If someone had told you on January 19th that a skinny young woman from L.A. would upstage the inauguration of our new President Joe Biden, dramatic performances by J.Lo and Lady Gaga, and even the joyful swearing-in of our first female VP, Kamala Harris, you might’ve been dubious. But the effervescent Amanda Gorman outshone all the stars with her wise words and soulful delivery. She tapped into the zeitgeist of America, addressed the “terrifying hour” of January 6th, and challenged us to “rebuild, reconcile and recover.” Gorman reminds us that there’s always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough tobe it.
When the world seems dark and our lives continue to be dislocated by the pandemic, I often think of Amanda Gorman, and listen to her poem, again and again. In watching her interviews with everyone from Trevor Noah to Anderson Cooper, I’m inspired by her poise, her wisdom and her optimism. Did you know that from age seven she’s been preparing to become president of the United States? That gives me hope.
This week, as Trump’s impeachment trial began in the U.S. Senate, and we’re forced to relive the horror of January 6th, I’m exploring these questions: How did our our country become so polarized and our politics so violent? And is there any hope for closing the divide? And what’s the role of empathy in the process? Is there a role for you and me?
I sought out the wisdom of three experts. And there is good news. My latest BBC report aims to do two things:
Help us understand how we got here: by exploring insights from psychology, anthropology and sociology.
Offer some tangible action we can all do to douse the fire and live more peacefully with people with whom we don’t agree.
Although Amanda Gorman was featured in my original draft, she didn’t make the final cut for the BBC (due to time constraints). Yet the words of her inauguration poem echoed the wisdom I gleaned from the experts: We must put our differences aside and focus on what unites us, our common aspirations. We must try to build bridges, and (as hard as it is sometimes) assume good intent. So I’d like to start this week’s Fresh Dialogues podcast by revisiting Gorman’s rousing performance at President Biden’s inauguration, before I share my report.
“We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none and harmony for all…”
Here’s a transcript of the report which aired on the BBC (including some parts which didn’t make the final cut):
Trump: They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some I assume are good people. Hillary Clinton: You could put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables: the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it…”
Alison van Diggelen: That was Democratic party candidate Hillary Clinton during her presidential run in 2016 and before her, Donald Trump during his bid as the Republican candidate, when he made his infamous comments about undocumented Mexican immigrants.
Dan Fessler is a professor of anthropology at the University of California in Los Angeles. He’s convinced that provocative language leads to dehumanization and is a key driver of the polarization problem.
Dan Fessler: Any time that you hear any politician, or candidate for office, talking about “them and they,” describing a competing party in terms that homogenize it, that treat it as uniform: “those people over there.” When single labels are applied, alarm bells should go off and you should start to ask yourself whether the humanity of people with different ideas is being eroded. This is happening in the US and around the world. As soon as it becomes “us vs them” we slide down the road of seeing others in our society as less than human.
Alison van Diggelen: As an anthropologist, Dan Fessler frames the issue with a wide lens.
Dan Fessler: I try to understand contemporary human behavior in the context of the species’ long evolutionary history, characterized by both remarkable co-operation, and a very long history of inter-group conflict. That propensity is strongly selected for. So it’s easy for us to flip into a mindset that leads to dehumanization, that’s an inherent part of our human psychology.
The perception of “the other” has a class component to it, those with more education and those with less interact less, live in different geographical regions, and confront different challenges. It’s easy to conceptualize “the other” as homogeneous and less worthy.
Alison van Diggelen:Larry Diamond, a professor of political science and sociology at Stanford University agrees about the danger of dehumanization.
Larry Diamond: The polarization in the U.S. and other advanced democracies represents an empathy gap. We aren’t even trying to see the world through the eyes of people very different from ourselves and to understand their pain and anxiety.
Alison van Diggelen: In the US, people have always had different views on issues like tax rates, gun control and health care, and held opposing moral and religious positions. Racism has a deep history in the country, and has been fanned by recent events. But more recently the rising inequality and growing opportunity gap have also contributed to the toxic mix. And according to Larry Diamond a new level of inflammatory and divisive rhetoric combined with conspiracy theories has pushed polarization to new extremes.
Larry Diamond: We have to put a heavy stress on leaders, political leaders who give oxygen to this fire.
Trump (6 January, 2021): All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical left democrats which is what they are doing, and stolen by the fake news media. That’s what they’ve done….
Larry Diamond: Leaders who inspire it, give legitimacy to it, and who led these people falsely and cynically to believe that their candidate had won this election when they hadn’t.
Trump: We will stop the steal.
Alison van Diggelen: Larry Diamond identifies partisan news media and social media as further amplifying the resentment and political polarization.
Larry Diamond: The technological disruption is super charging these people in terms of disinformation, rumor, conspiracy theories… The human brain is wired to be receptive to shocking rumors [ you can go all the way back to witch hunts…] but social media connects people on a larger scale and diffuses and magnifies these conspiracy theories and facilitates misinformation at a pace and scale we’ve never seen.
Alison van Diggelen:Rachel Kleinfeld is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She points to psychological research on our susceptibility to fake news and conspiracy theories.
Rachel Kleinfeld: We all want to believe what we want to believe, so strongly – it’s an idea called motivated cognition. In experiments with rats, they found when you hear a confirmation of your belief, it’s like getting a hit of dopamine, getting a drug. So people really want to confirm their own beliefs. They seek out information that confirms their beliefs, they hear it faster, they see it more quickly on a page. Amazing when you got through this research…
Alison van Diggelen: So what might it take to heal the deep divisions in the United States?
