Idiots are everywhere. Here's how to cope | Joshua Johnson
episodePreviously titled “A journalist's trick for talking to people you can't stand | Joshua Johnson” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 12, 2026
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Journalist and radio host Joshua Johnson has conducted hundreds of interviews, so he has learned quite a bit about how to talk to all kinds of people. Today, he has a piece of advice that might sound completely backwards for dealing with the people whose politics or values you might not agree with.
When you consider someone problematic, there's a better way to deal with them, keep your sanity, and maybe even connect. And it sounds insane. Move closer. Not to embrace them, but to explore them, like a doctor studying a sample. You need a microscope, not a telescope.
In this talk, Joshua makes the case for closing the distance with the people you can't stand. Not to agree with them, but to understand how they came to believe what they believe. Like many journalists, myself included, Joshua has spent more than 20 years moderating tough conversations. He hosted the national talk show 1A on NPR, and he's trained in the art of neutrality. Johnson talks about how we're taught to park our opinions, flatten our emotions, and just get through the interview without rolling our eyes. For him, this worked for a long time until he realized the distance it created was quietly costing something.
My neutrality allowed me to interrogate his beliefs, but the distance prevented me from seeing why he believed them. What if I had asked better questions, like, who influenced you the most in forming these views? Getting his story might have shown me him behind his canned arguments.
Joshua makes the case for flipping the script on the old journalist principle. He draws a sharp line between neutrality, which he says is really just pretending you have no opinions, and something he finds far more useful and far more vulnerable at a time when polarization is on the rise. It's coming up right after a short break.
How does Joshua Johnson define the problem with journalistic neutrality?
Hi, I'm Molly Graham, host of Work Life, a podcast from TED. The most important lessons about work usually aren't the ones anyone teaches you. They come from experience, from uncertainty, from figuring things out as you go. On this show, my expert guests and I explore how careers really unfold through change, through doubt, through the decisions that shape who we become over time. Because those moments aren't the exception. They are the work. Listen to Work Life wherever you get your podcasts.
And now our TED Talk of the day.
Idiots are everywhere. Some people drive you right up the wall with their opinions, their attitudes, their politics. I dealt with all kinds of people in my 20-plus years as a broadcast journalist. Eventually, I found moderating tough conversations with whatever kind of difficult people you just thought of kind of simple to do. Not easy, but simple. The trick is to go somewhere I know you'd rather not be. Closer. Distance makes things worse. I came up in public radio, trained by old-school journalists who taught me the art of neutrality. You neutralize your opinions, deaden your emotions, and you can get through most conversations without rolling your eyes. Generally, it worked, and it built me a strong reputation for fairness.
But when the subject matter felt personal, neutrality felt phony. I used to host a national talk show on NPR called 1A, and in one of our early programs, I interviewed a descendant of Confederate soldiers. He argued that Confederate monuments should be historically preserved. Now, as a black man, I felt enormous pressure to remain neutral, so I decided I was just going to focus on his arguments instead of on him. His logic felt kind of flimsy, and I called him on it. And eventually, he just folded, and he said, "'It really doesn't matter what I say.'" And the moment he said that, I knew I had failed. I may have had a point, but I missed a huge opportunity to really do my job. See, my neutrality allowed me to interrogate his beliefs, but the distance prevented me from seeing why he believed them.
What if I had asked better questions, like, who influenced you the most in forming these views?
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