Welcome to Episode 356 of Live Happy Now.

As we continue celebrating March as the month of happiness, we're taking on Civil War.

I'm your host, Paula Phelps, and this week I am so excited to be talking to Peter Montoya,

a speaker, thought leader, and author who is truly committed to helping restore our civility.

His latest book, The Second Civil War, A Citizen's Guide to Healing Our Fractured Nation,

looks at the challenges we're facing as a society, how technology and media consumption increase

our anxiety, and what each of us can do to help stop that conflict. Today, we're talking about all those

things as well as talking about what he's creating to help replace social media with civil

media. Peter, thank you so much for coming back on Live Happy Now. Paula, I am thrilled to be here.

You are one of my favorite hosts. I love your show. Oh, thank you so much. And we love it when you come and talk to us because you always have such great new information for us. And as you know, as part of Happiness Month, we are looking at the theme of unity. And that's why we talk to you. because a lot of people were hopeful that this year was

going to be one of like more unity, more civility, and that doesn't seem to be the case.

What's keeping us so divided?

We are inherently very, very tribal creatures. And that is our default mechanism.

So when I say tribal, we find various different ways of creating cohesive groups and also creating others or outside groups. And we do

this around national lines, political lines, religious lines, racial lines, so racism is part tribalism,

company around company boundaries, around sports teams, and even, you know, clicks inside schools.

We are tribal, tribal creatures, and that is our default.

That's what we automatically go to. And over the course

of our lives, we have become inculturated into being cooperative with people who are not

of our immediate tribe, which is actually somewhat of a miracle. So it really is.

So look at all of the ways we've been inculturated.

So when we first went to school in fifth grade, before fifth grade, before we were five,

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