President Joe Biden (January 20, 2021): This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward. And, we must meet this moment as the United States of America.
Alison van Diggelen: This is part of President Joe Biden’s inauguration speech on the 20th of January.
President Joe Biden: Let us listen to one another. Hear one another. See one another. Show respect to one another. Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire destroying everything in its path. Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war.
Alison van Diggelen: Larry Diamond believes Biden’s call for more listening and mutual respect is achievable. He’s encouraged by the results of an experiment called “America in One Room.” In 2019, his team from Stanford gathered a diverse group of five hundred US citizens for three days at a resort in Texas. They were given non-partisan factual information and neutral moderators led discussions about political issues. Living together, having meals and talking together helped them see one another in a whole new light.
Larry Diamond: We had African Americans who said they’d never got to know a white person socially before, a white suburban housewife who’d say I’ve never met an undocumented immigrant before. Once you meet people and see they’re human beings too and that you share some common aspirations and emotions with them, the instinct to demonize them is immediately de-escalated….We did achieve a reductions in emotional polarization and animus.
Alison van Diggelen: The researchers also recorded significant changes of opinion. The most polarizing policy proposals, from both the left and the right, generally lost support, and the more centrist proposals gained popularity. Could this experiment be replicated and made part of a national discourse? Diamond hopes that the experiment can be expanded across America using online video conferencing, to help build empathy between people who view each other as enemies.
Larry Diamond: We now have the (technological) ability to scale this up with automated moderators that ensure equal participation in the conversation…There’s no reason why, if we have the funding and sense of civic purpose why we can’t organize open minded, mutually respectful conversations among millions of Americans in the coming years.
Alison van Diggelen: And evolutionary psychologist Dan Fessler points out that if we want to close the divide and build bridges, it’s important to start with the right assumptions.
Dan Fessler: The first step is to recognize the other person or group is not inherently bad. Someone can be a good person and see the world differently than you do. If we begin with the premise that this is a reasonable person who is moral, and is motivated by things they believe in, then the question becomes: how can I understand what they believe in and where can I find things we agree on?
That’s not to be naive and to suppose there aren’t people out there who do wish to harm and exploit others, there are, but that should be your last conclusion, not your starting premise when you interact with someone with whom you disagree.
Alison van Diggelen: And Rachel Kleinfeld offers this advice for healing rifts with relatives, friends and neighbors. For example, what if you’re liberal and live next door to a (fervent) Trump supporter?
Rachel Kleinfeld: Focus on the things you have in common and try to rebuild neighborly ties. No one wants bad relationships with their neighbors. For whatever reason, they might have been a racist, someone who simply liked the tax breaks or really believes that abortion is wrong and they liked getting the judges that would support that view. You don’t know why they voted for Trump, but you do know that when it snows they have to clear their driveway just like you do, then you can commiserate and build some bonds over those things.
REPORT ENDS
And finally, another reason I’m optimistic today is an interview I did this week with Harvard professor, Marshall Ganz. He shared some valuable wisdom about how to turn anger and outrage into constructive action. It’s something he knows a lot about. If you’re not familiar with his work, check out his Research Page or his Wikipedia page. As well as working with Cezar Chavez to help secure decent working conditions for farm workers, he’s credited with creating the successful grassroots organizing model and training for Barack Obama’s winning presidential campaign in 2008.
Once again, thanks to the BBC’s talented Andrew Luck-Baker who did a herculean job editing my original draft, and thanks also to the experts who were so generous with their time: Dan Fessler, Larry Diamond, Rachel Kleinfeld and Marshall Ganz. I look forward to sharing more of Marshall’s insights with you next month.
And I’d like to give the last word to Amanda Gorman, because as she reminded us in her recent interview with Michelle Obama, “I am not lightning that strikes once. I am the hurricane that comes every single year, and you can expect to see me again soon.”
Just in case you need reminding, here’s our call to action from Amanda Gorman:
“When day comes we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid, the new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.”
I hope you and yours are staying well despite the violent insurrection in Washington DC on January 6th. This week, I want to bring you some hope and optimism for the future from an unlikely source. More on that below.
First, I’d like to share two insights that resonated with me as I sought to make sense of the attempted coup and think about a pathway forward.
The first is from our newly elected Georgia Senator, Raphael Warnock. PBS’s Judy Woodruff asked how we can get anything done with such a divided country and Senate. Warnock said “we have no choice!” and added this:
“Either we will learn to live together as sisters and brothers, or we will perish together as fools.” Martin Luther King Jr. speech in St. Louis, on March 22, 1964 (In Warnock’s version he added the sisters. Amen to that.)
And Warnock posed this key question: Do we want to continue in our silos of violent racial, political and religious hatred, or do we want to build what Dr. King called the beloved community?
The other resonant voice for me was President Barack Obama. He laid the blame firmly with Trump and his enablers. I felt that he was also speaking directly to me and all my fellow journalists when he wrote: “For two months now, a political party and its accompanying media ecosystem has too often been unwilling to tell their followers the truth…” Obama offered Republican leaders a choice: to either continue down a dark path or “choose reality…and choose America”
Although the majority of the media blame rests with Fox News, Sean Hannity, and all those media and social media platforms that allowed the false narrative of a “stolen election” to be amplified, every single journalist should examine his or her actions over the last four years. For example, NPR’s failing to call a lie a lie was a mistake in my view. Mary Louise Kelly explained “A lie is a false statement made with intent to deceive… Without the ability to peer into Donald Trump’s head, I can’t tell you what his intent was.”
I think the events of last week make that intent to deceive –– and win at all costs –– abundantly clear.
