Pathways to Impact in Perilously Polarized Times

Sustain What?

Aired: June 2, 2021

A special Sustain What episode with two scientists, a journalist and a songwriter offering ways to navigate turbulence, polarization and disinformation with the fewest regrets.
Join Andy Revkin of Columbia’s Climate School with Carnegie Mellon philosopher Andy Norman; solution-focused journalist Amanda Ripley; Columbia University psychologist and conflict dissector Peter Coleman, and songwriter and storyteller Reggie Harris.
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Here's more on our guests:
- Peter T. Coleman, a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University, will discuss lessons from his new book, “The Way Out - How to Overcome Toxic Polarization.”
Coleman holds a joint appointment at Teachers College and the Earth Institute and directs two research centers. He is also the author of “Making Conflict Work: Harnessing the Power of Disagreement” (2014) and “The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts” (2011), among other books.
He says “The Way Out” is “about why we are stuck in our current cultural riptide and what we can do to find our way out. It will explain how patterns of intractable polarization can and do change, and offer a set of principles and practices for navigating and healing the more difficult divides in your home, workplace and community.”
Learn more: https://thewayoutofpolarization.com/
- Reggie Harris is a longtime folk singer and songwriter, storyteller and educator who has worked and sung for racial understanding, human rights and justice for decades. He’ll speak about his experiences at the interface of love and hate, Black and White and maybe sing a song or two.
He describes his new album, “On Solid Ground,” as a “call for personal and national grounding in the explosion of racial and civil unrest and the growing worldwide death spiral that was 2020.”
Explore Harris’s music, writing and activities: https://reggieharrismusic.com/
- Andy Norman teaches philosophy and directs the Humanism Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University. He says his focus is studying how ideologies short-circuit minds and corrupt moral understanding and developing tools that help people reason together in more fruitful ways.
Norman will describe insights offered in his new book, “Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think."
Learn more: https://andynorman.org/
- Amanda Ripley is a solutions-focused journalist and bestselling author who has become a champion of a new style of journalism sifting less for sound bites and more for pathways to insight amid complexity.
Her new book is “High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out.”
Here’s Ripley’s summary of this concept: “When we are baffled by the insanity of the ‘other side’—in our politics, at work, or at home—it’s because we aren’t seeing how the conflict itself has taken over. That’s what ‘high conflict’ does. People do escape high conflict. Individuals—even entire communities—can short-circuit the feedback loops of outrage and blame, if they want to. This is a mind-opening new way to think about conflict that will transform how we move through the world.”
Explore: https://amandaripley.com/high-conflict
Sustain What, produced and hosted by Andy Revkin, is a series of conversations seeking progress where complexity and consequence collide.