the space to talk about it.

Manu, thank you so much for joining me on Forces for Nature. It’s so great to have you.

Manu: Thank you for having me, Crystal. I appreciate being on.

Crystal: I’m super excited for the conversation today because You bring together both sides of the aisle in the work that you do [00:06:45] InBridgeUSA.

So I want to talk about that because I think it’s so necessary today with all the polarization that we’re experiencing. were just in a panel, how to reach and recruit the middle 70%. How do you describe the And And those that fall within

Manu: well, first of all, again, thank you for, for having me congrats on this cool setup, you know, um, I’ll tell you that.

So we lead an organization called bridge USA. So we have college and high school chapters, these chapters are really led by young people and they’re focused on creating spaces for, dialogue, collaboration, listening. relationship building. Um, frankly, the, the simplest way that I describe it is just like we don’t have a democracy.

We can’t talk to each other. To me, it’s, it’s just that simple. Um, especially an issue like the climate and, and, [00:07:30] and as it relates to environmentalism. So when we think about like this middle 70, I think there’s two, Common myths. I think the first myth is that if you’re in the middle 70, quote unquote, then you must have very moderate, squishy beliefs.

You’re probably like a milk toasty person. You know, you, you like, don’t stand for anything. When in fact, I think the middle 70 is Described as people with very deep beliefs, very partisan affiliations, but they believe in being open minded. They believe in listening. They believe in having the conversation.

So that’s step one is how do you make this not about left, right. But it’s about people that are open minded and closed minded. And that [00:08:15] brings me to myth two, which 70, um, don’t believe in the need for action, right? I’ll tell you, just studying the climate work for the last 20 years, Uh, if the people in the extremes are so set in their ways and believe that their theory of change is right, then why haven’t we seen progress?

In fact, I think we’ve seen counter progress. Agree. So that’s how I think about the work. And I’ll just, I’ll, the only other thing I’ll just add in is that right now with EarthX and what we’re seeing, on different issues on the climate, the environment, you can’t change people’s minds by hitting them over the head with the same argument.

You the only way you can change people’s minds is by actually understanding their lived experience and story. And that’s what you’re doing with the podcast.

Crystal: [00:09:00] Thank you. You’ve implied before that without a you might have answered this, but you’ve implied before that without a unified sense of belonging, We don’t have a country, We don’t have a society if we cannot talk to each other. What solutions do you propose to reinstill that lost sense of community?

Manu: Well, I think solution one is recognize that most people feel that lost sense of community. I mean, very rarely now do I go around the country meeting people where, especially college and high school students, but broadly just anybody, there’s a deep sense of loneliness.

There’s a deep sense that everybody’s walking on eggshells. There’s a feeling that. You know, what is this person going to think? What are they going to think if I say this? Am I going to be judged? And that’s just not healthy. Like, imagine I told you that we’re building a society of 330 million people, all of whom look differently than each other, heavily armed, um, walking around in [00:09:45] eggshells.

You think that sounds like a plan for success? No, right? No. So that’s, that’s, that’s how we think about the solution is that there’s a real urgency right now. And this is number two, right now, as we were just talking, there’s protests happening on college campuses around, uh, what’s happening in Gaza. And you know, whether it’s Columbia, there’s a lot of stuff happening at Yale, NYU, just now at UT Austin, south of us in Texas.

The fact is that while protest is important, um, we’re seeing what happens when we don’t take the time to have the conversations. When people feel like they can’t speak, they shout. And when they can’t shout, they fight. And so the time is now to start building these bridges.

Crystal: And I feel like that’s [00:10:30] also what has brought us to, you know, the climate wars.

It’s not a war that we’re fighting. And on one hand, I understand that terminology because yeah, we’re, we are in a crisis and things are pretty serious, but at the same time, I don’t think we’re going to get very far when, when we’re that extreme and in our verbiage, so your podcasts, the hopeful majority conjures a fleet of socially informed listeners to build nuance and fight outreach.

There’s strength in numbers. What are some things you’ve learned from the show?

Manu: That’s a very honorable description, uh, and it’s only downhill from here. Yes, a fleet of socially informed, what is it, uh, [00:11:15] guests? That’s fascinating. Or listeners. The hopeful majority listeners are awesome. Um, so this actually goes to, have you heard the term exhaust majority?

By any chance? Exhaust majority. The exhausted majority. Have you heard that term?

Crystal: The silenced majority. The silenced

Manu: majority. Sure. It’s, it’s sort of similar. So, if you take that middle 70%, right, most people in that middle 70%, I certainly am one of those people, are, are not out there, like, making their voices heard or whatever.

