I'm Alan Olga and this is Clear and Vivid. Conversations about connecting and communicating.

My parents and I were all Mexican immigrants. We became citizens in the year 2000 after

about a decade in the United States. I voted for Biden and Clinton in 2016. My parents

voted for Trump both times enthusiastically. People assume, wow, you must have compromised

some of your values in order to talk about theirs. I'm like, no, not at all. It's not a thing

that happens. Their vote for Trump and my vote for Clinton and Biden is sort of the result

of the paths we walked. So once I got to know enough of their experiences through the world

and how that led to their view of everything on immigration, on guns, on everything,

it just made sense the way they would vote. And once it made sense, that changed everything.

That's Monica Guzman. When she realized that if she'd led the life her parents have,

then she would have voted for Trump too. It was an insight that contributed to her decision

to write her new book. The book is called I Never Thought of it That Way. And it's both a

diagnosis of and a prescription for the ugly polarization that is gripping today's America.

And the medicine she recommends is curiosity and courage.

I'm really going to enjoy this conversation because you're all about what this show is about,

communicating and relating. And you put a lot of work into it and have come up with some really

interesting angles on how to do it well. And one of the things I love is that when you interview

people as part of your journalism career, you do conversations rather than standard interviews

with a list of questions. How did you discover that? Honestly, through gaining confidence and spending

time and learning that if you sit with people, they will always reveal something interesting.

But that you can't do it on your own terms. So I did use to come in with all these lists of

questions because I was afraid that if I didn't have my questions and that they weren't prepared

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