Evan Meyer welcomes, Maria Madison, who is the interim Dean Brandis University, a trained global health researcher. Madison holds a doctorate in population in international health from Harvard.
Meyerside Chats seeks to eliminate the “us and them” narrative and toxic polarization by striving to create virtuous community leadership and authentic conversation. The intent is to showcase the humanity in those that take on the often thankless jobs of public service through civil discourse, and honoring differing points of view.
About Maria Madison
Dr. Madison is the Heller School Interim Dean. Her graduate school teaching experience includes courses on Intersectionality and Bioethics, Anti-bias/anti-racism workshops and Pro seminars, Discrimination Analytics, Clinical Trial Design Optimization and Problem Solving at Northeastern University as well as Evidence Based Research Methods at the University for Global Health Equity/Partners in Health in Kigali Rwanda. Dr. Madison’s career spans decades in health research including clinical and public health research in Africa and Europe, where courses on ethics are part of annual corporate responsibility best practices. She is also a co-founder and president of a nonprofit, The Robbins House, Inc. The nonprofit focuses on the long civil rights movement in America, through the lens of African descended inhabitants of the eponymous 19th century house, including a black woman activist who attempted to challenge the nation’s first civil rights act of 1866.
About Evan Meyer
Evan is the Founder of BeautifyEarth.com, a tech platform and marketplace that speed tracks the urban beautification process through art, as well as the original 501(c)3 sister organization and public charity that beautifies schools in the communities that need it most. Beautify has now facilitated thousands of murals around the planet, working with hundreds of communities, community organizations, cities and national brands.
He is also the Founder of RideAmigos.com, a tech platform that optimizes commuter travel and behavior through intelligent programs and analytics for governments, large enterprises, and universities, serving many regions across the US.
As a civic leader in the City of Santa Monica, he is the past Chairman of his neighborhood (Ocean Park), giving residents a voice in the public process, as well as helping the City of Santa Monica with innovative, actionable ways of civic engagement.
Podcast Summary
- The innate human propensity for hierarchy and “us and them.” | 6:00
- Paying for the sins of our grandparents | 8:00
- Challenging your echo Chambers with opposing views | 10:00
- Quality of life in America and it’s barriers | 14:00
- Exercise & nutrition information during COVID vis a vis social drivers | 17:00
- Obesity in America and how to start fixing it | 22:00
- The balance of responsibility | 24:00
- The responsibility of universities | 26:00
- Adaptive capacity | 32:00 Private interest vs social responsibility | 35:00
- Venture capitalism & social businesses | 39:00
- Replacement theory | 42:00 Greater exposure means greater respect | 44:00
- How to deal with information and/or people you disagree with & recast theory | 45:00
- How to accept new information that conflicts with your previous knowledge | 49:00
- Everyone has a migration story | 55:00
Summary Keywords
Multinational teams, Overcoming adversity, Black history, Toxic cultures and communities, Diversity and demographics ,Politics and relationships, Understanding perspectives, International perspective, Travel experiences, Tribal mentality, Power and privilege, Racism and systemic issues, Social media echo chambers, Critical thinking, Altruism vs. financial motives, Cancel culture, Quality of life, Gun rights and violence, Life expectancy, Health outcomes.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Evan Meyer: Hi everyone, and thank you for joining today. Today we have Maria Madison, who is the interim Dean Brandis University, a trained global health researcher. Madison holds a doctorate in population in international health from Harvard. She joined Brandeis with over two decades of international experience, designing, implementing, and managing various projects and studies, including clinical drug trials and registries where she oversaw large, complex multinational teams that abundance of her work in Africa.
[00:00:34] Evan Meyer: Thank you for joining us today, Maria Madison. Good to see you.
[00:00:40] Maria Madison: Thank you. Thank you as well. I dont know if I’m still an active editor of HEQ, I think I’ve become so overextended that some things fall to the wayside. That’s one of them.
[00:00:55] Evan Meyer: Oh, okay. So no longer an active editor there. But that I don’t know where I pulled that [00:01:00] one, that little piece of information from, but someone wrote that about you recently, so they got you wrong.
