It's my great pleasure, Hitendra.

It's a good question. What comes to mind just right in the moment is, I'm feeling very strangely hopeful, and I say that because I, like the rest of us, I've been in the valley of despair and hopelessness, working all my life on conflicts like in the Middle East, Ukraine or Venezuela, as an example, where I'm working today and there's a lot of grounds for feeling despair, for feeling hopeless, for feeling like, “Wow, the world's actually backsliding from where we were.” And I think there's a certain truth in that. At the same time, the reason I'm feeling strangely hopeful is I feel like we're on a razor's edge where the possibilities are expanding, and that includes the negative possibilities. With humanity right now, we're on the edge. If I was a martian anthropologist, as I like to imagine myself sometimes looking down and trying to understand this species, this tribe of ours, I would say, “Wow, they can do so much. They can do almost anything. They're so creative. And with collaboration they can do almost anything.” There's no problem on the planet, whether it's war, whether it's disease, whether it's climate, whether it's inequity or anything, we could address effectively. But there's one thing in the way, which is we're having some difficulty getting along with each other. That is what makes me hopeful that actually, while there are a lot of negative possibilities, we could end up with a world that we would not want our children and grandchildren to grow up in. Or, there are a lot of positive possibilities, and those positive possibilities give me a kind of hope that is not wishful thinking. That's not kind of like the Christmas wishes of peace on earth, but realistic, deeply practical, deeply realistic, where it's the hope that's on the other side of hopelessness. It's on the hope that's grounded, that's tangible, and that's based in reality. I think there's a beautiful thing in your Intersections podcast, which is a marriage of the inner and the outer. That's where I believe the hope comes from.

I love that quote, Hitendra. Just repeat that quote once more. I think it's worth actually really pondering.

It's so interesting. I could not resonate more deeply with that piece of wisdom from Gandhi. Because that's what I feel. I feel like when it comes to the question of war and peace, we use maybe and I'm being generous here, 10% of our capacity. If we just went to 20%, we’d be doubling our capacity. But we could go so much further. And that's why, in a funny, strange way, in this turbulent world, I have an odd feeling sometimes that peace has never been closer. Right now it seems like the most impossible dream. And yet I feel actually, practically not only is it possible, it's absolutely necessary if we're going to survive and thrive as a species. I think Einstein put it after World War II. He said, “There's a race now between technological abilities, which create enormous constructive outcomes, but are enormously destructive at the same time, like the nuclear weapon and our moral, social, emotional capacities to live with each other.” And there's a race. Our technological capacities clearly are shooting ahead. The challenge for us is to take that same creativity that goes into our new technologies, that same collaboration, that same curiosity, that spirit of possibility. That's what I wrote my book about possible and apply it to unleashing our natural, inherent human potential to transform conflicts. If we can do that, the sky's the limit.

I think your surmise is correct. Ever since I was a boy, I think I've sat with this question of how are we all going to get along? How are we going to live together? I was exposed early on to children of many different cultures, many different faiths, and also growing up as a child of the atomic bomb where, at any moment, some decision in Moscow or Washington could just wipe out the future of humanity and life on Earth. And so it left me with that deep question. Naturally, I think I've always looked for what realistically is going to take. And I went from anthropology, which was really trying to understand our species and understand where we are in our story, where we are in our evolution. At this moment this is the key question, and then very practically into negotiation of how to do this. Negotiation is behavioral. It in some ways is outer. Then always looking for how this works? How does getting this work in the most difficult situations?

What I found over the years maybe, is that the single biggest obstacle to us getting what we want in any negotiation is not what we think it is. I've worked a lot on how do you deal with difficult people, how do you deal with difficult dictators, how do you deal with the most difficult situations. But what I found is actually the most difficult person I have to deal with that gets in the way, is the person I look at in the mirror every morning. It's me. It's ourselves. It's our own very understandable, very natural, very evolutionary tendency to react. In other words, to act without thinking, without pausing, without reflecting on where our true interest is.

As the old saying goes, “When you are angry, you will make the best speech you will ever regret.” And I find myself falling into that pitfall, and I find a lot of people around me falling into that trap. So for me, that's where it began, I realized we needed something more. That's why I started to play around more with this metaphor of going to the balcony. It's almost like you're imagining that negotiation is taking place on a stage. You and the other person, and perhaps a lot of other characters and everyone's in a tussle of some kind. Part of you goes to a mental, emotional, dare I say, to a spiritual balcony, a place of perspective overlooking the stage, a place of calm and serenity where you can ask the fundamental question, what do I really want? Where can you keep your eyes on the prize? That ability in a world right now where we've got all these things and we're getting emails, texts and WhatsApps and all, where it's an incredibly reactive world where our nervous systems, where violence anywhere reverberates everywhere. Our individual nervous systems, our collective nervous systems are on high alert. There's a lot of anger and fear going through our collective consciousness. It is so important to balance that with whatever our practices are for going to the balcony, whether it's pausing and taking a deep breath and getting a little oxygen in our brain, whether it's meditating. My favorite activity is to go for a walk in nature, if I can, every single day. Because nature co-regulates our nervous system, it brings a feeling of awe. I find awe is one of the best antidotes to all the turmoil, violence and the destructive conflict in the world. It reminds us that no matter what appears on the surface to divide us as human beings, what unites us is far greater and infinitely greater.

