In the fictional town of Lake Wobagon, as the story went, all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

Real Americans don't live in mythological communities,

but surveys show the majority of us subscribe to the belief that we are better than other people,

better at delivering on commitments, better at learning from disagreements, better at addressing

performance problems and meeting deadlines. If we extend our sense of superiority to those who broadly share our

political beliefs, is that any wonder our actual political system so often seems to be spinning

its wheels. From KERA in Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd. The good news is that we can dig

ourselves out of these unhelpful beliefs and actually learn to

understand and even work with people who approach big issues from the other side of the aisle.

It starts with realizing we may not fully agree with the loudest voices on the far right or the far left,

even if they seem to assume they speak for all of us. Diana McLean Smith is here

to talk about this. She created the conflict and change method leading through relationships,

and she writes about her ideas in her book, Remaking the Space Between Us, how citizens can

work together to build a better future for all. Diana, welcome to think. Thank you, Chris. It's delightful to be here.

You note that research finds pretty significant distance between what the most extreme,

13 percent of partisans on the very far left and the very far right believe about the state of the

world and how things should be run and what the rest of us in the middle believe. Why aren't the voices of the 87% louder than the minority at the far end?

Well, it's a great question. That's why I wrote the book. I really tried to understand what that

was about how deep it went, whether there were outliers or people who were bucking that trend.

And first, let me start by saying it depends.

How you define the extremes depends on the eye of the beholder.

I think it's probably more realistic to say in the last six years since more in common first publish those numbers, that it's really

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