[00:01:05] Maria Madison: That’s right.
[00:01:07] Evan Meyer: Look , it’s great to see you today. I was excited to get you on. You have a a ton of experience that I think people need to understand. Part of what we do here is and by we, here I am speaking to you. So in this interview what what is going on is the intent to detoxify politics and get people to see perspective.
[00:01:31] Evan Meyer: So they can make better decisions, understand where other people are coming from and drop the hate overall. I just see too many families and relationships and people divorcing one another from each other’s because of their politics. And my goal has been to really reduce that and hopefully eliminate that so people can get along better and we can get more of what we want faster for people.
[00:01:55] Evan Meyer: We can get better solutions for people. So I was excited to speak with you because you have a ton of [00:02:00] international experience, which I thought was when I travel, I believe that is the largest.
[00:02:07] Evan Meyer: If you travel for a week to another country you haven’t been in, that’s about a year’s worth of knowledge, wisdom, and experience that you can get of your normal, mundane tasks.
[00:02:16] Evan Meyer: Like it’s just so dense and rich and from the work you’ve done I want to kick things off by just starting to understand what has that given you to help you build the perspective that you have around politics? And where has that come? Or where did where did you harness all that from?
[00:02:35] Evan Meyer: Yeah. And where do you see it going?
[00:02:38] Maria Madison: Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me to this discussion and for your passion and interest in realizing that it’s through conversations that we’ll all probably make our way to a better phase of understanding across our diverse demographics.
[00:02:57] Maria Madison: And, there’s always the short and the long [00:03:00] answer to where my current thinking comes from and I would be completely problematic if I didn’t say it’s deeply rooted in my black history, ancestral, through line of overcoming adversity. Through recognizing and creating a strong sense of place and belonging despite the cultures and the communities that are surrounding us, which are often or can be in the Black American tradition, toxic.
[00:03:35] Maria Madison: And so honestly, it’s from recognizing the the must have been transgenerational strength to overcome adversity and so you take that from centuries of the history of blacks or marginalized populations in this country, and you put me elsewhere in the world and [00:04:00] I gain a far deeper sense of perspective because, for example I can try to be the best parent I can and explain to my kids why their experiences navigating this society are problematic.
[00:04:17] Maria Madison: But I also then tell them it’s not just a racial issue. There’s something fundamental about humanity that divides people by race, ethnicity, class religion. And I’d have to say the bookends of the experiences of my ancestors led me to be hungry to understand and travel and see that around the world there are these natural propensities of humanity to try to create power and privilege among one class of people over another while being black in America is a black, white issue. And [00:05:00] or for those who are also marginalized in this country, I like to describe that. I’ve experienced and seen, of course the same dramatic kinds of issues in Rwanda, Hutus and Tutsi or Ireland Catholics and Protestants or Israel right now, which is profound that it’s not just Israelis and Palestinians but the discord seemingly is even more as of this week and this month pronounced between Israeli Jews and Israeli Orthodox.
[00:05:34] Maria Madison: And so the fundamental question is what is it about humanity that creates the need to create these hierarchies, maybe in a Darwinian sense. So I guess I take it to an intellectual level that helps feed perspective and hope. It’s not just the microcosm within which our daily lives are meeted out, it’s some larger issue that we [00:06:00] are programmed to have.
[00:06:01] Evan Meyer: There’s a biological element to it. Almost a tribal element. Yes. There’s something there that, yes. Almost there’s this us and them.
[00:06:10] Maria Madison: That’s it.
[00:06:11] Evan Meyer: Need almost. It’s that’s it. It feels, and you can hear it when people speak.
[00:06:16] Maria Madison: That’s it.
[00:06:17] Evan Meyer: No matter who they’re talking about. It’s like those people.
[00:06:20] Maria Madison: Exactly. Exactly. I have so many authors that I’ve used to gain clarity on these topics, and one of my favorites is Heather McGhee’s book, “The Sum of Us”. And, she beautifully describes the zero sum mentality. She’s describing it more in a black white sense, but it’s the same issue around the world, the sense that.