Yes exactly. It's a balcony stage. Let me give you a story from my own experience. That for me was a deep learning experience. It was about 23 years ago, actually. Jimmy Carter, whom you mentioned, had called me up and asked me if I would go down to the country of Venezuela, which is now so much in the news at this moment today. Venezuela, at that point, as it is today, was bitterly polarized as our country is here in the United States. There were a million people on the streets of the capital, Caracas, demanding the resignation of the president Hugo Chavez and predecessor Maduro. There were a million people on the streets supporting him. There were fights breaking out, and international observers were worried that it would break out into a civil war. I went down there and I spent quite a bit of time working there. At one point, I was able to have a conversation with Chavez himself, thanks to President Carter’s introduction, and I think my 3rd or 4th meeting with him, he liked to meet at night with a set for 9 p.m. in his palace. I went to his palace with my colleague Francisco and waited patiently till 10:00, 11:00 and midnight. Finally, 3 hours later, we're ushered in to see the president expecting to find him completely alone. But in fact, he had his entire cabinet arrayed behind him. They'd been having a late night cabinet meeting, and he motioned me to a chair and he said, “So, professor, what's your opinion of what's going on? What's your sense of what's happening in this country?” And I looked at him and I looked at the ministers and said, “Mr. President, I've been talking to some of your ministers here, and I've been talking to some of the leaders of the opposition, and I believe actually they're making a little progress.”

Well, progress was not the word he wanted to hear. He just flew into a tirade and he kind of leaned into my face very close. I could feel almost his hot breath and some of the spittle. And he said, “Are you crazy? Are you not seeing the dirty tricks those traitors on the other side are up to? You third parties are so naive?” And he just exploded with anger. It was one of those moments where we all have, your client is exploding at you, a boss is exploding at you, a parent is exploding at you. Where you see your life flash before your eyes. At that moment, I was, of course, taken aback. I was utterly surprised. I wasn't expecting to find a cabinet meeting and this kind of explosion. But at that moment, I remembered the balcony. It's what you're talking about, the inner and the outer. Outer on the stage there, I'm thinking to myself, I have a quick look from the stage there to the balcony and I could see, wow, I'm feeling all my work in Venezuela down the tubes. I looked at my little inventory of my emotions, there was embarrassment. There was some shame. Being humiliated in front of the whole thing. I could feel some sadness and all that work down the tubes and whatever. You could just see all that. I could feel some defensiveness. What am I going to say now? I'm not naive. What's my comeback? And then, maybe some anger. All of that, that stew. That's inside of all of us. In that moment, by naming it, by recognizing it, by listening to those emotions, just even briefly, their impact on me, not dissolved but diminished, I would say. Then I could ask myself the magic question of going to the balcony, which is, what do I really want here? What's my goal? What's my objective? What's my aim? What am I here for? I'm here for peace. And then I could ask myself, is it really going to advance the situation if I get into an argument with the president of Venezuela and I could say no. So then I could bite my tongue and just focus on listening to him. And I could listen to him because I had first listened to myself.

There was actually a friend of mine, he was a wise elder from Ecuador. He said to me, “William, if you're ever in a tough situation, pinch the palm of your hand.” And I said to him, “Hernan, why would I pinch the palm of my hand?” And he said, “Well, because it will give you a little pain. It will make you momentarily alert.” It was a balcony technique. At that moment when I pinched the palm of my hand and I held it steady for 30 minutes, Chavez continued to rage at me, and I was just watching him from the balcony. That little bit of perspective, as if it's a play. As if life is a play. As if negotiation is a play. And after about 30 minutes, I watched his shoulders slowly sink into his body language, and in a very kind of weary tone of voice, he said to me, “So, Ury, what should I do?” And that, my friends, is the faint sound of a human mind opening. That's the moment. Before that if I tried anything, when he was in a rage, it's like trying to reason with rage, it's not a winning ticket. But at that moment, I could propose to him that maybe the whole country would go to the balcony. But I said to him, “Mr. President, it's almost Christmas time. Everyone's exhausted from this conflict. The festivities for Christmas have been canceled. Why not a truce? Why not just give people a month, go enjoy the holidays with your families. And in January, maybe everyone will be in a better mood to listen to each other.” He looked at me for a moment and clapped me on the back and said, “Excellent idea. I'm going to propose that in my next speech.”

His mood had completely shifted, and in that moment, I learned that maybe the greatest power that we have as negotiators is the power not to react, power to change the game. It's the power to go to the balcony. It's the power to harness the inner to deal with the outer. By myself going to the balcony, just that inner move, curiously enough, I was able to help him by listening to him. Help him go to the balcony and by him going to the balcony, by proposing a truce, he was able to help the entire country go to the balcony. That's the way inner work leads to systemic change.

