Daryl Davis

And when I first got into wanting to meet these people, I wasn't trying to get anybody out.

And I still don't really try to get people out.

I just want an answer to that question that plagued me from the age of 10.

How can you hate me if you don't even know me?

Just tell me that and then you go your way, I go my way.

But what happened was during the conversation, you start off this far apart on the ideological spectrum, you talk to somebody for five minutes, that gap narrows because you found something in common.

You keep on talking, now you're here.

You found more in common.

At this point, you're having a cordial relationship with your adversary.

You might not be going out to dinner with him or whatever, but you're having a cordial relationship.

Keep on talking.

And you found more in common.

And now it's like a friendship.

You don't agree on everything, but you have found more in common than you have in contrast.

And the trivial things that you found in contrast, like skin color or whether you go to a church, a synagogue, a mosque, or a temple, begin to matter less and less because it's caused a cognitive dissonance.

And so when the first person left,

I thought, you know, this person, this is a fluke.

You know, this guy probably wasn't invested in it fully.

But then it happened again and again and again.

And I thought, okay, well, now something I must be doing when I'm interviewing these people is back when I was writing my first book.