By contrast, the BBC, The New York Times and other mainstream outlets used the word “lie” when it was merited, countless times. Yet even some highly regarded colleagues inadvertently fueled the fire by demonstrating lazy journalism. On January 8th, the BBC’s North America editor, Jon Sopel’s retweet of Trump’s lies about a stolen election, without clearly flagging it as a lie, was a powerful case in point. A few hours later, Twitter finally gave Trump the red card he deserved months ago, but the damage was done. Sopel and those like him need to follow the plea of New York Times journalists like Sheera Frenkel and think carefully about how they use their powerful media megaphones.
Statements from other political elders like Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and George W Bush are also worth reading. Which brings me to my latest BBC report.
When I read that Americans over 70 are showing remarkable resilience and optimism during this pandemic and lockdown, I thought, how can that be? We all know that the older you are, the more likely that Covid-19 can kill you, but here’s a fascinating statistic: in the United States, an 85 year-old grandmother who gets Covid is 10,000 times more at risk of death than her 15 year-old grandchildren. With odds like that, and the lockdown isolation you’d think that she’d be a lot more anxious and depressed than them, especially with the post-holiday spike in cases and prolonged lockdowns.
Instead, I discovered compelling research that demonstrates that the reverse is true. And found some valuable truths and life lessons for you and me.
Due to time constraints, the BBC wasn’t able to air all of the insights of the wise 19 year-old I interviewed, so I’m adding his wisdom at the end of this transcript and on the Fresh Dialogues podcast.
Riane Eisler is a grandmother of four, author, and President of the Center for Partnership Studies in Northern California. At 89, she’s energetic, busier than ever, and even optimistic about the immediate future.
Riane Eisler: Despite my age I’m still very very active doing online webinars, writing articles etc. Covid has not really changed my life that significantly. I’ve adjusted.
We tend to devalue our elders… Elders can be creative, active, and for me retirement is just… I don’t want to retire!
New research shows that although there are heightened levels of stress, anxiety and loneliness across all generations, older adults, like Eisler, are showing remarkable resilience, despite their forced isolation. Stanford University researchers surveyed almost 1000 Americans from 18 to 76 years-old in the early months of the lockdown.
Here’s Yochai Shavit, who co-authored the Stanford study.
Yochai Shavit: We found that older people reported feeling negative emotions less frequently and less intensely, and positive emotions more frequently and more intensely. Younger adults fared mostly worse than older adults.
Why was this?
Of course, it could be partly explained by the fact that younger adults are more likely to be directly and severely impacted by the pandemic’s economic and social fallout than older adults, especially retirees. But the study points to other reasons.
Yochai Shavit: As people age, they’re more motivated to find meaning and satisfaction in their present moment.So feeling joy becomes more important in older ages and worrying becomes less useful. When you have much of your life already lived, what we call limited time horizons, the future is just less of a priority and it becomes about what you choose to focus on.
Chris Campbell, a grandmother of four and retired attorney in Monterey County, agrees her time horizon contributes to her resilience.
Chris Campbell: I feel great today…It’s much easier when you’re in the last chapters of your life, as I am… to be in the moment and be very aware you have limited time left. To dilute or impair the time you have left with worry and anxiety is just so counterproductive. And I think that might be the secret to why we elderly people are perhaps not as stressed as younger people by this.
At 19 years of age, Luke Melcher is one of those stressed younger people. For his generation, there’s no apparent limit to the time horizon. But the opportunities at the start of their adult lives have been blocked by Covid’s restrictions – leaving many frustrated and angry he says.
Luke Melcher: I think a lot of kids felt cheated of very important years both academically and socially. We do all understand the significance of the virus but it’s a time when we are supposed to launching: going off to college or leaving college and going off into the real world. A lot of kids have been looking forward to this. It’s been hard for kids thinking that’ll never end. That’s what it feels like right now. It’s been going on for so long. It feels like it’s never going to stop.
Chris Campbell sympathises with how those much younger than her feel, even though the risk of death from Covid-19 is much higher for her age group.
Chris Campbell: There’s a collective sadness among many of us at the pain this virus has unleashed. Not just all the deaths, but the people whose livelihood has been destroyed and can’t feed their children.
So how do elders process that sadness and still nurture feelings of joy and pleasure? Yochai Shavit cites two key areas on which older people tend to focus to regulate their emotions:
Yochai Shavit: The first is emotionally close relationships become more of a priority… how they treat and approach these relationships: less confrontational, more forgiving, more generous to others. Making a positive social environment a priority.
The other thing is… when people of different ages are presented with stimuli that have positive and negative aspects, older adults tend to focus on the positive aspects, younger people on the negative aspects of things. Negative information is very useful in terms of evolutionary theory, when you have a long future ahead of you: it tells you what to avoid. (5min45secs elapsed at this point)
Kerstin Emerson of the University of Georgia adds some nuance to the correlation. During the spring lockdown, she surveyed the stress levels of about 800 people in two age groups: 60 to 70 year olds and 71 and older. She was surprised to find that, despite higher physical risk from Covid, 74% of the older group were “not that stressed,” compared to 56% of the younger group.
Emerson asked open-ended questions in her study and discovered these insights.
Kerstin Emerson: Lots of people worried for family members and society, but people remarked that this wasn’t the first time they’d gone through hard times… They know how to do this. They’re talking about resilience. By the time you’re 70 or 80 or 90, you’ve gone through some stuff. You have these coping mechanisms. I asked (them): how have your health behaviors changed since beginning social distancing? Some of them were the positive ones like exercising more, some were the less positive ones like drinking more, sleeping less, eating more.