I did this move many times, including with my own daughter. There's no more difficult negotiations in the family context. I've fallen off. I learned to go to the balcony. It doesn't mean that I don't fall off the balcony, as we all know we do. There's nothing more triggering than the situation. The more internal the conflict I find the more difficult.

It's so interesting, with business executives or any leader, I often ask, there are 2 kinds of negotiations, the external negotiations with clients, suppliers and banks and whatever, and then the internal negotiations with your colleagues, your partners and your employees. Which do you find personally more difficult? And almost all the hands go up for internal negotiations.

Then if you take a step further to me with my daughter or you with your daughter, or you take family business negotiations, where it's inside, it's family, they can be the trickiest. And then, of course, the hardest internal negotiation is with yourself.

That's it. That's such a beautiful story, Hitendra. I'm glad you completed the story, because that's the lesson. It's not incumbent upon us to tell others to get to the balcony. It's incumbent upon us. What I found is that we shift from within. It creates an environment in which the other side can shift from within. We're speaking of old fables and so on. Do you remember the ancient Greek fable, Aesop's fable of the quarrel, between the wind and the sun?

In this Aesop's fable, the wind and the sun one day were quarreling about who's more powerful. The wind was saying how more powerful the north wind and the sun was saying, I'm more powerful. So they decided to put it to a test to challenge. They looked down from high in the heavens, and they spied a wandering shepherd boy. And they decided that their test would be who would be so powerful as to pluck the cloak off the shepherd boy's back? The north wind went first. It goes and blows. The more the wind blows, the more the shepherd boy wraps the cloak tightly around the shoulders. After about 15 minutes, the north wind takes a pause to breathe. And it's the sun's turn. The sun just basks the boy in warmth. It's a beautiful, warm day. Finally the boy says, it's such a beautiful day. I think I'm going to lie down in the grass and get a little sun bath. As he lies down in the grass, he takes his cloak off.

In that fable, the sun shows itself to be more powerful. And as in a lot of fables, I believe there's a deep underlying wisdom. What you see is two different theories of change, two different theories of how you change someone's mind. There's the North Wind model, which is we blow and blow, we put a lot of pressure. And of course, the more pressure we put on someone, like you might have put on your daughter, like I put on mine in a lot of situations, the more that person instinctively resists. So you end up at a standoff.

The sun has a very different model of influence, which is, it doesn't try to change the mind by putting pressure. It basically creates an environment. A favorable environment in which the other side decides from inside themselves to change their minds. That's what your daughter did when she came back and said daddy. She had a chance. By doing our inner work, we create an outer environment in which the other side can do a little bit of inner work. That's how we get breakthroughs.

Wow! That's quite an amazing fact. It's quite an amazing metaphor for us.

I love that metaphor because it suggests our potential. The deeper we can go into our own core, the more light, the more power, the more potential we can unleash that can warm our lives.

I love that. Abraham Lincoln actually once called the better angels of our nature, inside of everyone bar none. I've seen the most remarkable transformations that take place. If you just come as a schoolmaster, pointing out where they're wrong and so on, in my experience, you're not going to get that far.

The first time I met with Chavez, just to pick up that story, I didn't know if I was going to have 5 minutes with him. President Carter had said, a courtesy call. And I showed up at his palace, I'm a Yankee. I am an academic. He's a political leader. When I showed up in the palace, there were literally hundreds of people waiting to see the president because he was the one who could make everything happen. He was that kind of leader. So I waited, and when I was ushered in to see him. Maybe a week before, I was in Brazil and I heard a song. The song actually had a line that I thought was so powerful and it said, “Do not give advice to those who don't want to hear.” And I thought, “Wow! That's a powerful line because that's exactly what I was about to do.” That's what we do. You got 5 minutes and that’s the most intelligent thing you can say. And I thought, no. I'm going to take a risk here. I'm going to go in there, and I'm not going to tell him what he should do. I'm going to go in there and just connect with his core. Like you were just indicating. Just connect with him as a human being. I researched it deeply. I'm not going to give him advice until he asks me for advice. If he doesn't ask me for advice, then that's fine. Part of me was saying, you're going to waste this opportunity. I'll take the risk. I went in there and I said, “We both have 3 year old daughters,” just to connect with him. I brought him President Carter's warm greetings. But when I studied him before and I found out what's his dream, what's at the core of him? He dreamed of somehow being the savior of his country by being like Simon Bolivar, who was the kind of the George Washington of Latin America. That was his dream. So I said to him, “There were giant paintings of Simon Bolivar in the presidential office.” I pointed to Simon Bolivar, and I said, “I've been reading a biography of him,” which is true. And he said, “Oh, Simon.” He just lit up. It was like straight to his core.