[00:06:42] Maria Madison: If you share resources, you’re making yourself worse off. And somehow that seems to be the common theme, the biological survival mechanism.
[00:06:53] Evan Meyer: And how, and the history, the stories that you’ve generated about those people or that your grandparents told you, and how that gets [00:07:00] put into your brain to prevent you from living in the present, but living in the past sometimes.
[00:07:05] Evan Meyer: And almost like we’re trying to get back today from what happened to our grandparents and then the people on what, sometimes even the racial stuff gets that’s polarized, where not people who aren’t racist are like, who, however you define racism. Systemic, yeah. Or what level. I’ve heard arguments of why am I paying for the sins of my grandparents?
[00:07:27] Evan Meyer: You’ve heard that argument, I’m sure.
[00:07:28] Maria Madison: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And We, there’s another wonderful book, I think the author is Deborah Irving, and that’s Waking Up White. And she beautifully gives these descriptions of, we all wanna believe the stories we’re told as children, right? And we embrace them.
[00:07:46] Maria Madison: And even if as a toddler or a child, there may not be total accuracy to the parent, the stories your parents are telling you, you wanna believe it, right? You wanna believe in the innocence and wonder and beauty of the world. And so [00:08:00] to begin to challenge that, to challenge the basic framework you’re given as a child, and then as an adolescent begin to challenge it, it actually is so disruptive as to be mentally, disturbing and creates a fragmentation of thinking and identity and and understanding of one’s place in the world.
[00:08:18] Maria Madison: And that is threatening. And it’s far more comforting to stay within the truths as they’ve then shared with us, whether it’s ancestors or social media. Social media will likely be or go down in history as one of the more influential places that have divided us because we go down our rabbit holes, our eco echo chambers and feed our our most deep ideas.
[00:08:43] Maria Madison: And we don’t come out of those echo chambers to learn about or have critical thinking on potential opposing views to advance our ability to think more broadly and more inclusively.
[00:08:55] Evan Meyer: Yeah we, there’s this tendency that I’ve seen to think of opposing views [00:09:00] as you categorize the thing you’re thinking about.
[00:09:05] Evan Meyer: Let’s say that person likes a particular president. If you like that president, now you carry all of the qualities that I think of that president right now. You have those qualities. You may have voted for that person for one reason because whatever that is. And, but all of a sudden you’re like, you’re now you are a raging narcissist or you’re a, whatever the thing is.
[00:09:25] Evan Meyer: And people then it’s almost like they assign values to this like single decision and then apply these like tons of values. Like you must have all of these values and you’re in just a bunch of categories. And I think that is dangerous.
[00:09:41] Evan Meyer: That is.
[00:09:41] Evan Meyer: Right. Yeah.
[00:09:44] Maria Madison: Absolutely. I think you’re absolutely right.
[00:09:45] Maria Madison: That is the danger, and that’s the pathway we’re on. However, and I can go down and lots of examples of what you just described, however, there are always moments of optimism and progress and to put [00:10:00] us into contemporary Times, Fox News just laid off Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon, right?
[00:10:06] Maria Madison: And CNN laid off Don Lemon. And so what history does do, and another guy, Hans Rosling, he has this book called Factfulness. History, allows us to see that we take one step forward and sometimes it feels like we take 30 steps back, but we’re always edging towards something different. We’re innovating and edging towards something different.
[00:10:27] Maria Madison: So you know where I may have found a Tucker Carlson Repugnant or a Dom Lemon repugnant? The stations take it upon themselves to investigate whether this is doing more harm than good, right? They determine their own tipping point. I don’t know if the tipping point is determined based on a sense of altruism in a moral compass or financial bottom line.
[00:10:51] Maria Madison: One could argue that, but sometimes we should perhaps ask ourselves, does it matter? Do the [00:11:00] means or does the end justify the means? And I think that’s the ultimate question for all of us. If you get rid of these two individuals who are saying things that could fuel the worst inclinations of the most prejudiced people in our, communities, whether it’s Dom Lemon and Misogyny, or Tucker Carlson and White Supremacy.
