Welcome to Words Matter with Katie Barlow.

Welcome to Words Matter, I'm Katie Barlow.

Our goal is to promote objective reality.

As a wise man once said, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, not their own facts.

Words have power and words have consequences.

Our guest today is an award-winning psychologist, professor, author, activist, speaker, researcher, and counselor,

as well as an occasional playwright, actor, and lyricist.

Dr. Tanya Israel is professor and psychologist in the Giverts Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

She is the author of Beyond Your Bubble, How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills, and Strategies for Conversations That Work.

Dr. Tanya Israel, welcome to Words Matter.

Thanks so much, I'm delighted to be here.

So Jen and I are really interested in talking particularly about your book to try and give our listeners some ways to reach across the political divide this holiday season, whether that's in person or hopefully virtually everyone staying home and staying safe.

But before we do that, let's talk about you and your background and how you got to this place and this wealth of knowledge that you have.

You grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia. You graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a double major in psychology and women's studies.

And you have a master's degree in human sexuality education and a PhD in counseling psychology, winning awards for your dissertation on training counselors to work with LGBTQ clients.

You also are a political advocate and activist having worked for President Obama's 2008 campaign and you've worked in democratic politics at the national state and local level.

So tell us a little bit more about your early life and career.

And in particular, your experience with dialogue as it relates to people with different political points of views and values.

Absolutely. Wow. You've done your homework. That was a fantastic summary of my life right there. I do think they're growing up in Charlottesville, Virginia.

You know, Charlottesville has now gotten on people's radar in terms of political conflict.

I think the growing up there really did help me to be in a situation where I could see multiple sides of things. Charlottesville is a town in the south in the middle of Virginia.

And it's an academic town, it's a college town, but it's also surrounded by rural Virginia. It's got a lot of white people, a lot of black people, people who are very connected to their church, people who are very connected to academia.

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