The 70 plus were engaging in less of the negative health behaviors: less likely to drink more, eat more and sleep less. Their coping mechanisms were more positive: reading, taking walks… And being creative with our social connections, technology…
Some people who’re struggling emotionally are reframing 2020 as a gap year, giving themselves permission for all the missed deadlines, the lack of achievements or career advancement, or even employment.
Chris Campbell, now in her 8th decade, has this wisdom:
“My parents taught me: you have so little control over what happens to you and how other people behave. You have complete control over your reaction to it. That has become my mantra in my elderly years. I find it’s extremely powerful: I get to decide how I’m going to respond to the darkest days of the Trump administration, or a terrible pandemic… the pain and destruction that they brought.” Chris Campbell, retired attorney and grandma of four.
Riane Eisler has found a purpose in her writing and collaborations that sustains and energizes her. She frames the pandemic and lockdown in positive terms.
Riane Eisler: I think it’s a time for reflection on our personal lives and our social institutions. Look what it revealed about the lack of resilience… lack of justice in our economy. I’d advise people to try to be of service in some way… you can have zoom sessions with foster children, someone whose need you can help to meet…I think that can help us a great deal.
And what’s her advice for older people who don’t have access to the Internet?
Riane Eisler: Use what you’ve got which is the telephone. Voice can be very important: listening, listening to someone who perhaps needs to be heard, can be very healing really.
Maybe it’s time we all called our mothers, our fathers or an elderly relative or friend, to check in?
***
And here are some insights from 19 year-old Luke Melcher of Northern California, who speaks eloquently about the anger of his generation.
I started by asking him to rate the intensity of this frustration on a scale of zero to ten:
Luke Melcher: Fear of missing out on this time of my life would definitely be a ten because so much important stuff goes on when you’re a freshman in college, a senior in high school, so that I was very frustrated about… friends who didn’t get to do prom and graduation. In this time in our lives, we get control of our lives, we’re off to college, not in our parents’ homes, we can vote, we can drive. When something happens that’s out of our control, that pushes us back a couple of steps, then that’s where a lot of the anger comes from. A lot of adults are obviously settled. It’s easier for them, when Covid hit to be: it’s all good, we’re going to hunker down. A lot of kids felt they were cheated out on… very important years, both academically and socially. A lot of adults don’t put themselves in kids’ shoes. They don’t remember when they were launching off to college or launching off to jobs after college, and how painful that is to have to move back in with your parents and pause again.
Luke also shared some coping mechanisms that are working for him: things like intense workouts.
Luke Melcher: A lot of running and intense weight workouts, anything to get frustrations out… a time for me to escape and get a good sweat on… has helped so much. It made me not think about what’s going on in the world.
He’s even been meditating.
Luke Melcher: Sometimes I’d just be silent, especially when I was feeling a little depressed or angry I’d just sit and let the emotions come to me and just let them go….
***
Thank you for reading Fresh Dialogues. Let’s hope the next time we connect, Joe Biden will be our President and the majority of Americans –– honest, decent people –– will reject the violence of January 6th and unite behind our common goals and shared humanity. And let’s hope that Trump and his enablers will be held accountable for their misdeeds, and reforms put in place so that Trumpism doesn’t raise its ugly head ever again.
As Thomas Jefferson said: Truth is great and will prevail.
Finally: many thanks to the excellent production skills of the BBC’s Andrew Luck Baker who gave the report added gravitas by adding some musical flourishes.
This report is dedicated to my 95 year-old friend and fellow journalist, Elayne Wareing Fitzpatrick who inspired my research. She’s working on her final book titled Transforming Despair and told me last Fall: “I’ve never been happier in my life.”
I’m excited to share my latest BBC report with you and introduce a remarkable woman who changed the way I see the world. When I heard my report on the BBC World Service last week, I was moved to tears. A lot has happened since I filed it in early August…
Animals help us reconnect to a wise and ancient part of ourselves that naturally knows how to find balance and alignment. A good deal of our resilience to stress and change comes from our self care practices.
Animals show us how powerfully soothing it can be to just sit and breathe together. Sit close to your pet and focus on your breath and his or hers for a few breaths. Give your dog or cat a light pet. Put your other hand on your heart and soothe your inner human animal. Now, think about what human relationships of yours might benefit from such a gentle and wordless check in. Beth Killough, Psychotherapist
In July, it seemed that things could hardly be worse here in Northern California. Covid rates started to tick up and with that came another round of tighter lock downs and restrictions. And then a freak lightning storm sparked dozens of fires. Overnight we had friends who faced evacuation, and others unable to go outside, as air quality spiked far beyond Beijing levels. Overnight, my 95 year-old friend had to evacuate and find refuge with her little dog, Buddy. Overnight, we all became experts at analyzing Purple Air, the air quality app where anything over 400 is classed as an “emergency condition” for public health. One morning, I woke to see one Bay Area monitor at 666 on the scale of 0 to 500.
The things that had become the “new normal” were suddenly out of reach: simple things like taking a walk in the nearby park to relieve cabin fever, doing yoga class on the lawn of the local fairgrounds, and eating outside at our favorite dog-friendly restaurant. Now we all have to dig even deeper to find silver linings and nurture some optimism for a better day.
