♪♪ -The following is a special presentation.

How curiosity will save us.

The 2025 New Hampshire Civics Treat Talk.

-Welcome to today's Treat Talks with New Hampshire Civics.

I'm Anna Brown, executive director of Citizens Count and the Rudman center at the UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law.

Today, we're welcoming five students from across New Hampshire to talk about civility and curiosity with our guest speaker, Mónica Guzmán.

Mónica Guzmán is a bridge builder, journalist, and author who lives for great conversations sparked by curious questions.

She is the author of I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.

She’s also the founder and CEO of Reclaim Curiosity, where she works to build a world that sees itself.

She is also an advisor for Braver Angels, the nation's largest cross partisan grassroots organization working to depolarize America, and the host of A Braver Way, a podcast that helps equip listeners with the tools they need to bridge the political divide in their everyday lives.

Now I'd like to turn to our awesome student panelists, starting with Zoe G. From Bethlehem, New Hampshire.

She loves acting and community theater, working with horses and everything 60s pop culture, especially music.

Madelyn F. of Bow is captain of her girls Cross Country team, a National Society of High School Scholars and a National Honor Society member.

She's also an avid member of the Harvard Model United Nations and part of the Spanish Club.

Noah C. of New Durham, New Hampshire, founded his school's branch of the Ethics Bowl, which is a team based discussion competition to analyze complex ethical dilemmas in the world today.

He also was the district champion for the Rotary Four-Way Test speech competition, and is an active member of his mock trial team... I heard you want to be a future lawyer, I think?

So... Jayden is of... from Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

He's a member of his school chor... chorus and is involved in youth engagement across the region.

And Ainsley, of Rochester, New Hampshire is a 2025 New Hampshire's Kid Governor executive council member, a role she was elected to by her peers from across the entire state of New Hampshire.

This year she worked tirelessly to advocate for increasing recycling and eliminating litter in her community.

Thank you all so much, and thank you especially to Mónica Guzmán for joining us.

-Hey!

It's so wonderful to be here with all of you.

Can't wait for the conversation!

Zoe, I would love to start with you.

What's your question for Mónica?

-Okay, my question is that oftentimes when we're talking to people and we talk about politics, we assume it's a reflection on their views on human rights.

And it's hard to learn to disagree with people who believe something so fundamentally different from you and, it's like, well, like these are your morals and how do we get by that and maintain relationships that way?

-Oh yes, this is such a big question for everyone who's struggling across the political divide and really any kind of difference is exactly that.

There are two big categories of assumptions that we tend to make about people on the other side from us, people who disagree tremendously, and one of them is about their character and we’ll think things like, they must be crazy, they must be dumb, or they must be bad.

And these are assumptions, because our brains are conditioned to want to push away from anyone who seems so unlike us, that we just can't grasp how they could have arrived a conclusion so different.

But they are assumptions.

And so when you catch yourself thinking that in the course of a disagreement, they must be crazy, they must be dumb, they must be bad, notice that assumption.

You don't know what's in someone else's heart.

You don't know the path they've walked to their story.

The other big category of assumption people tend to make in politics in particular, and a lot because of the moral reasons that you bring up, is the assumption that if you oppose what I support, if you're against something I support, you must hate what I love.

And so, it's... it's kind of... it's a logical fallacy, and the logical fallacy is called What You See Is All There Is.

We tend to think that the same variables that went into us coming to our opinion and our conclusion are the variables that somebody else used.

And so if they came to a different conclusion and you came to your conclusion for good reasons, they must have gone to their conclusion for bad reasons or you're missing their real reasons, which goes back to what Anna says about can we get curious about the path people walked to their beliefs?

And if we do that, we may discover that people have completely different reasons and experiences that figure into their view of the world, and knowing that that's a possibility can help us, give us, can, can help give us the curiosity to ask the questions.

-Thank you.

All right, Madelyn, we're going do... well it’s a conversation, but we're going to start going down the line.

Madelyn, jump in.

-Okay, so my question is more about social media.

So, I know that a lot of people will post how they feel.

But my question to you is how to respond to that, because the potential with commenting is that I could just start a fight, or an unnecessary fight and so what would you say to that?

-Yeah, social media is very tricky for many reasons, one of which is that the internet is sort of a non-place that makes us into non-people.

We're on social media with just a couple of the many tools of human communication that we normally have at our disposal.

We can write text and emojis and maybe include some images, but we can't look each other in the face.

Sometimes we see avatars.

We don't even see your real name, and the picture is like a cartoon.

We don't even know if it's a real person!

What if it's a bot or something?

We don't know!

And so these ways of having these elements taken away from our typical human communication make it easy for us to get lost in our own reactions and Madelyn, you said it just right it's a lot about the emotionality of what goes on on social media.

We tend to be reactive instead of reflective and responsive, and so we get carried away by our emotions.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard from people who tell me, I can't even believe I posted that.

I don't know what came over me.

And so, one of the ways to address that is to think of the ratio in your life, where you are on these digital platforms versus not on them.

They're fantastic.

They're great for connection, but they are not the best place to have difficult, contentious conversations because you don't have the full complement of tools at your disposal.

For example, right now I can see your face and you can see mine, and you can see the smiles, right?

And the goodwill that's behind this exchange?

