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Idiots Are Everywhere. Here’s How to Cope | Joshua Johnson | TED
Idiots Are Everywhere. Here’s How to Cope | Joshua Johnson | TED
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0:04
Idiots --
0:06
(Laughter)
0:08
Are everywhere.
0:10
(Laughter)
0:12
Some people drive you right up the wall with their opinions, their attitudes,
0:16
their politics.
0:17
I dealt with all kinds of people in my 20-plus years
0:20
as a broadcast journalist.
0:22
Eventually, I found moderating tough conversations
0:25
with whatever kind of difficult people you just thought of.
0:28
Kind of simple to do --
0:30
not easy -- but simple.
0:32
The trick is to go somewhere I know you'd rather not be.
0:36
Closer.
0:38
Distance makes things worse.
0:41
I came up in public radio,
0:42
trained by old-school journalists who taught me the art of neutrality.
0:46
You neutralize your opinions, deaden your emotions,
0:49
and you can get through most conversations without rolling your eyes.
0:52
Generally, it worked, and it built me a strong reputation for fairness.
0:56
But when the subject matter felt personal, neutrality felt phony.
1:02
I used to host a national talk show on NPR called "1A,"
1:05
and in one of our early programs,
1:07
I interviewed a descendant of Confederate soldiers.
1:10
He argued that Confederate monuments should be historically preserved.
1:14
Now as a Black man, I felt enormous pressure to remain neutral,
1:18
so I decided I was just going to focus on his arguments instead of on him.
1:22
His logic felt kind of flimsy, and I called him on it,
1:25
and eventually he just folded and he said,
1:27
“It really doesn’t matter what I say.”
1:30
And the moment he said that, I knew I had failed.
1:34
I may have had a point,
1:36
but I missed a huge opportunity to really do my job.
1:39
See, my neutrality allowed me to interrogate his beliefs,
1:42
but the distance prevented me from seeing why he believed them.
1:49
What if I had asked better questions like:
1:52
"Who influenced you the most in forming these views?"
1:56
Or, "Suppose we let all of these monuments and statues stand just as they are.
2:01
What would that mean to you?"
2:03
Getting his story might have shown me him
2:05
behind his canned arguments.
2:07
Grilling him changed nothing.
2:10
It felt pointless.
2:12
When you consider someone problematic,
2:14
there's a better way to deal with them,
2:16
keep your sanity and maybe even connect.
2:19
And it sounds insane.
2:21
Move closer.
2:24
Not to embrace them, but to explore them,
2:26
like a doctor studying a sample.
2:29
You need a microscope, not a telescope.
2:31
Doctors actually helped me learn this way before I became a journalist.
2:35
As a teenager, I was part of a summer program for future doctors.
2:39
Clearly it worked.
2:41
And I found myself working with clinicians studying cancer
2:45
and thrombosis and HIV,
2:47
very serious conditions.
2:48
I kind of naively expected them to be these crusading scientists,
2:52
but they were just level-headed people doing their jobs.
2:55
But there was a lesson in that level-headedness.
2:58
See, I am not neutral about the cancers in our world:
3:01
bigotry, hoaxes, political violence.
3:04
I want them gone.
3:06
However, as a journalist,
3:08
I often had to deal with them in my clinic:
3:10
“on-the-air.”
3:12
I survived it by getting as close to those problems as I could
3:15
and studying them like samples in a petri dish.
3:18
In other words,
3:20
I had to shift from neutrality
3:23
to objectivity.
3:25
And no, they're not the same.
3:28
Objectivity is just when you park your emotions and learn without judgment.
3:32
I don't have to like it,
3:34
I'm just here to learn from it.
3:35
Neutrality negates your opinions as if you have no judgments.
3:39
Does anyone here honestly believe I have no opinions on race?
3:43
(Laughter)
3:44
Right?
3:45
Now notice I said park your opinions.
3:48
When you park your car,
3:50
you don't abandon it in the garage.
3:52
You're coming back for it.
3:53
So you can choose when to focus inward on what you think,
3:56
or outward on what you can learn.
3:59
Of course, sometimes your car ain't where you left it,
4:02
and maybe your opinions will move too.
4:05
That maybe is why objectivity feels so vulnerable.
4:08
That's why it works.
4:10
That vulnerability is a sign of openness,
4:13
and a conversation that's not open is pointless.
4:17
But if you can stay open, amazing things can happen.
4:21
Another time on NPR, I was interviewing a former Baltimore police officer
4:25
who had become this fiery advocate for law enforcement reform.
4:29
And he was going on and on,
4:31
just a long rant in autopilot,
4:33
just (vocalizing).
4:35
And I was trying to stay objective and listening as best I could,
4:38
when I thought I heard his voice waver just a little.
4:42
And in that waver,
4:44
I detected more than his rage.
4:47
It sounded like trauma.
4:49
So near the end of the interview,
4:51
I mentioned, hesitantly,
4:52
that he seemed traumatized by his experiences as a cop,
4:57
and could he reflect on that.
4:59
He said,
5:01
"I put people in prison cells who are better people than me."
5:07
Whoa!
5:09
Sure enough, he went right back to his talking points,
5:11
but it didn’t matter, because in that moment --
5:13
that sliver of his story --
5:15
his defenses dropped, and he shifted from being right to being real.
5:20
Look, some people are just difficult,
5:23
but we can deal with them more simply.
5:25
Here are three tips to get you started.
5:27
First, get the story,
5:29
particularly the key decisions and the turning points.
5:33
What someone believes is not as important as how they chose to believe it.
5:38
Second, my NPR host pro tip:
5:41
keep your questions short.
5:43
10 seconds tops.
5:45
Long questions can feel like a setup or like you're rambling.
5:49
And third, use that mental microscope.
5:52
Look as closely as you can.
5:54
Remember, you don't have to like it, but learn from it.
5:58
It is time to reconnect,
6:01
even to the people you can't stand.
6:03
But this time, we're going to make those connections count.
6:06
You could learn a lot from an idiot.
6:08
(Laughter)
6:09
Especially if you resolve never to act like one.
6:14
I really appreciate you all making time for me today.
6:17
Thank you for listening.
6:19
(Cheers and applause)
