I'm Alan Alda, and this is Clear and Vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

Welcome to Season 33 of Clear and Vivid. This, of course, isn't actually season 33. This is a trailer for it.

As you remember from going to the movies, a trailer is the announcement of things that are

coming soon to a theater near you. Well, coming soon to a device near you are some really

terrific episodes. Our producer, Graham Shed and I have had a great time putting them together.

At least two of our shows this season touch on one of your favorite topics, empathy.

Sherman Cruz was a nine-year-old girl in Iran soon after the 1979 revolution,

when an encounter on the streets of Tehran led to her many years later writing a book called

Stoic Empathy. The book ties together two seemingly opposite concepts, stoicism and empathy,

and shows how their combination can transform a negotiation, even one fraught with danger.

We recorded a conversation shortly before the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran,

where Sherman's lessons learn may be even more useful on the streets of Tehran today.

I just want to preface the story. In this story, my mom utilized empathy to get us out of a

dangerous situation. I just want to emphasize in response to the brave men and women who are in Iran who are not

able to get out of situations and are receiving extreme violence in return, that this is,

it's obviously not a foolproof method of alleviating the possibility of

violence, but it does maximize the likelihood of you getting yourself out of this situation.

And that's what I learned. So what happened is we were in the central bazaar of Tehran. I was nine years old.

I didn't have my head scarf on. And by the way, my mom's wasn't really well tied either.

She had some hairs loose coming out. You know, a lot of people did that. And there was this

morality guard that came up to us. Their job, by the ways, to impose primarily the Islamic

dress code. And so she came up to us. She was just massive. She was huge. I was a little girl,

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