But imagine that you're reading a text message from somebody that you're a little bit mad at.

Whatever they're telling you, you're going to read in the voice you imagine them to have.

And if your imagination is saying they're being bad right now, I don't like how they're behaving.

You're going to read into the words they text you, a tone that is negative and might be mean spirited, but what if that's not the tone that they wrote the words with?

So, because you don't know that, we all need to be aware that we're missing these key pieces in spaces like social media, and try to bring those conversations out and tell that person, you know, what can we get on the phone?

Remember that?

Can we meet up?

Can we talk at school tomorrow?

And try to put those conversations in the spaces where they're most likely to be successful.

-Awesome.

Jayden you’re next up, we'd love to get you in the mix.

-Yeah, so I've been thinking about this for a while, in my experience, when I do talk to someone that we disagree with, not even politically, just in general, it can shatter a friendship like, so much.

I've had this friend that I've, been close with for almost about, like, seven years now?

And we've had our disagreements, and we stop talking for months at a time, even over petty stuff.

So I was just wondering, like, why does that happen?

-Yeah, isn't that fascinating?

You might think at first that it's between strangers, that things are trickiest, and in some ways that's true.

But in other ways it's with the people we most care about, where we have the most expectations of each other, the most entanglements come up.

I come from a politically divided family, so I really resonate with folks who feel this within their families.

You Jayden are bringing up an example with friends, and it's just as visceral and just as tough.

And sometimes it can be about the expectations and the disappointments we have with each other that are hard to voice.

So how can my own friend, my own best friend, disagree with me on this?

How can they think that?

And there's a there's layers of disappointments and reactions and emotions that begin to make it, so uncomfortable to continue to engage, that distance seems like the, the only recourse, at least for a while.

What I've found is that... And this may or may not be the case for you... And thank you, by the way, for sharing this story... But sometimes it's in that distance that you have from someone that you care about that, over time the, the resentments and the disappointments soften a bit.

And whatever it is that really forged that friendship and that relationship comes back up to the center and you start to yearn for that connection again.

And that's the time when people complete what I call, the cycle of rupture and repair.

Because we're humans.

We’re messy.

We're always going to get into these arguments.

We're always going to not be able to talk to somebody we love and care for.

But that's why it's a cycle.

There's a rupture and people are hurt and people need space and people aren't really sure what's going on, but over time, often people see, for example, one of the fallacies we fall into is that it's all their fault.

Whatever they did, that's the problem.

So they need to fix it.

[sarcastically] I don't have any... I don’t have to do anything.

Over time, you realize that it takes two to make a dynamic.

[Mónica chuckles] And a lot of times, you yourself were part of that dynamic, but you can't really see it until some time has passed.

And then that people are in a place where rupture becomes more possible and people find their way back to each other, it happens over and over again.

And then you might find that whatever it was that ruptured you doesn't seem to be as important anymore.

Doesn't always happen.

Sometimes people really do burn those bridges, and they really feel that they need to.

It's an extremely personal, case-by-case situation, and one of the toughest challenges of being a good human.

-I want to jump in before we move on to Ainsley.

Do you... Have you seen in your work... Because I know that you were a journalist for many years and now you know, the Braver Way podcast and so on... Do you see that there are more of those relationship ruptures like that?

Do you do you think that is it more the case it was now than, say, maybe 20 years ago?

Or is that just an impression we have because of social media?

-There is research that shows pretty conclusively that more people are burning bridges because of disagreements on very important things to them, aka politics.

So that's certainly happening a lot.

We're seeing a climb in that, since the last election as well.

And this is, this is what tends to happen.

Elections are feeling like ruptures for people, and they're bringing out people's reactivity quite a lot.

So the stakes feel so high.

And that is amplified by social media just like you said.

Social media tends to reward the extremes of our discourse.

Folks who have learned been conditioned and rewarded for stoking the fires of rage and of fear, frankly, because there's no emotion more mobilizing than fear.

If we can scare you, we can make you do something.

So frankly, to me, that's the scariest thing of all how easy it is to feel scared when we are in these spaces where again, the humanity of all of us, the lived experience, the pads we walk, the goodwill tends to, suddenly fade into the background, and what we see are projections of what's here in our imagination.

As I like to say, a sort of inconvenient truth of this period of time is that whoever is underrepresented in your life, will be overrepresented in your imagination, and our imaginations are not a great source of truth.

So we need to be intentional about checking in with people who are different and checking in with them one on one in trusted context where we can really see each other.

Otherwise, it's too easy to fall to some of the perceptions and exaggerations and frankly, delusions of a lot of the signals out there about who each other is.

-Ainsley, I'm going to turn it back over to you.

-Yeah so, you talk a lot about, like, the true meaning of listening, you know, and how most people, you know, if they're listening to someone, they think they're truly listening, by just, you know, nodding along, but you talk a lot about, like, you know, making someone feel like they matter.

Could you just, like, give a little bit more context and... of that?

Because I think that's really important.

-Absolutely, no, you nailed it.

A lot of times we perform listening.

It becomes an act of politeness and something that is more about conforming to norms.

Somebody else is talking, I need to be quiet.

But every time there's a conversation between, say, two people, there's, there's, if you're having a conversation with another person, you're not having one conversation, you're having two.