He said, “Simon is why I'm here.” Then he proceeded to tell me his whole life story because he had been in the military. In the military, they'd been called out to suppress food riots over the price of food. And Simon Bolivar had said, “Never open up fire on your own countrymen.” When he realized that, then he went into active opposition and he actually mounted a coup, and then he went into prison and he came out and he ran for president. When he told me this whole story, I think it took 45 minutes. He was speaking from his dream, his core that inspired him. Then he said to me, “Okay, so you're here. How would you handle the situation if you were me?” He was asking me for advice. I connected with his core, rather than coming in and telling him what I thought was best. He was then asking for that. That's the key. Then that conversation went on and led to other conversations. But the key was not telling him what to do, but listening. And to me, listening to the core, to the dream of that person is the key for transformation.

One of the things I found as an anthropologist and what I've loved about this field is, when I was a student looking for practice, I started mediating disputes between the landlord and tenant, or someone who took the rug into the dry cleaner and whatever small claims. Then working with coal miners and their grievances against their foreman and, then families. You might think of high level disputes. But the thing is, everyone's human and it's basically the same thing. Of course there are differences. There are a lot of differences in context and everything. In the end, it's profoundly psychological. We often think a negotiation is “Oh, that's when I'm selling a house or making a contract.” No. I asked people, if I just defined negotiation very simply and broadly, it's the active back and forth communication. You're trying to reach an agreement with someone. You may have some interests which you hold in common, like an ongoing family relationship. In that broader sense, who do you negotiate with during the course of your day? And people say they always start with my kids, my spouse, my neighbors, my boss, my colleagues at work, my clients, and they go on. Then I ask people, I say, “So in that broad sense, how much of your time are you spending negotiating?” And people say, “Well, it's 50% of my time. It's all of my time.” In that broad sense, this is something that's human. And the basic same principles apply. It's like this is a core human activity. We're engaged in a lot of our time, if not most of our time, if not all of our time. And so it cuts across family, work, community, all the way to the global and the same principles of going to the balcony, with your daughter or my daughter applies like you're dealing with Hugo Chavez. Maybe the biggest people would also say, “Well, what's the most important skill for a negotiator?” What I would always say for a long time is the ability to put yourself in the other person's shoes, which applies as much in the family as it does with a client.

But understanding that negotiation is an exercise and influence, you're trying to change someone else's mind. How can you possibly change someone else's mind? How can we do that unless we know where that mind is or where the heart is?

The principles that I've found work in every single domain of life and that's what we're being called upon is, right now in the evolution of the species at this particular moment is it's calling on us to go to the balcony, which is to go to the inner and then back to the outer in order then to be able to turn family disputes, which right now are rampant. Then what happens is the family right now is getting married with the politics of it. We just went to Thanksgiving. And you're there and people have very different views and very emotional views about what's happening in this country.

I find there are no boundaries, just like you say in your podcast here, the boundaries are entirely diffused. This is something where and what we're being invited to as human beings right now is to make a choice. Because for me, peace is not some fairy outcome in the future. It's a choice that we can make in the present moment. It simply means, how am I going to deal with the situation? Am I going to deal with the situation reactively and destructively, as I might feel like doing? Or am I going to go to the balcony and choose a more constructive way? For example, I would say, the most important behavior for putting yourself in their shoes is to listen. Listening is so much more important for me than talking when it comes to negotiation. If you observe successful negotiators, they listen more than they talk. Why is that? Because in listening, you're putting yourself in the other side’s shoes, you're learning about them. You're learning and you're signaling respect. You were listening with your daughter. I was listening to Chavez. That quality of listening transformed the situation and created the possibility for a breakthrough, like you had with your daughter, like I had with Chavez. This cuts across all domains. Nothing that I'm saying is rocket science. It’s an inherent human capacity that we all have, every human being has that we're simply unleashing.

Yeah. For sure. I love your Ukrainian barber. What's become increasingly clear to me is that negotiation or conflicts, for example, seems like an outside phenomenon and it is an outside phenomenon in one sense, but it's an inside game. Negotiation is an inside game. Peace is an inside game. Life is an inside game. It's an inside-out game. It starts from the core and it goes out. And if we appreciate that, interestingly enough, we empower ourselves because of the question of responsibility. If I take responsibility even for things that I don't seem to be responsible for. I just take responsibility for my life. That doesn't mean blame. Responsibility is not blame. It just means I take responsibility for my attitude towards it, for how I am going to respond. My ability to respond. I take responsibility for that. If we do that, we give ourselves power. Because if we blame it, which is so much the attitude these days. If you look at politics, if you look at the media, it's just all to blame. Who is to blame for that apple juice spilling? Blame. I know that, because I grew up in a family where there was a lot of blame. I was educated in a school where there was blame, there's pointing the finger.

It's a blame game. But the thing is, I get blamed and I blame back. It's just so natural and it just happens everywhere. If I choose to take responsibility, that doesn't mean I'm blaming myself because there's a lot of self-blame going on, too. Blame triggers so much because I've got a lot of self-judgment and that blame triggers my own self-judgment. And they say that if you're pointing a finger, you've got 3 fingers pointing back at you.

But if we can transform that and take responsibility and say I'm responsible, then suddenly I've got power. Then I can choose how I respond. From that power, I can change my own attitude towards it. I can change the relationship with the other. And so, so much begins with that simple recognition that the blame game doesn't further my objectives. It’s actually self-sabotage.