[00:11:21] Maria Madison: And if the stations did it to increase their revenue or get more ads posted. If it’s still achieved, the better good than proving and moving society forward to having a more civil discourse. Maybe. Maybe it should be considered inching forward.
[00:11:41] Evan Meyer: Inching forward. Yeah. It’s hard to sometimes see the bird’s eye view of things and it’s especially especially now because you can take offense with anything and Right.
[00:11:52] Evan Meyer: You people are fine. The cancel culture situation is, makes things challenging where it’s like everything is just wrong. But if you look at the [00:12:00] how far we’ve come Yeah. And where we are in America. Yeah. This is the best it’s ever been, ever anywhere, period. Yes. And that’s not perfect. That’s right. But it is the best quality of life that you can live with caveat, basically hassle free for the most part, right?
[00:12:20] Maria Madison: With caveats, right? That statements should never be said in the sense that the the defense of gun rights, right? The access to guns and the support and the substantiation of pack and carry and allowing the numerous amount of violence in this country discord world always exist.
[00:12:47] Maria Madison: But for a country to say within the context of the level of discord that’s fueled by discrimination or fear and hatred, to allow those individuals to immediately have access [00:13:00] to guns, to solve that discord, that sets our community apart. That is a kind of throwback to the 19th century, right?
[00:13:09] Maria Madison: Or the development of the constitution and the right to bear arms. It’s a throwback to saying we haven’t made that much progress in that sense, in the sense of this.
[00:13:19] Evan Meyer: So that is not an inch forward for you.
[00:13:21] Maria Madison: No not at all. And neither is life expectancy. Yes. So here’s the issue and you are, beautifully framing it like a Hans Rosling, Factfulness.
[00:13:30] Maria Madison: We’ve made a lot of progress. Our life expectancy has gotten better, but we’ve also just during covid o have, witnessed a period in time that pulled the lid off of the fact that it is a very tenuous kind of progress that we’ve made in life expectancy, because we lost years. We didn’t just lose years of life expectancy.
[00:13:52] Maria Madison: We widened the gap between marginalized populations and privileged populations [00:14:00] in this country in the same zip code. So when you wonder about the progress that we’ve made, one could ask given the wealth or the GDP of our country compared to Costa Rica or other places with less, with a worse economy why other countries seem to have better health outcomes, why other countries have longer life expectancies?
[00:14:24] Maria Madison: And one could say, how should we hold ourselves accountable to the definition of doing well or doing better because we are not doing as well as we could compared to some resource constraint settings that have better maternal outcomes than, black women in many zip codes in this country.
[00:14:45] Maria Madison: So it is a delicate balance to describe we’re doing better, but given our economy or given the kind of capitalism and democracy that we market, we should be doing [00:15:00] much better.
[00:15:01] Evan Meyer: Yeah, there’s plenty of room for improvement. And I want, one of the things around this that I wonder, especially through Covid, is I didn’t see one, and maybe there was one, but I didn’t see it.
[00:15:14] Evan Meyer: Piece of material put out by, say the CDC, local government, state government, county government, whatever association that was blasting out information about what to do to be safe. I didn’t see one of ’em that was speaking to the importance of exercise and nutrition and I was just surprise and I was, this is something that I was, before the vaccine came out even, it was like, look, we don’t know what’s coming.
[00:15:41] Evan Meyer: We don’t know a lot about this. The best thing you could do is build your immunity up. And I didn’t see anything about that. And I was on my neighborhood calls and telling people who are a lot older than me, like how important was, especially now to be the best you can be because when something hits you, you need to be able to fight it.
[00:15:58] Evan Meyer: Doesn’t matter what it is. Yeah. [00:16:00] So let’s get regular exercise. I was just wondering what your thoughts on.