They’re usually quiet. Um, a lot of them don’t want to touch politics or all this, you know, gooey stuff, climate, whatever the case might be. They might care, but they’re like, this is for the crazy people. You know,

Crystal: it seems like an extreme thing to do.

Manu: It’s an extreme thing. And, and why would you want to jump into a vat of boiling water?

You know, in some ways it sounds, um, Self [00:12:00] destructive. Self destructive. Uh, so my thought is that we have to figure out how to make the silent majority of people hopeful. And importantly, once they are the hopeful majority, How do you make their voices more relevant in our discourse as it relates to the extremes, right?

Because right now we live at this moment where you have 10 percent of people on extreme sides of the left and the right, again, united in their temperament of being close minded and being very zealous with their beliefs. And so if you have that, the only solution is to build spaces and places where the hopeful majority can see and feel heard.

And that’s why I love these long form conversations because that, [00:12:45] these conversations make it so that you’re not doing your quick, you know, 10 second clip hit, um, you’re actually trying to be nuanced.

Crystal: Yeah. And let’s try to get more tangible. Sure. Like, so we can walk away or, you know, the listener can walk away from this saying, okay, okay.

Now I’ve got this new tool that I can use to try to connect with more people. Do you have any suggestions in that regard?

Manu: Yeah. So I’ll, I’ll give you a quick story and then, and then give you two very tactical things that anybody listening to this awesome show can do. So story is. How I actually got started.

So, um, I was a pre med student. I had like no interest in any of this stuff. Like I was actually the middle 70, and I was like actually probably like the squishy and milk toasty person, you know, without like a lot of [00:13:30] beliefs. And, um, my freshman year of college, so this was 2017 at UC Berkeley, we had a speaker come to campus.

named Milo Yiannopoulos, and it led to some of the largest free speech protests in Berkeley’s history since the 60s and the Vietnam War protests. And the next day, me and some random people, we got together and we’re just like, this is, this is really not healthy. This is painful for the people involved.

Like, let’s just create a space for all these people to just be able to just see each other. Like, let’s just have a conversation. It’s an incredibly naive proposition, uh, but Sometimes it’s better to be naive before you go into these things. Exactly! Because it turns out, and this goes to the two very tactical things, so we ha we have this discussion, and initially, everybody showed up with their guards up, right?

Everybody was [00:14:15] like, these guys invited the speaker, these folks protested the speaker, you know, these students don’t really care, everybody’s got their flanks, and they’re like ready to fight. And so one of the folks that was moderating this conversation had a really interesting idea. He was like, let’s just create a sense of vulnerability.

So the way we created this vulnerability was we started the discussion with everybody talking about just where are they from and why do they care? Like, why, why are you so passionate right now? Like what brings you here? Some people talk about their parents. Some people talked about their siblings. Some people talked about, um, the pain they see in their societies.

And what happened was you took. Social media arguments and turn them into human stories. So that’s step number one is like, just be vulnerable, you know, and vulnerability is hard until [00:15:00] you realize that people are actually looking to be vulnerable. They want, they, they’re like, you know, I got this thing going on.

I want you to help me. I want you to see me step number two. Is these conversations are really productive if you follow like a certain set of norms or principles? So every bridge conversation starts with four norms Norm number one is listen to listen rather than to respond, right? You’re actually just listening norm Number two is people represent only themselves and not broader groups.

So like you don’t represent I don’t represent every American living in Italy, right? You represent Crystal. You know, I don’t represent every Indian American. That way you can keep the argument focused. Third is very simple, but it’s hardest to follow. Just try not to interrupt. And norm [00:15:45] four is respond to the argument, not the person.

So that way you create a little bit of a distance between who you are as a person and the argument. That way you don’t devolve into ad hominem attacks. So that’s what we’ve seen. And I’ll just tell you that we’ve hosted thousands of conversations. Our student leaders are amazing. And very rarely have there been huge disruptions.

You would think that it’s, uh, it’s crazy out there, but people are looking for it.

Crystal: Have you ever had any of these discussions in the, in the frame of the environment or the climate?

Manu: Absolutely. Um, So many because, uh, climate and the environment is probably top three issue for most people in my generation.

Um, but I’ll, I’ll take you back to another tangible example. And again, uh, I’m in the mood to share some [00:16:30] Berkeley examples. So here’s a Berkeley one, which is in 2019. Uh, some of the folks leading that chapter, they created this full four day, a four hour full day symposium called heated debates. And they had people from what you might think is the quote, unquote, right, the left, um, scientists.