I remember, 40 years ago I was at Harvard and we were bringing US and Soviet officials together for quiet, confidential conversations. It was the height of the Cold War. Even though it was amazing that we were able to bring them together, the conversations all started with blame. You’ve done this and you've done that, and everyone was shaking their finger at each other and reacting to the blame and the other side’s blame. One time we did this, I was in charge of setting the agenda. The first session of this 2-day meeting, I called it mutual accusations, and I scheduled it for 06:30 in the morning on the first day, and then after breakfast at 9:00, would be another subject. And it was funny, but everyone got there. Let's recognize we're going to have mutual accusations. Now let's talk about the real thing. If you want to get up early and accuse the other, something like that. We need to do that in some sense. It's a shift in which we empower ourselves to take control of our lives.

The golden bridge, actually is a metaphor I took from Sun Tzu, who was a Chinese strategist 2,500 years ago. We talked about building your adversary a golden bridge to retreat across. For me, what I took was the essence of that, which is how do you build the other side a golden bridge to advance across? To advance across towards an agreement, for example, that serves both of you and serves the larger community too? Because so often in negotiation, and the prerequisite for building bridges, you have to be able to go to the balcony so that you are at your best. You're empowered, you've got perspective, and so on. You're non-reactive at that moment. Because so often when it comes to conflict, we're here and the other side is way over there. And there's this huge chasm between where you are and where the other side is, and that chasm is filled with unmet needs, fear, self-doubt, fear of looking bad, there's trauma. There's so many things like chasms. It's like a Grand Canyon often. It feels like there is no way to span that chasm, like the political chasm right now in this country, or between Ukraine and Russia, or between the Israelis and Palestinians. You take your pick. There's a chasm.

The whole arc of building a golden bridge is to, for a moment, leave where your mind is. We're on this side of the chasm. Leave where your mind is. Respect that, you know what you want and so you've done that work from the balcony. You figured out what you really want. But for a moment leave where your mind is and step to the other side of the chasm. Put yourself in the shoes of the other, as difficult as that might be. Try to understand where they're coming from and then start the conversation from where they are, building them a bridge over that chasm in the direction you want them to go. The art of building a golden bridge is, instead of making it hard for the other side, which is what we do often in conflict. We see our job as making it easy for them, as easy as possible for them to make the decision you want them to make. And for me, the iconic exercise of that which I always love in any difficult situation is, I like to write their victory speech. Not my victory speech, but their victory speech.

In other words, let's say it's my boss. I’m asking for a raise or whatever the situation is, but let's just take that one because it's an ordinary one. And I think to myself, I want the boss to give me a raise. The budget's tough. How's the boss going to justify it to their boss? What's the speech they're going to give to their constituency? Or how's the politician, the political leader, going to speak to their voters? Or whoever their constituency is? Imagine that they agree to what you want them to agree. Now imagine that they then have to justify it as a victory for their side. It's a union leader, back to the union members or whatever it is. Write their victory speech. Write just the 3 key points. What could they say in which they justify having accepted your proposal? How do they then sell it to their constituency? You write their victory speech. For example, you write Putin's victory speech, in which he agrees to a ceasefire and settlement. Or you write Zelensky's victory speech. And if you just go through that exercise, that's the art of building your golden bridge, you put yourself in their shoes.

For example, in 2017 when President Trump became president for the first time, President Obama handed him a foreign policy challenge that he said was the biggest, most dangerous situation the United States was facing, which was the North Korean Kim Jong Un was busily developing nuclear weapons and nuclear missiles and threatening the United States. And Trump said it will not happen. And then began to hurl insults at each other, fire and fury and little Rocket Man, and actually experts, including in the military and in diplomacy began to think there's a like a 50% chance that we're going to go to a nuclear war for the first time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So, I got alarmed and I began by just sitting down and could I write President Trump's victory speech? What would he say in which he said there was no war? We're going to decide not to go down this path of nuclear escalation. And could you write Kim Jong Un's victory speech? For Trump, it wasn't that hard. It was like he needed to be able to say, “I made the best deal ever.” I saved the world, basically. Second thing was, I kept America safe. Safety and security. And the third was, I didn't spend a penny. That was my first cut.

For Kim, almost no one knew anything about Kim. He was a relatively young leader, he was in his mid-30s, and no one really knew much about him. But it seemed like the first thing he would care about is safety. I kept my family safe. I kept my regime safe. Second thing would be, we're finally getting respect. We're finally getting the respect we deserve because we've been heavily stigmatized. Then the third would be, we'll be the next Asian tiger economy or something like that.

I read the speeches, and then I looked at what were the different proposals that they could make to de-escalate this. And you could see that actually it would be possible for both to give those speeches. That's the beginning of how you build a golden bridge, it's by listening. Working behind the scenes, sure enough, that happened, which is in a very surprising move, both leaders met in Singapore and they reached some kind of agreement. Did it end the problem? No. But they both then made their victory speeches very much along those lines, President Trump tweeted, Americans don't have to be worried anymore. Kim tweeted this and a 50% risk of nuclear war went down to maybe 1%.