Did you know that one in three Americans are showing symptoms of depression? It’s likely even higher than that. A close friend who’s a therapist tells me she’s never been busier. We’re all taking one day, one hour at a time. That’s why we could all do with a Beth Killough in our lives. She’s a deeply insightful person who suggests we need a toolbox of choices to help us deal with stress and anxiety. Here’s her story:
Seven years ago, Beth bought a ranch and let go of her traditional office-based talk therapy practice. Now she uses her psychology insights and her barn full of horses to teach resilience, radical self care and leadership skills. She helps her clients tune into their own instincts and pivot to new projects and passions. Thinking her wisdom could hardly be more timely, I talked to my BBC editor in London about making her the focus of my latest report.
You might think that equine therapy –– working with horses to improve your resilience and well being –– is a niche thing, something for the affluent or the physically impaired. But Beth explains that some of the techniques are easy to practice at home and timely for this time of high anxiety and Covid related stress. They might even help you navigate this challenging time more easily and pivot to more joyful relationships and a sustainable career path.
Here’s a transcript of my report for BBC Health Check, including some bonus material that didn’t make the final cut:
Alison: Beth Killough works on her Northern California ranch and has seen a spike in clients looking for help for anxiety, trauma and loneliness since the pandemic began. Today her client is a 50 year-old woman named Michelle and they’re in the barn with Riva, a brown mare with a black mane and tail.
Beth: Notice as you brush her, she gives you feedback. She’s telling you…
Michelle: I can’t tell. I’m not sure what her feedback is…
Beth: If I stop talking and you start observing, it’ll help you tune in…
Michelle: Yes…with my dog it’s so incredibly obvious. If you stop, he’ll buck my hand to keep going.
Beth: Right as I stopped talking, she started licking and chewing which is her nervous system going into a relaxed state. She also took some steps forward. What is she showing you?
Michelle: I’m going to adjust so you’re doing (brushing) where I want you to be.
Alison: Beth Killough has been working with horses for four decades. She pivoted her traditional talk therapy practice to equine therapy when she bought the ranch 7 years ago. She examined equine research that showed physiological healing in people with PTSD and decided that you don’t have to be in trauma to benefit from working with horses.
Beth: If you look at where you are. Just pause. You got yourself in a little tight spot there! Did you feel it?
Michelle: Umm no.
Beth: The more focused you are picking up on her, the less focused you’ll be on your own pressure. This is a safe horse… However, you’re in between a thousand pound animal and a wall! So where are the places in your life you get in a tight spot without even realizing how you got there?
Michelle: Ummm..
Alison: The healing power of horses dates back to the ancient Greeks who used them for therapeutic purposes. In modern times, equine therapy still has its skeptics but anecdotal evidence is now being supported by growing clinical research.
Ellen Kaye Gehrke runs an integrative health program at National University in San Diego. She has been researching the human-animal bond for 15 years and her latest peer reviewed research examined the treatment of PTSD in nine war veterans. It showed remarkable results.
Ellen: We were at a conference a couple of years ago and a bunch of public health people came up to us and said: What pill are giving those people? The effect is like a drug.
Alison: Kaye Gehrke works with small groups of war veterans, some of whom have lost hope and are suicidal. Her eight week programs help them build connection with the horses through grooming, and interactive activities. More recently she has them saddle up and ride.
Ellen: We wanted to get the veterans up on the horses, not to go galloping away but just to have some movement.
We did notice there was quite a bit of difference…Their spirit, their physical carriage, the way they stood, the openness around their faces. The main point of my program is the heart connection.
Alison: What does Kaye Gehrke mean by “the heart connection”?
It relates to heart rate variability (HRV), the variation in the time between consecutive heartbeats. A normal, healthy heart does not tick evenly like a metronome, but instead, there is constant variation. In general, the higher the variation at rest, the fitter you are and the greater your ability to handle stress.
Professor Michael Myers, chair of health sciences and a research physiologist at National University has found that being with horses improves your HRV.
Mike: Horses are prey animals so they’re constantly alerted to their surroundings and that seems to trigger some response in humans: The response we see is documentable…
We use a technique…It’s basically reflection based bio-optical imaging. Photoplethysmogram or PPG for short. We’re able to measure the heartbeats of the subject. Something around horses changes the heartbeat variation. When the heart is beating the same, that’s stress. It’s fight or flight response, when you’re running from the tiger.
What’s really good is this: a couple of short beats then a long beat. Horses seem to have that effect….
Alison: Myers was surprised to measure an almost immediate physiological effect in the war veterans.
Myers: Within the first visit, within three hours, their heart rate variability has changed in a positive way.
Ellen: Their heart rate variability improved the first day but their self report took four weeks for them to have confidence…We could see they were getting better, but they were still in these messages of self destruct…By the fourth week, they started changing their self report about how they were feeling: less agitated, less irritable, more joyful. Their psychology was lagged, compared to their physiology.
Alison: Beth Killough has found that the practices used for PTSD treatment can benefit her clients. In sessions of two to four hours, they are introduced to the horses in the pasture, choose a horse and spend time interacting and grooming it. Killough helps them reflect on every interaction, allowing them to become aware of patterns in their own behavior and tune into their own thoughts and actions, both at home and at work.
Back in the barn, Killough explains how horses deal with new challenges…
Beth: When something new enters, the horses experience and respond by circling up and moving their bodies until the pressure releases. Then they’ll circle back and examine…
They’re taking care of themselves 100% of the time, it’s radical self care and it’s safety in numbers.
If we go into a freeze state or try to think our way through it, it makes it worse.
Beth: If you get scared and reactive, you have to ask yourself: what do I need right now? You’re not going to go galloping off, letting the cortisol and adrenaline release…
That’s why you can’t sleep. It’s coursing through you and hasn’t anywhere to get out. So when we don’t know what to do to take care of ourselves. We get into habits where we do something relational…
Alison: … like fighting with a family member
Beth: What we need to do first is take care of ourselves.
