I'm Alan Alder, and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

It is so much fun having the most unlikely conversations with the most improbable people.

You cannot imagine how much you'll learn and grow and be so proud of yourself for being able to build this container

for people you never thought you'd talk to

and you never thought you needed to talk to.

It is so much fun.

I can't say that I'm not having a ball,

because I am. That's Loretta Ross. She spent over 50 years fighting racism, sexism, and sexual

violence, often fiercely. Now in her 70s, her experiences have led her to move past anger

toward a more empathic relationship with those she

disagrees with. As a visiting professor at Smith College, she teaches a course on white supremacy

and human rights, built on her conviction that it is more effective to engage with those whose

ideas and beliefs are counter to your own,

rather than calling them out.

She has distilled this approach in her book,

Calling In, How to Start Making Change with Those You'd Rather Cancel.

I find your work fascinating because you take what can be a volatile kind of communicating, calling someone out, and you explore it with nuance and empathy, which are two aspects of communicating that are kind of hard to find nowadays.

First of all, what would you call calling out? How would you describe it?

Calling out is when you want to hold someone accountable, but you choose to publicly shame and

humiliate them to pursue that accountability. But the most important word is that you do it publicly

because you want others to see you holding somebody else accountable. You don't

just want them to change. You want to show off how virtuous you are. And am I right that

...