And it was a fascinating day because the one thing we came away from is that to make progress on something like the climate, it takes a lot of nuanced technical conversation. You know, like I was just on the panel that you talked about. And two of the folks on the panel, one was Congressman Williams and the other one was, um, I’m forgetting their last name, but a gentleman named Gary who’s, um, an environmental lawyer.

So Congressman Williams was a nuclear engineer and an environmental lawyer. And ten minutes in the podcast, they [00:17:15] got into a little bit of an argument and they talked about green electrons and load shifting wind turbines and agricultural crop health. And our discourse just does not enable the complexity nuance required.

Because all that argument gets boiled down to in social media is you deny the climate, you love the climate.

Crystal: Yeah, and tell me a little bit more about this panel because I unfortunately missed it. What was discussed? What was, what did you take away from it?

Manu: I would say I took away three, three things. So the first is the last point I just made which is That we live in a moment where we incentivize outrage and disincentivize [00:18:00] nuance.

So as a result, all the debates are very binary and black and white. And so, actually this is where you flip the conversation when the extremes tell the middle 70 percent Oh, all you’ll do is sit around and talk to each other. The reverse of that argument is, it’s not critical thinking to just beat the other side over the head with your argument repeatedly hoping that it changes.

In fact, I think it’s stupid. And so, that’s, that’s the first thing I, I learned. The second thing is actually. about the congressman that was on the panel. You know, he is in one of the most independent districts in the country. He’s in upstate New York. Um, so very split down the middle, very purple district, and one of the things that came up was the fact that if you’re a member of Congress, you’re incentivized to do three things.

You’re incentivized to raise money, uh, build a [00:18:45] following, and get reelected. None of those things involve actually solving the problems. And we love paying attention to the Marjorie Taylor Greene’s of the world, and to the Matt Gaetz’s of the world, and the AOC’s of the world. Um, but we pay zero attention to people actually trying to solve problems.

So, part of this is, to those listening, is where are we spending our attention? And reward nuance with your feet. Vote with your feet. Um, Your feet? Your feet. Like vote with Show up to the election booth and reward the people that are solving, right? Um, vote with your attention. Like, where are you spending your attention on social media?

Maybe it might not be helpful to like and share the, the, the Doomsday article because maybe that argument hasn’t changed anyone’s mind. And the last quick thing I’ll just [00:19:30] say is that one of my friends who is on the panel is moderating the conversation, Benji Backer. And Benji’s great work, too. Yeah, he does great work and his new book, which I am looking for royalty deals on, Benji, Um, it’s called the conservative environmentalist.

And it’s fascinating about that title. We were just last week at UChicago at the Institute of Politics there. And we were talking about how, you know, he’s the conservative environmentalist, which some might think in the climate discourse is an oxymoron, right? But that’s nuance, you know, you can be a conservative.

environmentalist. You know, you can be, um, a young Republican. You can be a Democrat who cares about fiscal security. So those are the three broad things that I took away from the [00:20:15] panel.

Crystal: If so many of us are in the middle,

Manu: how

Crystal: do we find these things? Because I feel like Find,

Manu: find what?

What are these things?

Crystal: Oh, I’m sorry. How do you find these nuanced discussions? Because I feel like All I hear are the extremes, and especially from a distance, not being in the U. S., it seems like it’s just a giant dumpster fire. But when I come back and I’m talking to people, I’m like, Oh, you know, you’re, you’re not that extreme and you’re not that extreme.

Right. What’s going on? So how do you find these discussions in order to realize there’s hope?

Manu: I think part of it is, um, comedian Dave Chappelle. In the U S one said that Twitter is not real life. You know, [00:21:00] part of it is like actually, and this is, I guess, I know, I guess ironic is like a, as like someone that’s part of a generation is highly digitally native is.

Maybe part of those conversations are in your real life, you know, talk to the people around you, like maybe our definition of dialogue doesn’t only have to be what you see online. So that’s, that’s part of it. But the other part, and this gets to a deeper challenge, is that the media has, yes, they care about journalism, really some of them do, but they’re driving incentive.

And I think it’s all about incentives. The driving incentive is to get people to click on their articles. So, what’s going to get them to click on their articles? The crazy clickbait, junk food nonsense, right? So [00:21:45] part of this is actually up to the consumer. It’s up to you listening, who thinks they’re part of the middle 70, to reward companies, to reward the media, because actually, they’re not leading, you are.

This is the secret of, I think, politics that I’m starting to realize, which is that our politicians, our institutions, they’re reflective of what the citizenry wants, and if the only responses and touch points that they’re getting are on the vocal extremes. Then that’s what they’re going to do So part of it is just a deep structural issue in terms of what incentivizes people that create the stories And I think it’s up to us to Literally not here you want a very tangible example Don’t click on the [00:22:30] next article that shows a giant fire and says The right is going to destroy the environment because while that story seems great, you know, if you’re on the left, it does nothing to actually advance the debate.