You're having the conversation with the other person and, at the same time, you're having the conversation with yourself.

And so in order to listen, there needs to be a real attention on the other person.

The conversation you're having with yourself at the same time needs to support that presence that you are working to achieve with the other person.

That gets harder when what the other person is saying is, is causing reactions in you that are unpleasant or disruptive.

If you start to feel like whatever they're saying means that you're wrong about something, your reaction will be defensiveness.

And at that point, perhaps your conversation with yourself as you're listening to this other person just talk about their point of view, begins to practice how you're going to defend your point of view as soon as they stop talking.

Right?

So this is just one of the many ways that the conversation with yourself can become louder in your own mind than what the other person is truly saying.

What can we do about that?

In that circumstance, that particular disruption, it can be good to remember and this is radical... You ready for something radical, Ainsley?

[faint chuckling] [quietly] - Yeah.

-It's okay to be wrong.

[Mónica gasps] [chuckling] But it is!

It's actually okay to be wrong.

In fact, I'm going to blow your minds.

Each one of us in this room, even though I'm in a room far away, is dead wrong about something.

We just don't know what it is.

We don't know what it is.

So what is the real consequence of listening to someone and considering what they're saying all the way?

And if you have the objection in in you, listen to that, let it play out, you know, watch your reactions, notice your emotions, but continue to listen.

And then when they're done, what is the problem with silence as you reflect on what's happening within you and how to voice it?

There's no problem with that.

There's no weakness in that at all.

There's a strength in presence and curiousity.

-Wonderful.

Noah, it’s your turn now.

-So I sort of want to build on that, right?

Like I try to stay curious in my day to day when I'm talking to people, but I sometimes can find it really difficult.

How do I stay curious when the people I'm talking to don't reciprocate that curiosity?

-That is one of the hardest things, because as you pointed out, and I heard, you know, you started the the ethics discussion group so I know that you've been in some of the uncomfortable conversations I'm sure.

Staying curious when it's hard is effort.

And we want to be paid for that effort.

We want to be paid for that effort with reciprocity.

We want the other person to, to take the same effort on our behalf.

So let's zoom in to that desire.

Because one thing that is true and that will never change, is that we can't control other people.

We cannot control how other people will react to us.

We cannot control what other people will do.

We can only control what we do.

That's it.

That's all we have power over, in this world.

Now this is extremely aggravating to a lot of people.

Especially when all you want to do is change the other person's mind.

You just want to change their mind.

Now persuasion?

Nothing wrong with that, except when it starts to hijack your ability to do what's ultimately going to serve, you know who you want to be.

So really, what I think is the good news here is that research shows, again pretty conclusively that curiosity is contagious.

What do I mean by that?

So Julia Minson at Harvard Business School has done incredible work on responsive language and hedging language.

And she's learned that when people state their views, you know, fully and freely, but at the end or in there somewhere go, I'm curious to know what you think?

That, that language actually can start to get echoed.

And it's, it's almost mimetic.

We are mimetic creatures.

We imitate each other, we learn from each other.

So if one of you has more flexible language.

You know, maybe you declare your opinion, but you don't say, like, This is this and anyone who disagrees with me is an idiot!

But instead you say, As I look at it, this is this.

I'm curious, what do you think?

That language tends to spread.

But then the question becomes, well, how long does it take to spread?

Because some people... you can't control other people and curiosity may be contagious statistically, but it doesn't mean that that other person is going to suddenly ask you what you think after they've given their opinion.

Maybe they're going to give their opinion and give their opinion and keep giving their opinion, and good luck getting anything in and all you can get in is another question.

You're going to feel a bit stomped over, but you have still modeled curiosity.

And here's the thing, I believe, and I believe that the research supports the idea that, people can only hear when they're heard, and you have no idea, how long someone needs to feel heard before they feel kind of liberated enough from their own assumptions and resentments to hear you back.

You just don't know how long it will take.

I think theoretically, if we were all robots, we could all get there.

It just might take so long that we just don't have the time.

Right?

But curiosity is contagious.

It only takes one.

So take that on faith.

Keep modeling curiosity.

Know that you are doing the best you can.

You can’t control the other person, but they may surprise you.

People have certainly surprised me.

-I would love to ask all of you a question now because I... I'm not sure what it's... I was a high schooler once, but I feel like a lot of things have changed.

Social media has changed.

And I remember when I was in high school, it was very much like the high school movie, where it was like it was the jocks and the nerds and the band geeks and the drama kids and I wonder, do you feel like you have friend groups that there are like politically diverse viewpoints, or do you feel mostly like everyone kind of like if you even talk about politics, do you sort of feel like everyone sort of sticks with their own people, or is there more like open dialog even if it happens in a class?

And any of you could jump in.

-I, I think from a sociology viewpoint, I think that we are more comfortable and feel... feel more safe, when we stick to our own groups.

And I think it's... it's rare to see people with diverse political viewpoints mixing.

And I think, I mean, I think that's a big struggle.

I mean, I think it's important to mix, but it's, it's hard to see that.

And like personally, I don't see that very often unless, with you have a group of people who are very open minded about it.

- Yeah.

Any other reflections from any of you?

-Yeah, I would agree with that.