We need to build a bucket, a toolbox of choices: Things you can do when you feel that way. You can’t think of these things when you’re in the panic.
Alison: Killough recommends we move our bodies: go on a walk in nature, get a punching bag, find outlets to physically express yourself.
Beth: A lot of our anxiety symptoms are caused by not giving ourselves little moments. We deprive ourselves of it, so we’re thirsty for it.
It’s first pressure, then tension, then stress, then pain, then anxiety. There’s a sequence.
There’s some unlayering that will happen… The smells, the textures you noticed: That’s the vibrant part of our humanity we miss out on when we’re focused on our thoughts, our worries, other people, and either the past or the future.
Those are the things most distracting…Did that make sense?
Michelle: Yeah…
Alison: Of course, we don’t all have access to horses. Can our pets improve our mental health, and our adaptability to change? Killough recommends learning self care from our pets. For example: shifting our mindset about walking our dogs. Instead of a chore, consider it from your dog’s perspective. Could it be an exhilarating adventure that sparks curiosity, playfulness, and joy? Switch off autopilot, and consider it your resilience practice. You and your dog are two mammals venturing into the world together….
Here’s Beth Killough with one last thought:
Beth: Animals help us reconnect to a wise and ancient part of ourselves that naturally knows how to find balance and alignment. A good deal of our resilience to stress and change comes from our self care practices.
Animals show us how powerfully soothing it can be to just sit and breathe together. Sit close to your pet and focus on your breath and his or hers for a few breaths. Give your dog or cat a light pet. Put your other hand on your heart and soothe your inner human animal. Now, think about what human relationships of yours might benefit from such a gentle and wordless check in.
Last week, as demonstrations and outrage continued across America, I received an invitation that made me very nervous: I was invited to join a live BBC World Service program to discuss the view from California. I felt ill-equipped to contribute. What could I say that would be valuable to the dialogue? This is a challenging time to opine on the tinder box that is America, particularly if you’re a white immigrant. But I did my homework, listened to a lot of diverse commentary and read widely.
I can’t claim to have all the answers (who does?) but in preparing for the program, I did some personal growth. I changed from from feeling tongue-tied and unworthy, to fired up about speaking out. How? My research taught me three important things (see below).
Or listen to the Fresh Dialogues podcast below which features highlights of our discussion and more about what I discovered.
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We began by discussing Trump’s executive order introducing police reforms, and then listened to the insightful perspective of Philip McHarris. A researcher at Yale University, McHarris is a vocal member of the Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability. He makes some excellent points about the need to prioritize education and economic opportunity for the black community, and has written a provocative New York Times Opinion piece that concludes: “We need to reimagine public safety in ways that shrink and eventually abolish police and prisons.”
I agree with his call to reimagine public safety, but it’s hard to imagine that abolishing police and prisons will ever be a wise idea. What do you think?
BBC transcript (edited for length and clarity).
Philip McHarris: Police are largely arresting people, and putting people in jail and ruining lives and communities, when people need resources and opportunities, and not a prison cell and policing.
Defunding police means shifting resources away from policing and getting at the underlying causes like not having quality schools, employment options, housing healthcare. The communities that are the safest don’t have the most police but they have the most resources. Because of specific decisions and political inaction, housing policies have created legacies of racial and economic inequality. People often are forced into survival economies which are then criminalized.
So the first step is funding community resources and institutions. The other side is developing alternative emergency response systems where police –– who have guns and a license to kill with immunity –– are not showing up when people need a wellness check, a mental health intervention or domestic violence support.
Jamie Robertson: Alison, this idea of defunding the police…is it getting traction? The idea of withdrawing the police and replacing areas of police enforcement with social workers?
Alison van Diggelen:There is support for defunding police and looking at the root causes (of police brutality). The fact is: We all have bias. It’s what we do with it and how we manage our first impulses (that matters most).
The police force needs to build new protocols and new partnerships, as Philip said, with social workers and psychologists. It needs to invest more in anger management and de-escalating violence, rather than inciting violence. And perhaps making Malcolm Gladwell’s book Talking to Strangers mandatory for police officers?
This pandemic has exacerbated the tinder box of despair and rage in America. Perhaps America also needs to face its horrific history of slavery. That legacy continues today. We need to borrow practices from South Africa and Rwanda and hold Truth and Reconciliation hearings.
Here are the three things I learned in preparing for the BBC program:
Speak out: As influential psychologist and author Adam Grant says:
“Just as sexism is not only a ‘women’s issue,’ racism is not only a ‘black issue.’ In social movements, research has repeatedly shown that when majority groups stay quiet, they inadvertently license the oppression of marginalized groups.” Adam Grant
So, no matter who you are or where you’re from, this is time for speaking out against injustice and inequality. It’s also a time for mindful listening, reading purposefully and amplifying the voices from the black community.
“Let’s not excuse violence, or rationalize it, or participate in it. If we want our criminal justice system, and American society at large, to operate on a higher ethical code, then we have to model that code ourselves.” Barack Obama
It’s a version of Michelle Obama’s powerful mantra: “When they go low, we go high.” Here’s her full explanation of the mantra:
“‘Going high’ doesn’t mean you don’t feel the hurt, or you’re not entitled to an emotion. It means that your response has to reflect the solution. It shouldn’t come from a place of anger or vengefulness. Anger may feel good in the moment, but it’s not going to move the ball forward,” Michelle Obama.