That's the art of building the other side of a golden bridge.

Yeah, that's a good question. I would say the first thing is to take care of ourselves. In this world, as you mentioned, we're being trained and the kind of technology that we have is accentuating our reactiveness. I have a friend who's a neuroscientist, Jill Bolte Taylor. She's well known because she had a stroke many years ago and it paralyzed the left side of her brain, and then she took 8 years to recover. But she has a very interesting model of the brain. Basically left and right, as we know. The left side of the brain sees things as very separate and everything separate, that's where the ego lives and so on. And then there's the right side of the brain where everything is connected, and we parallel process, but it's not just left and right, it's thinking and feeling. What she advocates beautifully is the whole brain. We need the whole brain. We need the left feeling part of our brain, which is mediated often through the left part of our amygdala, those emotions of fear, anger and hatred and all the things you're talking about, those judgments. That plays a role. It plays a role of keeping us safe and protecting us. It's kind of evolutionary there.

Then on top of that, there's a left thinking part of the brain, which is what we're using most of the time. We're a very left-thinking kind of culture, that's how we get things done. We need that too. But right now we have a system, and we have technology that tends to emphasize the left emotional and the left thinking part of the brain, which drives separation. There is the right part of the brain, which is the right thinking part of the brain, the part of us that's aware, it's the balcony. We can see the larger picture perspective. We can see how connected we are as we know, scientifically and anthropologically we are. You can see that. It's the moments in meditation or walking or taking a breath. Then there's the right feeling part of the brain, which is love and music and dance and all the things. But it's all connected. What we need is a conversation among all 4 parts. What you're talking about with technology is there's technologies that emphasize the feed of the left feeling. I don't like that. I don't like that judgment, that kind of thinking.

What we need to do as a society and individually is make sure that we're feeding all 4 parts and thinking who's in control. I like to think of it like, who's in the front seat and who's in the back seat, who's got the driver's wheel. If the driver's wheel is the fear part of our brain, we're going to end up with road rage. And so I think, in order to be happy, to be content in life to satisfy our needs, to be successful either in the family or the business, or to actually have peace in the world, we we need to learn increasingly to go to the balcony, which is step back, go from the left to the right, and then back from the right to the left. We need that dance and it's available. It's entirely possible. By taking care of ourselves, we cultivate what you're calling the soft heart that we can bring in service of making sure that we're living our lives and that we're helping others around us in the way that we would like in releasing our innate human possibility, which is very practical.

The interesting thing for me because a lot you talk about is the power of the inner, the power of the spiritual. What I found as an anthropologist wandering around the world in some of the world's most difficult places, I just came back from a month in the Middle East, and I've been to Ukraine and so on and in those places is to test out what seemed to be soft methodologies, but in the most unforgiving environment, which is these deep human conflicts of how do we transform them? And all I can say as a wandering scientist, as a wandering anthropologist, that after all of these situations, I still have this hope that's not wishful thinking. But on the other side of having been immersed in all these difficult situations that human beings were capable of it. We can do it. I've seen it happen with my own eyes. That's why I call myself a possibilist.

People often ask me, after all these years, are you an optimist? Are you a pessimist? And I say, actually, I'm a possibilist. I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but I believe in human possibility because I've seen it.

When I was a graduate student, the Berlin Wall was there, the Cold War was there. People were saying the Cold War would go on for generations. It shifted and I watched, I went back and forth between Washington and Moscow and saw all that happened. People said Catholics and Protestants will kill each other in Northern Ireland, and I saw that transform. I've worked more recently in Columbia with a 50 year Civil War and hundreds of thousands dead and millions of victims. I saw how that transformed and in countless other situations, in business situations and family situations. So I know the human capacity to transform, and I know it's inherent in each one of us. That's the real opportunity today to take the beauty of the inner, infuse it into the outer. Just like in that story from Yogananda of the king with the oil, the ability to do both. It's inner work, outer world work or outer work, outer systemic work, changing systems, whether it's family systems, work systems or economic systems or political systems, it's a combination of both. It's the dance of both, where possibility lies.

Exactly. Tales full of sound and fury.

That's it. It was so embedded in our culture and in European culture. Now it's become faintly ridiculous. I have a feeling that there's just a possibility that a generation or two from now, people might look back at war right now and see the same thing. Why would you handle your differences that way when there's so much more effective ways and better ways in which everyone does much better? It's ridiculous. They would look back on us and the way we look back on dueling. Back to Lincoln, one way that he showed the future of what it takes towards the end of the civil war, not long before he was killed. He was in the White House, and he was talking about how we bind the wounds of our nation. How do we bring the North and the South together back into the union? How do we take care of the orphans and the widows? The themes that animated his second inaugural address. He was reflecting deeply on it. One day he was talking about that in The White House, and there was a Yankee patriot who went up to him and said, “Mr. President, how dare you speak kindly of our enemies when you ought to be thinking of exterminating them?” And Lincoln paused for a moment, went to the balcony and he came back and said, “Madam, do I not destroy my enemy when I turn them into my friend?” That's the art of building the other side of a golden bridge. That's what requires a balcony. It’s that art of destroying our enemies by turning them into partners. Whether it's our friend in the family, whether it's our business partner, whether it’s on the international scene, is to really learn from Lincoln that art of destroying our enemies by turning them into our friends.