I think the only time they would mix is when they're like forced to, like, if people are in the same class or on the same team.

Other than that I think normal friend groups are very much same ideas and same... - Yeah.

I will admit too, reading your your book, Mónica, I am totally an introvert and there were some moments where I found myself feeling like I don't know if I... if like if I'm just in the checkout line and someone just starts spouting a political viewpoint that I don't agree with necessarily, like I don't see myself being the person to be like, Tell me more, So I get that... curious to hear some of your advice about whether it is just finding other ways to break out of your group, or find those little moments and feel more confident.

-Right I mean, to the points you've been raising, it's the, the... It is extremely natural for us to feel more comfortable around people who are like us.

That's how we form friendships.

That's how communities bond fastest.

It makes sense.

It's good for us.

There's a dark side to it, and the dark side is that when you are surrounded by people who share your instincts, you'll also share your blindspots.

And if a society does that too much without enough porousness, without enough collisions and serendipitous interactions between people who, you know, represent enough of a web of difference, we will begin to fret.

And we're already starting to see that.

And I believe we kind of get dumber as a society because we've all got these different blind spots, but we're not checking each other's blind spots, you know?

To your example, at the grocery store I mean, it is it is uncomfortable and a little awkward.

How do you... How exactly are you supposed to mix?

It goes back to that, fact that we're having two conversations.

If you're not gonna tap the person on the back who was, you know, watching some opposite news media, on their phone, and you just want to know about it.

What you can do that is extremely effective is check in on your conversation with yourself.

So you've just seen that they hold a political view, that you don't.

First of all, are you sure about that?

Because you just saw a quick sneak, you know, at something they were watching.

So you don't know.

It's good to hold that uncertainty.

But let's assume that it's true.

Okay.

What then are you assuming about this person?

Check your reactions.

Are you already demoting them in your mind somehow?

Check that!

Because that's dangerous.

Are you already assuming you know why they believe what they believe?

Are you assuming that they hate what you love?

All of these things are things that we tend to load into our minds like that without questions, and that's the ultimate danger.

So we are already making progress on getting more curious when we question ourselves and our own ideas about other people, even before we take the bigger step of approaching other people and talking to them, let's question our certainty about them.

Because if we do that often enough, it's going to make that curiosity feel safer, and safer, and safer until at some point you might just be utterly fascinated and you really might actually want to tap that person on the shoulder and ask.

-Awesome.

So I'm going to mix things up a little bit here.

How many of you, including Mónica, are familiar with the dress picture that came out a few years ago?

And... oh yes, Mónica knows, looks like Zoe... Zoe, Noah, Jayden, all right yeah so for the people who at home, who were living under a rock and didn't have internet at the time, there was this picture of a dress and, it was like 50% of the world was saying this dress, I think it was blue and black or white and gold and just no one could see... It was the wildest thing ever.

And I remember reading about that and scientists over time have done studies on this, and they think it was whether you were assuming that it was lit by like fake incandescent indoor lighting or if you're used to like sunlight and were thinking, oh, this is natural lighting.

So it turns out that our brains are programmed just by the type of light we see during the day.

So I always think about that when it sort of like comes to the fact, like maybe there aren't objective facts that we can all agree on all the time.

And so I'm going to call you out a little bit Mónica, because you’re a journalist, but one thing you said in your book was that basically, you're sick of facts and you don't think facts can solve our... our country's problems.

And, so apologies to teachers in classrooms watching, that's a very radical thing to say, but I think it's an important point that you brought forward.

I'd love you to share some of that.

-Yeah, I mean what I'm sick of is people using fact disagreements as weapons and as reasons to consider other people ineligible for interaction or, you know, again, demote them somehow in their minds.

It’s too easy to conflate fact with interpretations of facts.

And I would argue that in the last many years, we've gotten too much into the habit of calling something that is an interpretation of many facts, its own fact.

And then we hold that and we say, Here's these people who don't see this, and it's fact and they're crazy and they're dumb and they're awful.

But really, if you take a close look, the fact that we are so siloed is part of what makes us mistake collections of facts that lead to a certain interpretation as its own fact.

Because when we are so siloed, we don't tend to be challenged as much.

And so we start to think that something that's an opinion is really just another fact, because we're just not in enough debates to understand that actually, that's not nailed down in stone.

That's not the sky is blue.

That's something a little bit more uncertain.

So that's the part that I'm sick of, is we do tend to use that to push people away, to think that they don't have anything to teach us.

And so, obviously what happens in the world is important.

I am a journalist.

I put truth number one.

Truth is number one, folks.

[Mónica chcukles] But guess what?

We can't unlock truth without trust.

And we can't build trust with each other, if we're not listening past our judgments of each other's interpretations of facts.

The other piece is so much social research has shown that we have enormous perception gaps.

What do I mean by that?

When one political side looks at the other and is asked, you know, for example, Democrats are asked, what do Republicans think about immigration?

And then Republicans are asked, what do Democrats think about immigration?

They take the people's guesses about the other side's view against the reality of the other side's view, and we fail.

We fail.

We do not know the other side's view.

So how can we pretend to be informed, when we're not informed about each other's perspectives?

This is part of what makes us weaponize facts and turn against each other, instead of turning to each other to find the truth of our perspectives.