3. Champion what works
The United States has a appalling history of slavery; but it’s not the only country that’s ever dealt with systemic racism. Think about the last century of German and Rwandan history. And in South Africa, racism wasn’t just systemic during the Apartheid era, it was an integral part of the constitution and the law of the land. Many people predicted a bloodbath when apartheid ended, but instead Nelson Mandela helped to make a peaceful transition. The country’s Truth and Reconciliation Hearings were an integral part of this.
My fellow BBC contributor, Barrett Holmes Pitner writes eloquently about what we can learn from other countries and concludes:
“Rwanda, Germany, and South Africa have reckoned with their troubled past to make a better future, but America has long preferred to ignore the past, and proclaim the inevitability of progress. America today must define and confront the Original Sin of slavery.” BBC contributor Barrett Holmes Pitner.
Here are some other insightful perspectives worth reading:
“Mother Nature is a very powerful educator” and her power has never been more apparent than during Covid-19.* But what have we learned from this unprecedented pandemic?
Firstly: That what was once impossible, is now possible. Who’d have predicted that governments facing a global crisis would put humanity ahead of the economy? Despite all odds, they did and for the most part, continue to do so.
Secondly: With many economies in the deep freeze, we have a rare opportunity to create a “new” new normal, one that’s less carbon intensive and more environmentally friendly.
This week’s podcast explores these important questions: Is the Earth sending us a message? And if so, can we rise to challenge, before it’s too late?
OK, here’s a sobering statistic: A recent IPSOS Mori poll revealed that over 70% of the global population consider that, in the long term, climate change is as important a crisis as the coronavirus. Think about that for a minute.
Climate activists –– like the team at Global Optimism –– have renewed confidence that this pandemic has produced the wakeup call we need to re-examine our priorities. Instead of returning to business-as-usual and locking in higher emissions, some leaders are using the slogan: “Build back better.” The BBC’s Roger Harrabin writes about the need for the UK to avoid “lurching from the coronavirus crisis into a deeper climate crisis.” Britain’s Climate Change Committee Chairman, John Gummer has called for rebuilding the economy with a focus on green jobs, and boosting low carbon industries like clean energy and electric cars.
The pandemic has taught us that, instead of denial and inaction, basic risk assessment and preparation could have avoided mass chaos and deaths around the world. I’m sure you’ll agree that witnessing over-stretched intensive care units and the Hunger-Games-like scramble for ventilators, face masks and personal protection equipment was excruciating. It didn’t have to happen. Over five years ago, Bill Gates warned us about the risk of pandemics. Why did no one listen?
Today, Bill McKibben, Greta Thunberg and others are warning us about the risks of climate change. Calling them all Cassandras -– prophets of doom and gloom -– is no longer an option. We’re all in this together and we are woke! Let’s harness this united mindset and act NOW to green our economy, before it’s too late.
Some people might scoff at my idea that the pandemic could mean the Earth is sending us a message: the FT’s Robin Harding couldn’t conceal his mirth, as you’ll hear soon! But Jamie Robertson supported my idea, recalling his high school “Fruit flies in a jam-jar” experiment. Thanks Jamie! So think about this: Is the jam-jar sending the flies a message? It’s clear that you don’t have to be a sentient-being to send a message.
Here are highlights of my conversation with the BBC’s Jamie Robinson and the FT’s Robin Harding, (edited for length and clarity). We start by hearing from Tom Rivett-Carnac about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change direction, as governments use unprecedented levers to jumpstart their economies.
Tom Rivett-Carnac: If we now just subsidize fossil fuels, previous ways of doing things, we’re just going to end up with another boom and bust and very quickly be back to where we were in terms of pollution. An interesting correlation between climate and the pandemic: In both cases, relatively small amounts spent yield massive returns to benefit society.
Recent analysis suggests that if world leaders had spent $3.4 Billion annually preparing for Covid 19, it could have prevented at least $4 Trillion in costs, not to mention the human costs of the pandemic. That’s also true of climate. Taking action to prevent further impact is the cheapest thing to do and we should learn from the experience of the virus and invest now to prevent the impacts of climate change, and reap the benefits of the transition to a green economy.
Jamie Robertson: Robin, how does that argument fit in Japan?
Robin Harding: I don’t think that argument plays very strongly in Japan. I disagree with it strongly. The virus has revealed how miserable we are if we can’t go on holiday, see people, go out to work. I think people will be keen to get back to normal. What it reveals about the climate and the environment is that shutting everything down, avoid traveling to improve the environment isn’t going to wash with people. Instead we need to think about ways to decarbonize… Japan tends to prioritize the economy over the environment and always has.
Jamie Robertson: Now I want to go to California and see if the feeling is any different there, Alison?
Alison van Diggelen: There is a change in mindset, the pandemic and climate change are connected: we’re united against a common enemy. And we are learning to work from home more and that’s having a positive impact on climate change and it’s going be a lasting legacy.
Today on Earth Day, it’s worth framing it like this: When Europeans came to The Americas, they brought smallpox and other diseases that decimated the Native American population because they didn’t have immunity. Now, the tables have turned: we humans are the invaders of the natural world. We’re now being exposed to wild animals’ pathogens; (from bats etc.) and we don’t have natural resistance. So it LOOKS like Mother Earth is fighting back. So I’m hoping, and I think many people are hoping, that this pandemic could stimulate a shift in mindset: we might become more inclined to protect rainforests, rethink farming and rethink our use of oil. If not, if we keep encroachment on wild areas, we could face more pandemics like this one.
Jamie Robertson: Robin, I imagine you’re not going along with that?