Maybe click on the story next time. That’s like, you know, here’s the shift between green electrons and load management, wind turbines. You don’t have to watch that, but you get my point.

Crystal: there any tactics that you Besides just like a headline like that, are tactics, are any, are there any specific tactics?

What to

Manu: watch out for? Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it’s a great, great question. So there’s a term that I’ve been working on popularizing called the outrage industrial complex. And have you heard of the military [00:23:15] industrial complex, that phrase? So the idea around the outrage industrial complex is this notion that outrage sells.

So again, like the article. The politician running in their primary and they’re gonna have to run to the extreme because only like 10 percent of people vote So again, you’re incentivizing outrage when you’re a social media company you care about engagement outrage drives engagement So I think there’s an entire industry Around outrage.

Like that’s, that’s what, there’s no like nuance selling, you know, because it goes to your question, like if there was, then why don’t we see it? Um, and so what we’ve started saying is exactly to your question, how can you spot tactics of outrage and remove yourself from them, basically like stop being played, you know, [00:24:00] by, by, by the conflict entrepreneurs, right?

Like the people that are like playing on our divisions to make money, to make profit, to sell books, to have more followers on Twitter, Three things to look out for. In addition to the fourth one of headlines. One is when you see, especially as a realistic climate, the argument being as simple as this is all we need to do and we’ll solve everything, or this is all that needs to happen and this thing will be taken care of, or, or destroy those people and then it’ll all be fine.

That’s just not how the world works. So simple takedown arguments. The second is it’s so comfortable to be in our tribes. So, force yourself to read one or two things that someone that you disagree [00:24:45] with is saying. And it’s uncomfortable, it’s visceral, and yet that’s what democracy requires. And the final thing to watch out for is like, when you’re, when you’re watching the news or you’re scrolling through social media, catch yourself when you spend a lot of time on the comment sections where it’s like, these guys are going back and forth and you’re like, oh, I love this fight.

I’m into this guy or that girl or this person. Um. You’re feeding into exactly what incentivizes then the company to be like this is what we’re gonna highlight further You know, and there’s a lot of amazing people that are highly nuanced that don’t care about the provocateur ism But they just care about like I’m gonna, you know, try to figure out how this community can rise above its sea level Um, we have to seek those people out.

Crystal: [00:25:30] How do we amplify those voices? How do we amplify our own if we’re trying to be that?

Manu: Yeah. So part of it is these types of podcasts and these conversations. Um, it might sound cliche, you know, all of our platforms don’t even amount to help bake the. The crazy people platforms are, but they do build.

The second is, I actually don’t think it requires like us thinking about how to necessarily be louder. I think part of it requires us realizing that we’re actually in the majority. Like that feels like a mental shift, but it’s a really important one because suddenly then the next time you see the crazy takes and you see like them getting a hundred to a thousand likes, and you think, man, all the, You know, the total Twitter has an active user engagement rate [00:26:15] of 10%.

There’s approximately a hundred million users on Twitter. Of those hundred million, 10 percent of them are active, which means there’s 10 million people in the country driving the entire discourse. So you are in the majority. And then the third way that I think we think about amplifying is actually Starting to lay the groundwork for elevating the leaders that are focused on nuance, like vote, like actually get out there and vote, you know, our primary rate in the US, at least if you’re listening to this, you have primaries and then you have the general election.

Um, the primary selects who the Democratic candidate is and then they go to the general election or the Republican candidate. So only 10 percent of people, just like Twitter, 10 percent are [00:27:00] active there. 10 percent of people vote in the primary, which means that in the general election, you’re getting the picks of the 10 percent of the crazy people.

It’s like, imagine if your crazy uncle dictated what your family conversation was going to be like every Thanksgiving. So how do you combat that? Like, what do you do about it? Do you just let them ruin it? Maybe. Sometimes. Sometimes

Crystal: it’s the easier thing to do. It’s just like. But that’s the problem. Like so many of us, I feel, you can’t see you if you’re listening.

You can’t see that. I just threw my hands up in the air. I feel like so many people are just like, forget it. Yeah, this is not worth it.

Manu: Sorry. Finish your, no, no, that’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. People, people throw their hands up, but actually think about it like this, right? When that like crazy uncle shows up to your Thanksgiving dinner table [00:27:45] or the crazy aunt, or you’re like crazy, uh, You know, young cousin, like blue haired, you know, whatever they might be, pick your stereotype of person, right?