Well, we've been talking about it all along, but I'll bring it out. One thing I've noticed is the way we approach any conflict, whether it's between husband and wife or between union and management or whether it's between Israelis and Palestinians, Democrats and Republicans, we always approach conflict as if there's two sides. And the question is, which side are you on? What I've learned as an anthropologist actually from spending time with a lot of the indigenous cultures is, what they recognize is they're not just two sides. There's always a third side. What is that third side? The third side is not just neutral. It's not just the mediator. It's the side of the whole. It's the side of the community. It's the side of the kids. It's the side of the future. In a divorce like situation, the kids are the third side. They represent the third side.

I can give you an example. Back in the late 90s, there was a lot of tension between Democrats and Republicans in Congress, the impeachment of Clinton. They weren't talking to each other, and they were insulting each other, somewhat familiar. The leaders of the House decided to have a retreat, where they invited a couple hundred members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats. I was present as one of the facilitators. We had an after dinner where we broke up into small groups, and I had 4 Republicans and 4 Democrats for an after dinner conversation about how do you mend the fence here? There was some anger and some resentment and the spouses were saying, “Our spouses never got home because they were up late at night and weekends” and there's a lot of grousing going on in the circle. I was asking them how it was going. It was late, and one of the members, a woman who apologized and said that she hadn't been able to find a babysitter for her baby. So she said, “Would you mind?” We were sitting around in a circle and she put the baby right in the middle of the circle. A 6 month old baby. This baby was gurgling and the conversation instantly shifted. We just went to a different tone. When they cut the tone, the tone of the conversations changed and they started sharing stories about the toll. The toll had taken, but from their hearts, from more the core.

I asked them how they got into politics and one shared a vulnerable story about how he had cheated in high school and the principal had said this could be the best day of your life or the worst day of your life. You get to decide. And the tone entirely shifted. Why? Because the third side was there. The third side was the representative of the future of America. What I find is that in indigenous societies, when there's a conflict, the whole community gets around in a circle around the campfire and they talk. They'll talk and they'll listen to each other for however long it takes. The mobilization of that third side to me is key to the transformation of difficult conflicts. It's not just neutrals. It's not just mediators. It's friends from the parties. People who come together, a family for example.

When two members are having trouble, to bring them together, to have them sit down, to hold them, to contain them. I find that the safe space that's created by the third side, the actually the lead of destructive conflict can be turned into the gold of conciliation and negotiation. The ultimate third side, of course, is what you refer to as the source of us all. That's the third side.

To me, the secret to peace in the end, after spending 50 years looking for the secret to peace turns out to be us. The problem is us, and the secret to peace is us, which is our ability to remember the whole, to remember the community, to remember whether it's the business or the family, or it's the nation or whether it's the world, is to remember that and very practically bring the parties together, hold them, embrace them until the situation shifts. You see that happen in families, you see it happen in world politics. The third side is a kind of social immune system, in which we're all part of that. In that immune system, it allows us to deal with the viruses and to prevent the viruses from becoming diseases or to heal those diseases. That's what conflict is. Conflict is a little bit like a virus. Violence is a virus. We need that communal system to do that. That's the challenge for us these days in the United States, for example, is to build a third side.

Business, for example, is a natural third side in the United States. Labor is a natural third side. The communities of faith are a natural third side. Right now we have these two opposing poles, but basically maybe 10% of the population on each side are in real polarization. But the great majority of Americans are what are called the exhausted majority. And if we can activate them, we can activate ourselves. We can create a community, embrace the two poles and say, we need a right and we need a left. I need a right arm and a left arm for the body to work. Let's work together as Americans.

That's it. That's the baby in the middle. I was in Brazil last month. I went to visit a school in a very poor neighborhood where there's quite a bit of criminality and violence in this community. The kids who are 9 and 10 year olds were just electrified by learning to sit down and mediate their differences. They showed me how they did it. They actually demonstrated it. That program started last year, it is now in 37 schools going to another 33 schools. I was so touched by these kids. They even composed a song about it and it was just a natural thing. I saw 3 kids and the mediator. She listens to the 3 of them. Repeat what they hear. They feel heard. They feel seen. She says, “How are we going to solve this problem?” Someone stole someone else's pencil box and then they say, “Well, it's not right. Let me apologize.” They get up and they all hug each other. That's the future. That's it. It's kids. I realize all my life I've been engaged in remedial education, teaching negotiation to adults. It’s kids who can learn this. That's the future. It's for the kids. It's by the kids. And that's what gives me hope.

No, I'm not.