Robin Harding: I don’t feel this is the earth is sending us a message, that we’re doing something wrong (laughter)…
Jamie Robertson: There is the argument that if you put a large number of people in a small space: we have 8 billion people living on earth, you’re going to get more diseases. If you put fruit flies in a jam jar, they expend in number and then they die off…
Robin Harding: That’s belied by our actual experience. As we’ve become richer and more developed, we’ve succeeded in taming diseases. This disease came from a wild animal market that wasn’t properly regulated. So to me, the lesson is you need to regulate wild animal markets, not that you need to need to revert to nature.
Jamie Robertson: Alison, final word from you on this argument?
Alison van Diggelen: I appreciate your support here, Jamie. Arguably we’ve crossed a line here … and I don’t think regulation itself is going to help us.
*In 2019, during a must-read interview with the Washington Post, environmentalist and author, Bill McKibbon, famously said “Mother Nature is a very powerful educator.” Here at Fresh Dialogues, we couldn’t agree more.
Have you ever wondered how venture capitalists in Silicon Valley decide what startups to fund and what ones to skip? I had the opportunity to sit down with one of these “masters of the universe” and explore the secrets of venture capital. Scott Kupor is managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz (AH) – one of the most successful VC firms in the world – and we had a candid and lively discussion about the do’s and don’ts of pitching; lessons from Elon Musk’s entrepreneurial journey; diversity, bias and ethics; future trends; and when it’s OK to move fast and break things. Scott teaches at Stanford and Berkeley and has a new book out – Secrets of Sand Hill Road – that aims to demystify the VC mindset. The conversation took place in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club in Silicon Valley on June 10, 2019.
Listen to the Fresh Dialogues podcast:
Here are some highlights of our conversation (edited for length and clarity):
Re. Women in business, diversity and bias
Alison van Diggelen: Let’s talk about diversity: Julian Guthrie’s new book is just out – called Alpha Girls – it’s about four women who took on the Venture Capital “bad boys” and succeeded, despite the odds. There are some good lessons in there. It’s a very tough place to thrive as a woman. Less than 10% of decision makers in the venture capital world are women.
Scott Kupor: The number is about 10 or 12 %, depending how you cut the numbers, and about 2% of the funding going to female founders. It’s a real problem.
There are two types of bias: explicit bias, which clearly the #MeToo Movement exposed in a very horrible way. We have to root that stuff out. We need to shine the light on what was underground for many years. The more challenging problem is implicit bias…Whether I like it or not, I’m implicitly biased by the networks I came from. When I want to hire for a job, it’s more likely I go to people I know from Stanford. What we have to do is reach out to (other) networks. So we proactively send out job recs to MLT a group that works with African Americans who’re trying to get into business and financials; and we also have a Cultural Leadership Fund (at AH).
It’s a network connectivity problem. It’s going to take time, it’s a deep rooted problem.
Alison van Diggelen: How many general partners at Andreessen Horowitz are women?
Scott Kupor: 20%. Three out of fifteen are women. That’s only in the last two years. For the first eight years we did not have any female partners…We changed our criteria and opened up the funnel to have a more diverse talent pool.
Re: Ethics and moving fast and breaking things
Alison van Diggelen: Let’s talk about ethics: lessons learned from Theranos (the blood testing company that imploded). And Facebook: they used to have a mantra: Move fast and break things. They have been cavalier about sharing our personal data. How do you train your entrepreneurs to have ethics front and center?
Scott Kupor: I think there’s a difference between outright fraud – we can’t have behavior like that in this industry – and there is this idea that sometimes you have to push faster than sometimes is comfortable and you do break things sometimes and ask for forgiveness second. I think there are elements of that that are fine in this business. There’s a difference between committing crimes and defrauding people and are you just trying to move the ball quickly? You recognize there’s going to be iteration of products and sometimes you’re going to put stuff out that may not be perfect.
The big difference is: as companies mature it’s a bit of the Elon Musk question (we talked about earlier) – I think different standards of behavior are appropriate depending upon the size and maturity of these companies. Running fast and breaking things – and putting out half baked products – is not as unacceptable in the pure startup world where the scope of the harm potentially is smaller because you’re still dealing with small amounts of customers, but when you get to the scale of a Facebook, you have a different responsibility. Our best bet on our companies is to use our persuasive techniques to make them value these things. Over time, your level of responsibility changes, based upon your success. At some point in time you have to act like the navy – not a pirate – once you conquer the ship.
Alison van Diggelen: Are you saying it’s OK to be a pirate in the early stages of a startup?
Scott Kupor: It depends on what pirate means (audience laughter).
Fraud and misleading people is clearly not right. But the idea that you might enter into a market where you’re not exactly sure what the product should look like, you might have a theory on what your regulatory structure is, but you’re not 100% sure.
I’ll give you a great example: we’re investors in Airbnb and Lyft. These companies probably couldn’t have been successful if they’d asked for permission every time they went into a new market. You could argue that was unethical: They should’ve got permission first. The reality is, they said: we’re going to go into a new market, we believe we have a defensible theory that why what we’re doing is appropriate from a regulatory perspective, but we also know we’re likely to get challenged on that. But over time, if a consumer utility is big enough, there is a way to deal with these issues. So that’s my definition of a pirate: I think that’s reasonable acceptable behavior. Fraud and misleading people is not acceptable behavior.
Due to time constraints, the BBC wasn’t able to air all of the insights of the wise 19 year-old I interviewed, so I’m adding his wisdom at the end of this transcript and on the 
Finally: many thanks to the excellent production skills of the 
Scott Kupor: It depends on what pirate means (audience laughter).
