You're listening to How to Be a Better Human.

I'm your host, Chris Duffy.

February is a month where people are often thinking about love because of Valentine's Day.

But love is so much more than just romantic love.

And so today on the show, we're thinking about that broader understanding of love.

What would it mean to approach the world with it?

What would it mean to assume the best of it? What would it mean to assume the best

of the people that we interact with every day rather than preparing for conflict and assuming the

worst? I mean, even just saying this out loud, I can immediately start building arguments against

it. Do I honestly believe, given everything that we know, that it's reasonable to think that

care and love could ever be the default.

And I'll tell you the truth, I don't know.

But to me, the answer lies in thinking more critically about our preconceived notions of how things are going to go and what other people are going to be like.

In my mind, there's a direct line from love to cultivating open-mindedness and pushing back on our biases. And I know that today's guest, Anu Gupta, deeply believes in this. Anu is the author of the book Breaking Bias,

where stereotypes and prejudices come from and the science-backed method to unravel them.

Here's a clip from his 2017 TED Talk.

When I was growing up in Delhi, my town was often at a police lockdown.

We couldn't leave our homes because of ethnic tensions.

So at school, I'd ask my teachers, why is this happening?

They'd say, because those people are bad.

Wait, what's bad about them?

They're not like us.

...