This election season has certainly been a roller coaster of a ride, and I hate to say it,

but it's reminded me that sometimes it feels like we live in a world of intractable conflict,

wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, political polarization here in the United States.

I know a lot of people have been telling me that just gathering with family for the holidays

can be a struggle. With all of this

conflict, I think there's certainly been times when I have felt like, I don't know, maybe we're

somehow getting worse at this, at just talking with each other, and that maybe we'd all be

better off if we could reconnect with the art of compromise. If we were more willing and able to give something up

every now and then, maybe that could make a world a difference. But to that, my guest today would say,

not so fast. Many people think about conflict resolution is that it's a compromise. And in some

situations, might be the optimal solution,

right? But if you zoom out a little bit, then you can start to kind of mix and match and

problem solve together. Dr. Peter T. Coleman is a social psychologist and he's author of the book

The Way Out, How to overcome toxic polarization.

He's a researcher at Columbia University, where he runs this place called the Difficult Conversations Lab. Really fascinating. After decades of work in the field,

Coleman knows a lot about how our brains and our bodies respond to conflict. So today we sat

down to talk about why difficult conversations are so

difficult and why our evolutionary instincts makes them feel maybe even harder these days.

Perhaps most importantly at the end of the discussion, you're going to hear some simple steps we

can all take to get better at conflict resolution, whether it's with the coworker, a neighbor,

or even a spouse. I think some of his tips are going to surprise you. They surprise me.

They're going to make you think differently. I'm Dr. Sanjay, CNN's chief medical correspondent,

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