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 this episode of Humanize Me, David joins Bart Campolo for a conversation 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.
Mentioned in the podcast: This American Life episodes #555 and #584. Links here:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/555/the-incredible-rarity-of-changing-your-mind
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/584/for-your-reconsideration
Part II of this conversation with David, recorded several weeks later, can be found in Episode 429.
