118 – Fearlessly Curious with Mónica Guzmán

Mónica Guzmán joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis as they reach across the political divide to explore how the Left and Right might better engage one another in respectful debate.  Mónica shares her experiences as a liberal living in deep, blue Seattle yet grappling with her immigrant parent’s support for Trump.  They also discuss the limitations of reason to resolve our differences, why viewing people as complex and not merely complicated helps us bridge divides, and why Mónica has hope for a brighter future.

 

About Mónica Guzmán

Per her website, Mónica Guzmán is Senior Fellow for Public Practice at Braver Angels, a nonprofit working to depolarize America, host of Crosscut’s interview series Civic Cocktail, and author of I Never Thought Of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.

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Moni was a 2019 fellow at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, where she studied social and political division, and a 2016 fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, where she studied how journalists can better meet the needs of a participatory public.

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Before committing to the project of helping people understand each other across the political divide, Mónica cofounded the award-winning Seattle newsletter The Evergrey and led a national network of groundbreaking local newsletters as VP of Local for WhereBy.Us.

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She was named one of the 50 most influential women in Seattle, served twice as a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes, and plays a barbarian named Shadrack in her besties' Dungeons & Dragons campaign.