Which, by the way, is a huge part of our civics.

Facts about the world obviously matter, but how people living in this country interpret those facts, what concerns come up for them, and whether they feel those concerns are addressed by say, the policies that we're trying to make up to thrive together.

That matters a lot.

[Mónica chuckles] And so when we are failing our tests on that, we need to get a lot more humble about how we treat these things that we think add up to truth.

There's the truth of people's perspectives we are ignoring.

And if we can't get good at that, it's not going to matter how often you repeat the fact you think is set in stone.

People are not going to hear you.

They're not going to trust you.

And you're not going to do enough to earn that trust.

-I’d love our students to Jump in some more, Ainsley maybe?

Do you have another question?

-So I was wondering, so you talk a lot about, bridging conversations you know?

Like, and, bridging conversations, it, to me was kind of like a hazy thing.

Could you talk a little bit more about that and like, how to classify a true bridging conversation?

-Good question.

Yeah so a bridging conversation is one where you are reaching beyond some circle of comfort.

You are going to, a person or a conversation or a topic that feels like a risk in some way.

Because at minimum, it's... it might challenge a set of assumptions or beliefs that you yourself have.

So these are bridging conversations because the conversation presents, introduces, a bridge to another point of view.

Will you walk across it?

Will you meet somebody on it, and have that conversation?

Will you find someone, you know, to Noah’s point I think earlier, who could reciprocate your curiosity back?

This is coming with a lot of risk.

But the reward of these conversations, I think, is also kind of their signature.

And it's why I titled my book the way I titled it, I Never Thought of It That Way .

When you think or say, I never thought of it that way, that's evidence that something pretty wondrous has happened.

That some insight has crossed this chasm between somebody else's perspective and your own.

And so if that insight challenges something that you thought, [Mónica exclaims] I mean, it can be scary, it can be really uncomfortable.

It may be that that seed that was planted in your brain today will get dug out of the ground tomorrow or it may be that it sprouts, and that you start to look at the world a little bit differently.

But in every circumstance, a bridging conversation has this potential to help you add complexity to your world.

One of the dangers of a too divided world is that for too many of us, everything is really simple.

It's just this!

It's just this!

If you don't see it this way that I see it then... If too many of us lose sight of the fact that we live in a really complicated world.

Because we're surrounding ourselves with people who think that... just like us, and what the research shows is that when that happens, when we do that, we tend to gain more confidence about our ideas, and so they become more simple.

This is simple!

Which makes it easier to judge people who disagree and we just cycle away from each other in this vortex right?

So, so that's why I think bridging conversations are existentially critical for us right now.

And you don't have to go... People tell me this all the time, they think of the worst possible topic, the hardest possible person.

And I'm like, why are you doing that?

[Mónica laughs] I'm not saying that.

You, you pick something that's close to you.

You build a short bridge.

You don't have to build the biggest bridge to the most hateful person you can ima... Short bridge.

Right here.

That's it.

[Mónica chuckles] And after a while of building short bridges, the longer bridges won't seem so long.

-So are you thinking also like, more local issues as opposed to state or national or even international?

Is it like that when you talk about a short bridge, is that sort of what you're talking about or?

-I, I was initially thinking morally, I think one of you was bringing up the moral issues because in our, in our psychology, it's the moral piece that makes it so unimaginable to talk to somebody whose views are just so different.

You know, we start to worry that we're, just by having the conversation we're releasing a Pandora's box of harm, and these kinds of fears can, can, you know, they're, they're understandable and they can make these bridges seem quite long.

But to your point, Anna, local issues are gems because these are issues where it is far more likely you can make a difference.

It is far more likely that the people you're talking to have a stake in the issue that is not conceptual, but is actual.

Many of us get lost in this tornado of national issues.

They're very, very important.

But the impact of each of our voices is very diluted, in that huge pool of millions and millions of people.

Not to mention so many people are sucked in to the national conversations that are so sometimes outraged and they give us dopamine hits of, you know, [Mónica exclaims] that, that we get we get too emotionally reactive.

So local issues are great.

You can actually meet and shake the hands of people who also care about the issue and it's narrow enough, and the pool of people are small enough, and you're actually there together, and it's not all boiled down to social media and some spaces where you don't really see each other as people at all.

So local issues are huge and we could really use more engagement on that level.

-Noah or Jayden, do you have another question you want to jump in with?

-I had one earlier about the trust.

It's just, it's hard to build trust even when you've known the person for so long or you have so much confidence in them and their knowledge.

So do you have any advice on, ways to build up trust?

Even from ground zero or even when you're already so trusting.

It's just that little bit.

Do you have any advice on how to build on that?

-Yeah.

So one of the key, conditions that I think of for building trust is containment.

So it's really important that, we, when, especially when we're trying to build trust that we make use of the 1 to 1 conversation, the 1 to 1 interaction.

This is another thing that gets really hard to do on social media, which is sort of this panopticon of you don't even know how many people are listening, but it affects you.

You start to censor yourself, you start to perform your perspective instead of explore your perspective and things like this.

But when you're one on one, you have no other purpose except you're there with each other.

You know?

You only have to worry about yourself being hurt, not others being hurt.

Or yourself being judged, not others being judged.

