58 mins + 1 hour, 21 mins
Want to change someone’s mind? David Fleischer, of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, has discovered more reliably than perhaps anybody else how to do it. As he puts it: ‘We’re the first to reduce any form of prejudice in a measurable, long-lasting way with a relatively simple intervention: a 10 minute one-on-one conversation that we call deep canvassing.’ In these two companion episodes, David joins Bart Campolo for conversations about his background story, how he started experimenting with different ways to talk to the people who voted against them on California’s Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in 2008, his view that progressive people especially have an irrational confidence in rationality’, how human rapport, common ground and stories are the basis of changing minds, and how listening is at the heart of it all. In the second episode, they talk about the next election, Trump as the opposite of loving and humanist, how to encourage people to vote without shaming them about not voting last time, how the lessons of deep canvassing relate to the conversations people are having about faith in God, and more.