Narrator: Imagine a Thanksgiving dinner in Knoxville, Tennessee. Barbara, a mother of five grown men, is just trying to keep the peace. But it’s 2017, and the political air is electric. Soon, the simmering tensions between her sons boil over. An argument erupts, a bomb of political rage detonating at the dinner table. One family storms out. Two other sons leave in a huff. Daughters-in-law are left crying, comforting each other. Outside, a pregnant daughter-in-law weeps, her two-year-old trying to comfort her, saying, "Everything's gonna be all right." But it isn't. The family gathering is a disaster, shattered by a divide that feels impossible to cross.

This scene, and countless others like it playing out in families and friendships across the country, is the central crisis journalist Mónica Guzmán confronts in her book, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times. Guzmán, a liberal journalist whose own Mexican immigrant parents voted for Donald Trump, doesn't offer easy answers or debate tactics. Instead, she provides a roadmap for navigating these treacherous conversations, arguing that the only way through our division is not persuasion, but genuine, fearless curiosity.

Narrator: Before we can build bridges, we must first understand why they collapsed. Guzmán argues that our divisions are deepened by three powerful, often invisible, social forces she calls Sorting, Othering, and Siloing—an acronym that doubles as a distress signal: SOS.

She explains these concepts using the simple analogy of a house party. When you arrive, you naturally gravitate toward people you know or who seem like you. That’s Sorting. It’s our human tendency to seek out the familiar and comfortable. Then, you might consciously avoid a certain group in the corner because they seem loud, or you overheard a political comment you disagree with. That’s Othering—the act of creating an "us versus them" by pushing away those we see as different or opposed to us. Finally, as the night goes on, you spend all your time with your chosen group, reinforcing each other's jokes and views, your world shrinking to the size of your circle. That’s Siloing, where we become so entrenched in our own narratives that we can no longer hear, or even tolerate, alternative perspectives.

While these behaviors provide comfort and a sense of belonging, Guzmán warns they are steering us away from reality. They create echo chambers where our own beliefs are amplified and the humanity of those on the "other side" is diminished. We see this in stories like that of Sophia, a woman from Boston who lost deep friendships after her political views shifted, leaving her to feel that a "peaceful divorce" between red and blue America might be the only answer. The SOS framework reveals that our divisions aren't just about disagreement; they're about a social architecture that actively keeps us apart.

Narrator: If Sorting, Othering, and Siloing are the problem, Guzmán proposes a powerful antidote: curiosity. But it's a specific kind of curiosity, one that is not aimed at gathering ammunition for a debate, but at genuine understanding. This entire approach is captured in a single, transformative question: "What am I missing?"

This question is a tool for humility. It forces us to acknowledge that our perspective is incomplete. It shifts the goal from being right to getting it right. Guzmán points to people like Marcus, a young man in Portland who felt torn apart after the 2016 election. He described his internal state as having two modes: "political vigilance" to fight for his ideals, and "the need to understand" the other side. This internal conflict highlights the struggle many feel. The question "What am I missing?" helps reconcile these modes. It doesn't require abandoning our values, but it does demand we look beyond our own certainties.

Guzmán argues that misinformation isn't just the product of a culture that doesn't value truth. As she puts it, "It’s the product of a culture in which we’ve grown too afraid to turn to each other and hear it." Asking what we're missing is the first step in conquering that fear. It’s an invitation, both to ourselves and to others, to open a door that we may have sealed shut, allowing for the possibility of new information and, more importantly, a new perspective.

Narrator: A common mistake in difficult conversations is to focus on what a person believes. Guzmán urges us to dig deeper and get curious about why they believe it. People's convictions are not just abstract opinions; they are forged in the fires of personal experience, shaped by their core values, and held in place by their attachments to people and communities. To truly understand someone, we must understand the path they walked to arrive at their beliefs.

Guzmán uses a quote from the French film La Règle du Jeu to frame this idea: "On this earth, there is one terrible thing, and that is that everyone has their reasons." This is the core of the book's third part. It’s not about excusing harmful beliefs, but about understanding their origins.

This is powerfully illustrated in Guzmán's own story. On election night in 2020, she watched the results with her Trump-supporting parents. Amid arguments about race and immigration, her father shared a fear she had never considered. He said, "You know, Mónica, I’ve heard that some people who don’t share their parents’ politics . . . they stop letting them see their grandkids. And I’ve wondered if that’ll ever happen to us." In that moment, his political stance wasn't just an opinion; it was tied to a deep, personal fear of losing his family. Understanding that "why"—his fear, his values, his attachments—didn't change her political views, but it deepened her understanding of him as a person, making connection possible even in the face of profound disagreement.

Narrator: Curiosity opens the door, but it's honesty that allows us to walk through it together. Guzmán stresses that even the best questions are useless if people don't feel safe enough to give honest answers. This requires moving beyond just what people say to what they truly mean, and creating conversations where people can be vulnerable without fear of judgment.

She tells a simple but profound story to illustrate the danger of jumping to conclusions. A young boy runs out of a barn and tells his father he saw a man named Chuck and a woman named Susie about to urinate on the hay. The father laughs and says, "Son, you’ve got the right facts and the wrong conclusion." The boy had seen them dropping their pants and raising their skirts, but he completely misinterpreted their intentions. This is what happens in our political conversations all the time. We see a fact, a post, or a soundbite and draw a sweeping, often incorrect, conclusion about the other person's motives or character.

To avoid this, Guzmán says we must be clear and show our work, explaining the experiences and reasoning that led to our views. And we must create an environment of "containment," where the conversation is a safe space, not a battlefield. As she states, "If we’re not honest together, we’re not really together at all." True connection isn't built on winning an argument; it's built on the shared, honest exploration of how we each came to see the world the way we do.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from I Never Thought of It That Way is that understanding is not agreement. The goal of a curious conversation is not to convert the other person to your side, but to see the world through their eyes, even for a moment. It is to see their humanity, to understand their reasons, and to preserve the relationship that the division threatens to destroy. The strength of the bridges we build, Guzmán reminds us, lies in the people who cross them, not in the ideas they carry.

The book leaves us with a radical and deeply hopeful challenge: to operate from the belief that no one is beyond understanding. It asks us to stop seeing conversations as contests to be won and start seeing them as mysteries to be explored. So, the next time you encounter a view that makes you angry or confused, try asking yourself that simple, powerful question: "What am I missing?" You might just find yourself saying, "I never thought of it that way."