And so that really helps is trust is built one on one.

Even corporations, businesses, you know, they think about their brands and they think of things that scale, even they, you know, put folks through trainings to remind everyone that even though we are big, giant entities in the world, trust is built between people.

One on one.

So the other thing is to maximize your ability to be candid with each other.

What does that mean?

Well, if you are in a place where you're really emotionally reactive, maybe that's not the best time to go and talk to this other person.

You know?

You can kind of, chill a bit with yourself and then go talk to them for example.

When you listen to them.

So trust is really about three things.

It's about authenticity, it's about empathy, and it's about logic or expertise so what I mean by that is if I'm trying to decide whether I can trust you, Jayden, right?

Number one, I'm looking at authenticity.

Is Jayden a person who says what he means?

Do I see his actions and his words as being at odds?

Right?

So I'm judging your authenticity.

Empathy.

Does Jayden care about me?

Earlier, Ainsley was talking about how listening is showing people they matter.

That's what that means.

When, when Jayden and I talk, is he just waiting his turn to speak?

Or does he care about me a little bit?

Right?

Am I sensing that sense of empathy?

And then number three is logic expertise, which is, well, if I'm trusting Jayden to do something, is he any good at it?

[Mónica chuckles] Right?

Like, I don't know, I'm coming to Jayden because I want to know about trigonometry like, does Jayden know anything about trigonometry?

And maybe I can't trust him on that, but I can trust him on something else, so, so think about those three things authenticity, empathy and, and logic.

If there's something I'm trusting him to be or do.

So think about those things for yourself and how you show up to each other and, and trust will get built over time.

- Thank you.

- Mhm.

-Noah I called on you a minute earlier, so you're probably ready now.

-Yeah.

I do have one question and it's should social media ever be used as a platform for a political voice?

Because like, I use Instagram a lot, like, I always scroll, Instagram Reels, which is basically Instagram's form of TikTok.

And if I ever get like a political video, a lot of times the comments will always be supporting the extreme view of that reel.

And when you look at the replies of those extreme views, sometimes people will try and like ask questions or challenge that belief.

And then those challenges are sort of always met with hostility.

And so it's like when you're using social media, it always feels like you're met with hostility is what I really see.

So is there ever a time where I should be using that platform as a political voice?

-Honestly I don't, I don't think I have at all anywhere near the final answer to that.

I think that's one of those questions that resonates and echoes and that we all ought to be asking.

The reason that practically it feels like every politician I know uses social media is because it reaches so many people.

And the potential benefit of reaching people with your message, because maybe most of them, and I think this is true, most of them will look at the post, but not spend that much time in the comments and other things outweighs the cost, the risks of all the misperceptions, all the hostility, all the assumptions of bad faith and all the ways that that gets spun out.

Certainly there are ways to mitigate all of this.

I know social media accounts that have done an incredible job building an internal sense of community on their own page, where the comments are responded to with good faith, where the poster, the author is actually championing those principles one way or another, and that helps.

But it doesn't... It doesn't get rid of kind of the background culture that can come in at any time.

You tend to see that when there's a viral spike on one of these social media accounts, and things get out of control.

It's happened on my Instagram account because I use Instagram and I know exactly the dynamic you're talking about.

So, boy, in an ideal world, I, I really wish that we would mix it up more in person, because the fact that so much social media use and scale and reach, is happening at a time where there's a loneliness epidemic and people are staying home more, and people are looking at their phones a lot more, and all of this is just like, oh, it's a perfect storm of something.

So I tend to think I really believe that our most charismatic and impactful and good political leaders of our future are going to be really, really good at navigating that.

And they're not going to allow... They're not going to unwittingly invite, bad faith, divisive, toxic stuff, through, you know, thoughtless actions that they do for the sake of their own market.

But this is a really difficult thing to do.

I know a lot of politicians.

They're super busy.

They're trying their best.

[Mónica chuckles] And, and it's an uphill battle.

It's an uphill road.

That’s a great question.

-Madelyn I think you wanted to jump off that.

-Yeah, I just want to ask if you're able to speak on the fact that the algorithm is going to push things that you interact with.

So a lot of the time you'll see the same stuff with something you agree with, because you'll watch the video and the algorithm will be like, Oh, they like it.

Like whatever.

Are you able to speak on how to, like, either diversify your algorithm or see other views?

-Yeah, I think that that unfortunately is up to us, up to each of us.

Right now the algorithm cannot optimize for profit, based on giving you a mix of things, like, I think our pluralistic society would, prescribe.

So it is up to us and I think you, you, I think you named a big piece of it intentionally diversifying your media.

When something makes me uncomfortable that I'm coming across, because I have an instant reaction to it that is negative, it's a it's a good opportunity for me to stop scrolling, and see if this is gonna be a moment of challenge that I am going to give to myself.

Now, I can't do this 100 times a day.

I'm choosy about it, right?

But if I run into those moments, that's an opportunity.

I can hit pause and I can say, okay, this is making me upset.

Why?

It took a millisecond, what even is happening?

And then my brain catches up.

And maybe it's a headline, or maybe it's a reel it's a short message.

And then I have an opportunity to do the following... And this is a practice that I undertake to keep myself curious when it's hard.

So I see a headline.

