This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Imagine you had a dispute with a neighbor.

It could be something trivial.

Maybe he's playing music too loudly late at night, and your kids cannot get to sleep.

The way we usually resolve these problems in daily life is to knock on our neighbor's door,

explain the problem,

and try to find an amicable solution. If all goes well, you discover you have similar

tastes in music. You swap playlists while getting him to keep the volume down at night.

Maybe you take over soup when he's unwellwell and he helps you on a cold morning when your

car needs a jump. Now imagine that this dispute takes place on a platform like X, formerly Twitter.

Instead of talking to your neighbor, you throw open your window and tell all the people on your

side of the street that your neighbor is a jerk.

Upset and offended, he throws open his window, which opens onto a different set of neighbors

and tells those people that you're crazy. Soon, you're yelling at each other, but really talking

to completely different sets of people.

Every escalation is met with a reprisal. Each of you is certain the other must be dim-witted,

malevolent, or unhinged.

On social media, especially when it comes to political disagreements, this is often what passes for discourse.

Platforms like X have called these shouting matches engagement, but common sense suggests

that they are really a prescription for disengagement.

Today we bring you a favorite episode about why we are often unable to get through to our political opponents and how we can learn to do so.

Breaking Through the Echo Chamber this week on Hidden Brain. There's a saying that's attributed to the Dalai Lama. In the practice of tolerance,

...