So my guest today, Priaparkar, was born in Zimbabwe to a mom who came from India and

a dad who came from South Dakota.

She spent the first chunk of her year traveling across Africa and Asia as her parents worked

together in fishing villages in various different places.

They eventually moved back to the US and it up divorcing, then remarrying, and she found

herself moving every two weeks between her mothers and fathers households, toggling back

and forth between what she describes as, in her words, a vegetarian liberal, insens-filled,

Buddhist Hindu, New Age universe, and a meat-eating conservative twice a week church-going evangelical

Christian realm.

That set in motion a need to understand how to to a certain extent shape-shift, understand

radically different social and familial dynamics, and how to almost play the role of conflict-resolver,

peacemaker, and understand her of different views, which eventually evolved to become her

career path as she rose up and developed a career in conflict resolution, traveling

to various places around the world and facilitating conversations, very often really hard direct,

necessary conversations that had in the wrong way can be monumentally destructive, but

under her great-carrying guidance would turn into moments of deep and profound connection

and awakening.

That became her career.

She has shared a lot of her ideas in a fascinating new book called The Art of Gathering where

we talk about this journey, we talk about her exposure to the early years and how when

she ended up in university, her awareness really started to rise up and spurred a deeper

interest in creating conversations and how her skill set has really become super useful

...