I see something that represents what I know to be a popularly held view that is really not my own, that I do not like.

I click on the article, I look at the video and I ask myself two questions.

Question one is, what are the deep down honest, concerns informing this point of view?

So that's a generous question.

I can't be saying, Well, they're just terrible people and they want to be terrible!

I can't say that.

I have to actually look at the people and say, Okay, there's something here that they think is really valuable.

Can I, can I, can I be still and can I listen to that myself?

And can I sit with that discomfort to look for it?

And then the second question is, what is the strongest argument on this side?

And how could I express that argument in a way that somebody who holds that argument would look at me and go, Yeah, you got it.

Exactly!

That's exactly right!

That's really hard to do.

I learned how to do that as a journalist, it's really important to be able to understand a point of view, the way somebody who treasures it understands it.

It reminds me of a beautiful quote by John Stuart Mill, famous philosopher, who said, He who knows only his side of the case knows little of that.

[Mónica chuckles] You know?

So this is a... This is like reps at the gym.

You've got to make sure that your brain is still capable of challenging itself.

So anytime that something makes you uncomfortable, if you notice it, if you're not just running away with your emotions, right, if you notice it, you gain some power, you gain some agency, and you can diversify just by inquiry.

-This makes me wonder too Mónica, you have provided some really wonderful practical advice I think that each of us can think about implementing in our daily life and one on one, but it is also true social media is designed to make money right now and that means, you know, rage clicks I think are a whole thing, right?

I'm just wondering, do you think there is a role for some sort of government regulation or intervention?

And I'll just add a sort of like local color, New Hampshire banned cell phones bell to bell in schools this year and that's a major change and maybe we can hear from some of you if that's... [unintelligible] any interesting differences.

-Yeah!

Oh, I would love to hear from from you all about that!

I know that some of those changes were, you know, accelerated by this book by Jonathan Haidt called The Anxious Generation.

I devoured that book because as a parent of two kiddos, I'm also concerned.

I know the addictive, characteristics of some of these technologies.

I've struggled with them my entire adult life, and I wonder about that too.

So in general, as a parent, I am mostly in favor of banning phones at schools, even if that sounds really harsh.

I just feel like sometimes we need to be really intentional and deliberate about giving ourselves that open space to see each other, to just be!

To run into each other by the locker and say something, to not have our eyes on the phone and miss that moment with each other.

Like it's not great that we would need an intervention from the outside to help us with that.

But I'll tell you something else I've been reading articles that adults are doing the same thing.

There's a rise in house parties where the hosts just have a basket and you put your phones in, because we all sense this.

There's a way that we can be more present with each other when those things are put away.

I don't... That doesn't come from a hatred of the technology.

The technology is wonderful.

For me, that comes from an awareness and an acknowledgment of our psychology and how vulnerable it can be, and that sometimes we just kind of need to coordinate with each other to give ourselves, like the conditions for success and the success we want.

I think that it's an ongoing conversation.

Do I prefer government to regulate it?

No, I prefer culture to regulate it, frankly.

Like, I would rather have norms emerge organically that, that make this happen and come from the bottom up rather than the top down, that would be my ideal.

-I'm curious, And I know, Zoe, you... I haven't come back to you for a second question, but before I just... what is your reaction sort of been like in school to have that bell to bell?

Is it kind of like, is it good is bad?

-I, I think, can I share?

-Of course!

-I think that we, we had a big assembly at the beginning of the year, and the principal was like he explained the cell phone ban, but everybody was kind of familiar with it.

So he only touched on it for a second.

But he also said, I have talked with a lot of you one on one, and most of you have agreed that it's generally for the best.

And I think it's interesting to hear how people agree with it when there are other people around who agree or disagree with it.

Because when you're in the office with the principal by yourself, and the principal is trying to explain to you all these good points of the cell phone ban and you go, okay, this is you know, this sounds like it's for the best, but when you're with your group of friends, I mean, some groups don't think this way, but some are like some are like, oh, this is just, bridling our freedoms to connect with the world, or we have safety concerns because of the rise of school shootings and all these things.

And, and they tend to rally around each other and agree and I wonder if this has anything to do with the echo chamber?

-Yeah, no, you, you, you raise a great point.

What you just said about that contained conversation, one student with the principal, well, you know, there's several incentives to kind of go, yeah.

But then students with themselves having a different point of view.

I think the best way for kind of deliberative democracy to effectuate itself in schools would be to, to, to raise the volume a little bit about how kids are talking to each other.

You also bring up a really great point around the need for independence.

I mean, you know, we we want to be in a society where kids are raised, supported in their journey toward becoming adults.

And that means they can't feel like their freedoms are being taken away from them.

And phones and social media have been shown to, you know, there's lots of ways that, that folks like, figure out, like their identity in these more granular conversations with each other and when they're healthy and illuminating, they can be really, really great.

So, you know, tricky issues are tricky issues because they took... They put good values into tension with each other and I think you've identified some of those tensions just in that response.

And I really hope people are listening because that's what we need to do.

We can't take people's concerns and ignore them and deflect them.

We have to keep them part of the equation.

We can't want to win for our side at the expense of honest disagreement.

-That's interesting you brought up too and sort of touching on it maybe it was part of the cell phone conversations in your schools.

