“If there’s one thing that most people on the Left and Right can agree on,” journalist Mónica Guzmán asserts, “it’s that the way we treat and talk to the other side is broken.”

America’s ideological divide has become entrenched and reflected in our collective refusal to speak to one another. To even consider crossing the political aisle in the spirit of compromise and consensus is to risk public criticism. “Why are you still speaking to them?” friends repeatedly asked Guzmán about her Trump-supporting, Mexican-immigrant parents. Such rigid partisanship inspired her first book, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times, a guide to fostering productive conversations between ideologically opposed people.

Guzmán contends that we must use our “built-in curiosity,” rather than approach conversations antagonistically, if we truly want to understand our differences. Curiosity “keeps our minds open so they don’t shrink,” she explains. “Nothing busts through the walls we’ve built between us like a question so genuine and perceptive it cannot be denied.”

In I Never Thought of It That Way, Guzmán offers more than 30 practical tools and recommendations to implement in difficult conversations, culling her material from a dozen interviews and from personal stories, as well as from her work as the director of digital and storytelling at Braver Angels, a nonprofit launched as a citizens’ movement dedicated to depolarizing America. Using the analogy of climbing a mountain, she explains that each person needs a map—what she calls a “curiosity starter kit”—to know where to begin a difficult conversation. Each person must start with “minding the gap” in their knowledge by “turning assumptions into questions” and rejecting easy answers. To prevent the tendency of making assumptions, Guzmán encourages readers to take note of the “assumption assistants,” or the stereotypes and other forms of cognitive shorthand, that cause them to prejudge their interlocutors, rather than enter a conversation with an open mind.

Read the full article about partisan divides by Megan Wildhood at Stanford Social Innovation Review.