When they show up, you might actually throw your hands up, but everybody’s throwing their hands up with the recognition that everybody’s throwing their hands up, like everybody’s like, all right, this person’s little in our society, what happens right now at social media scale is you throw your hands up.

You don’t see everybody else throwing their hands up. You only see. The thousand people liking that tweet then what happens is that you assume that you’re the only one throwing your hands up and, that allows you to disempower your uncle, you know, so yeah, he still might be the loudest, but is he really driving the family dynamics?

Good [00:28:30] point.

Crystal: Can you tell me about a time when you said to yourself, yes, this is why I do it. Mm hmm. Proud moment, a success story.

Manu: It’s not so much a success story, um, but it’s, it’s why I do the work. So, I’ll take you back to those protests in 2017. I’ll give you a little bit more of a description of what actually happened.

So, February 2nd, 2017, um, a speaker was invited to campus. Now, Berkeley has a great relationship with protests. We protest everything. That’s like our thing, okay? Um, doesn’t matter what it is. So, the thing wasn’t that it was just a protest. That wasn’t what was different. So, I remember Chris, I was walking back from, um, My math seminar, and there’s a cafe, well there’s a helicopter flying overhead, and then there’s a [00:29:15] cafe that I walk past, the window’s broken in, and inside, it’s a TV screen, it said, CNN, UC Berkeley students protest speaker’s speech.

I was like, wow, this is different. And suddenly what was crazy about that moment was the television crew that was filming that segment was standing right next to me. And it was like the breaking of the fourth wall. It was like, suddenly you went from feeling like you’re a spectator to an actual participant in whatever you might call this democracy, this politics, the country.

And I remember walking further into campus and there was hundreds of state troopers there. People had been punched, there was pepper spray, fireworks were being thrown at each other. Um, there’s a tree that was set on fire. That was like, to me that entire evening was just [00:30:00] incredibly, not frustrating, just like deeply sad.

Because my family comes from India, they immigrated in December of 98. I was born, uh, in December of 90, 98 itself. I lived in India for a couple of years. I came back, moved around a bunch. Um, I love this place and I wanted to succeed. And so, that night was what caused me to really think about how I can try and just do my small part.

And I’ll just say one more thing to people listening to this. I wasn’t getting involved with like the strategic plan of building like an organization with chapters all across the country and everything. That’s all like a happy accident. Um, for the first two years, it was just a tiny little student club with a couple friends.

There’s a couple other clubs popping up a bridge at different colleges. It was just we had found our passion and that, that’s it. You know, part of it is just [00:30:45] doing, doing what you love and, uh, and just being very focused on the moment and, and things work out.

Crystal: Wonderful. Now, I usually ask the listeners at the end to leave us with some action tips on something that they can do to help this situation.

You gave us a tremendous amount, so I don’t even know if you have any more.

Manu: But I, I don’t have any more, but I will say, um, if there’s two things that you take away from this, the first is remember that we are not as divided as we think we are. I actually think that we’re not living through the great divide.

I think we’re living through the great misunderstanding and that sounds incredibly naive, but think about it like this. If you’ve never actually spoken to your crazy uncle and your entire perception of them is a result of the angry niece [00:31:30] that hates them, um, your only perspective is one filtered through.

Bias, and that’s basically how we see the other side whether it’s the issue of climate criminal justice reform social economic inequality foreign interventions, you name it and the second thing is Recognize that social media is not real life and is happening on social media is a result of a few extreme people that feel empowered because they know that you’re going to play into their nonsense.

So we can opt out. Um, and by opting out, you can build new things.

Crystal: Manu, this was brilliant. Thank you for all that you do. Thank you so much for having

Manu: me. Thank you for having me and thank you everybody for listening.

Crystal: The [00:32:15] polarization we face is daunting and getting uglier as we near the U. S. elections. But as Manu reminded us, most of us are a part of the hopeful majority. that craves understanding, not conflict. It’s clear that real change starts with dialogue, by listening, by being vulnerable, and by rejecting the outrage culture that dominates so much of our discourse.

I encourage you to take Manu’s advice to heart and think about how you can start fostering more meaningful conversations in your own life. Let’s remember. It’s in these spaces of understanding that true progress is made. Don’t forget to go to forcesfornature. com [00:33:00] and sign up to receive emailed show notes, action tips, and a free checklist to help you start taking practical actions today.

Do you know someone else who would enjoy this episode? I would be so grateful if you would share it with them. Hit me up on Instagram and Facebook at becoming forces for nature, and let me know what actions you have been taking. Adopting just one habit could be a game changer, because imagine if a million people also adopted that.

What difference for the world are you going to make today?