Mónica, how would you think about the interaction between and conversations between students and then, you know, staff and faculty is, is, because then you have sort of that power dynamic, too and I think that that power dynamic exists in school, but it also exists everywhere in the world where, you know if I walk into a room and I'm the one woman in the room, or if you're the only person under the age of 20 in the room, or you're the only person over the age of 60 in the room, you know, do you have thoughts on that and about what bridging or speaking up looks like when there's that power dynamic?

-Yeah, I mean, this is the layer in which roles can diverge.

So if, if there is a power dynamic that is that is, that there's a consensus around, it's fairly undisputed and in the case of schools, I think there's a fairly undisputed power dynamic.

Often in politics there's disputes.

But, but in in classrooms they’re very clear who holds the power right?

The administrators and the teachers more than the students.

So then the roles diverge.

And whoever holds more power, whatever they do to model curiosity or in curiosity has more ripple effects, has more resonance, has more impact.

So in other words there’s a responsibility to, you know, create a curious environment falls to those in power a bit more.

It doesn't mean that those who are not in power suddenly can just kind of do whatever they want and not feel that they're responsible as well for their own community.

Of course they are.

But it does mean that leadership has to lead in the right way and there's so many surveys and research I mean, it just goes back and back and back that building curious organizations, you know, curious curiosity up and down hierarchies is so important.

So, yeah, I think schools that are going to do the best job teaching the rest of us to navigate between these tensions are going to be the ones that listen really, really well to the student body and go out of their way to question their own assumptions and biases about we know best, because that's what tends to accompany power is sometimes like a little bit of blind certainty around, well, We know best, we deserve our power we’re older or wiser.

So those are just kids.

What do they know?

That's the thing to be most careful about, because that's not going to lead you anywhere good.

-Mónica were there... Was there any question that you wanted to ask our our student panels here?

-Oh my gosh!

Where do you feel that more curiosity would do good in your own life?

-I'll let any of you jump in.

Noah made eye contact, so I feel like Noah might be ready to answer.

-I'd say it's most important in school.

School is very much where curiosity, I think, is the most needed.

Because honestly, I think this might be for my school specifically, but politics isn't really brought up too much like outside of the classroom, but still in school.

And I think that's honestly where a lot of good could be done, where it's like we are having those conversations and we're trying to understand more, because sometimes it does feel a little bit divisive in the classroom.

Like people who don't fully agree maybe with like the median, belief in the classroom, are too scared to bring out their views.

Right?

And so I think curiosity in that way could be the most beneficial.

-Love that.

-Thoughts from any of the others of you?

-I would definitely agree with that.

I think in the classroom would be the time where everyone's sharing their ideas.

Usually outside, everyone goes back to their friend groups with the same ideas and same perspectives.

So yeah, I would say in the classroom definitely would be the time to get curious.

Especially like you mentioned, having like a different opinion from everyone else or being scared to share that opinion.

Yeah.

- Absolutely.

-I think building off of what you guys said, sometimes our teachers in the classroom they're... They don't want to be the mediator and they're like, no, shut down all conversations about politics.

And what I think when we're talking about curiosity and we're talking about civility and polarization, I think it's really important that those teachers like that's their job is to teach, like, not even just in civics class but I think that maybe those teachers should foster those kind of communications.

-Ainsley I'm curious too, as, as a kid executive counselor in New Hampshire, you know, is... Have you ever had that chance outside school but in this program, you know, where you're thinking about people being curious or uncurious?

-People being curious.

I would definitely say, so the, all the executive counselors, we have pretty much a different platform right?

And, I think it's really important between like, the six of us to be curious about each other's platforms and, you know, ask, you know, why they chose what they chose, like, did they have any personal experiences or like, did they just choose it because they think it's really important?

So I think that that, that's why, yeah.

- Yeah, important.

-Jayden I got to give you... Everyone else had their chance talking about curiosity in school.

I got to give you your your chance.

-I think curiosity in school is definitely a necessity.

Especially in the classroom, like everybody else has said.

And I understand what you said with teachers not wanting to be the mediators, but I think it's really necessary because so many disagreements can break out and someone needs to be there to, I don't want to say regulate, because that has a more negative connotation, but regulate, you know?

Someone has to be there to keep the peace.

-Yeah.

-And sometimes when teachers shut that down, I think that, silences other students.

-I find myself to be really opinionated in a lot of places, but, even in my school, I can't really, [coughs] Sorry.

Oh, my gosh, sorry.

I can't really find a way to express that.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

-All right.

Well, I think, as you said, it's incumbent on all of us and you guys right now are in middle school and high school but, before you know it, you're going to be the ones at the head of the classroom or in town meeting and so on and I know Mónica and I are just... I was so excited to have this conversation with you, because I think it's that learning back and forth as part of that conversation.

And so that's it for today's New Hampshire Civics Treat Talk.

I want to thank Mónica Guzmán so much for joining us and of course, each of our panelists, Zoe, Madelyn, Jayden, Ainsley and Noah.

And to all our viewers, go be fearlessly curious.

It's up to all of us to keep this conversation going.

♪♪ -This has been a special presentation.

How Curiosity Will Save Us.

The 2025 New Hampshire Civics Treat Talk.

♪♪ ♪♪