Without question. I mean, actually if you look at broad indicators, despite all the bad news right now, if you step back, has there ever been a time when human beings have lived longer? More human beings have been healthier, have had access to all that? We're in the best time that human beings have ever lived in terms of the average human being around the planet. And of course, that doesn't deny all the problems that we have. Peace, for example, we think, maybe people are making more everywhere. But if you look around the world today. In New York City or anywhere where you are, all the human interactions, what percentage of them are violent or destructive? You look around, you're there with your Ukrainian barber. If you look around the street, there's immense amounts of cooperation, 90-95% of human interactions, people are taking care of their babies. They're taking their kids to school. They're going to work. They're working with each other. A small percentage of human reaction is what we call war or even destructive conflict. So we're not talking about going from 0 to 100. We're talking about going from 90 or 95 to 99. We can do it.

For sure. Well, my greatest teacher in life is my daughter, Gabi. She was born with a lot of congenital challenges and anomalies with a rare congenital syndrome that basically meant she had to have surgeries on just about every system and organ of her body, from her spinal cord to her spine to her legs. So she went through that kind of life. She never wanted to be treated any differently than anyone else. She really didn't like that at all. She aspired early on to be in the Guinness Book of World Records. One day, when she was 9, she tried out for the longest hopscotch course. She would always try out for things. She tried out for volleyball, even though she was much smaller than the other kids and so on. She couldn't run very well. The teacher sent off the kids for a run. But Gabi couldn't run. She said, “Gabi, why don't you just do the plank?” where you lie down on the floor and you hold your body straight on your elbows. When the other girls came back, Gabi was doing the plank. It had been like 5 or 6 minutes. The teacher was surprised that she was still able to do the plank. Gabi rode her way to the Guinness Book of World Records longest female abdominal plank was 40 minutes. You got to hold that. I tried to do the plank. I don't know if you've tried to do it, but it's a standard exercise or yoga move. But, I could hold it for maybe a minute before I started to shake.

Gabi began training after her next surgery and then and then on her 16th birthday, she decided that she was going to go for it. So on her 16th birthday, in front of all the guests, she held the plank. She was able to hold the plank for an hour and 20 minutes. Then the next week, she's on Good Morning America. They're in New York and she's being presented by the Guinness World Records, their award. Then she gave a little Ted talk about it. She entitled her Ted talk, “What's wrong with me? Absolutely Nothing.”

She is to me the icon of a possibilism. What we need to do is take what is seemingly impossible and we make it possible. So much of it is a mindset shift. Yeah, it's a hard set shift. She's taught me so much. It’s deeply touching and moving to me as a father. No self-pity, just focus on what I can do. If she can do it, we can all do it. In other words, that's what it will take for us to make the shift to the world that we want for our kids.

I could imagine.

Yeah. I'm deeply humbled by her.

Yeah, of course. These days I'm doing some work on how we transform the conflict inside Venezuela, which I've been working on for many years. Also, I had a call this morning about Ukrainians and Russians, about how we transform that. They're my children. There are things that people are just interested in or the US, for example, of what we do with our polarization. My dream is that, in order to shift how we deal with conflict within this country, within our families, within the world, to put out a dream of a league of possibilists. Teams of people, the young people of today who are trained to mediate. Trained to bring their curiosity, their creativity, their radical collaboration, doing that patient, persistent work of transforming conflicts around us at whatever level. This last week, I was with this nascent league of possibilists. I brought together people working in Venezuela, in the Middle East, in Ukraine, in the United States. That's my dream. That's my baby.

We ask people to imagine and use their imagination, like, what if 10 or 20 years from now, the world made a shift towards peace. Peace means not some pie in the sky, but a transformation in the way we deal with conflict from destructive to constructive. Which could happen now. What does it take to do that? What would we have to do both at the top level with Ukraine and the Middle East, and then working with the youth, have youth do that in their schools and in their lives. We're working with the future and with the present. We're working at the top level and working with the grassroots. How do we create a generation when every baby is born as a possibilist? How do we train a generation of possibilists who can make that shift and help others make that shift? That's my dream. It is to take a phrase that we now say at Christmas time, which is peace on Earth. How do we make it practical, tangible, real, and not wait a hundred years? But have it happened in our lives?

Oh, thank you so much, Hitendra. I'm deeply thankful for all those who made my life possible and made my learnings possible. All my teachers. There have been so many of them in all forms, from my daughter to people like Ramana Maharshi, who I have deep reverence for. I think what he spoke about is it. We've been talking about the dance between the inner and the outer and what he was bringing to our attention is there is no outer, and there is no inner. There's just one connected life that we're all part of, and that it's an inside game. That's the secret to peace. The problem is us. The solution is us. The secret is us right here in the core of that human heart. You gave that metaphor of the sun that has so much potential for us to be able to bring our light and let our light shine. If that's the case, then each one of us, each one of the people who are listening to this podcast right now, within each of us is that possibility. There's no magic solution from outside. It's from inside that a better world will emerge.

My pleasure. Joy indeed, Hitendra.