[00:16:04] Maria Madison: Yeah. It’s a yes and conversation, right? Yeah. Because you’re referring fundamentally to the social drivers of health. And when one thinks of the social drivers of health, we try to avoid the health behavior classic model of, the individual should in essence pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
[00:16:24] Maria Madison: The individual should exercise. The more the in more the individual should stop smoking cigarettes. The individual should avoid sugary drinks, however, The United States in particular, and of course the model is mirrored around the world in relationship to how we treat others. Has relegated populations to certain zones, redline zones in this country where we provide not only worse access to healthy foods, worse access to, to nutrition and open air and biophilia, forests and greenery and access to safe [00:17:00] streets and just self-determination in those spaces.
[00:17:03] Maria Madison: And so with food deserts and the increased proportion of liquor stores and cigarettes, and access to sugary foods and drinks it’s hard to say to someone why don’t you just exercise more? With, you haven’t eroded redlining as a holdover.
[00:17:22] Maria Madison: It’s been as a policy disbanded, but in reality, the geography of politics has created these zones, these deserts of access to healthy foods and open spaces and equal access to fair pay employment et cetera.
[00:17:40] Maria Madison: What society really needs to do is to say, provide equitable financial opportunities to all populations such that they have equal access to quality education, equal access to healthy foods, equal access to living housing and all [00:18:00] aspects to assure a high quality of health and wellbeing, including parks and not including those populations in saying what they want to create healthy and thriving communities.
[00:18:11] Maria Madison: It’s not as if such communities didn’t happen previously. As a variety of populations including Black Wall Street had grown in the first reconstruction, but the swift backlash has been a part of the erosion of that kind of equity, which feeds into the ability to say a simple message of just exercise.
[00:18:36] Maria Madison: Right? Society has created structural racism in such a way that not everybody can just feel safe walking the streets and jogging —-Ahmaud Arbery. The list of reasons why those messages have to be put into the context of creating a true mutual society where everybody has equal access to all the greatest [00:19:00] quality resources that a rich country like ours should provide.
[00:19:03] Evan Meyer: Yeah. Yes. And you mentioned, the reason I was even asking that was because I wanted to bring it back to obesity in this country and heart disease but also why America didn’t perform as well as some other countries like it should have. And obesity was an overwhelmingly large factor of some, the hospitalizations and deaths related to covid.
[00:19:25] Evan Meyer: And people don’t know what obesity is, I don’t think. I think they think obesity is like huge. Obesity is like a little bit, it’s 25% or 25 or 30%, BMI. So like it’s not as much as people think. Most, a lot of people are obese and they don’t know it because they just, they don’t realize that they’re just got an extra inch or two.
[00:19:47] Evan Meyer: And so one is just the knowledge and I guess is it hard to put out the level of communication? Just, it doesn’t have to be easy. Hey, just work out. That’s all you have to do and, but there can be tips of nutrition and [00:20:00] how to do it, especially in during this time, and that was my feeling. But more importantly, if this is the issue, how do we start to balance it right in a way that we can perform better next time.
[00:20:13] Maria Madison: Yeah. Again I would steer us away from blaming the individual and working only with the individual and the issue of obesity, because it’s a system and a structure and a societal issue. The work of the President Obama and Michelle Obama there are great programs that are out there working with school systems.
[00:20:31] Maria Madison: So issues of access to healthy foods starts in the educational system. It starts with the availability of healthy foods in communities. And I believe the sad truth is the growth of obesity across the country, large is not just endemic, but it is an example of perhaps the kinds of policies that have promoted the growth of profit over mutual benefit [00:21:00] societies profit over understanding how if you help one community do better, we all do better.
[00:21:06] Maria Madison: If you help the health of one community have access to healthy food and avoid food deserts, then you’re actually reducing the overall health cost for society, and you get to reallocate those funds to other things for the GDP writ large.
[00:21:20] Evan Meyer: So you’re only as strong as your weakest link, essentially.
[00:21:23] Maria Madison: Exactly right?
[00:21:24] Evan Meyer: I sometimes it’s where to place responsibility is always tricky. There is a level of personal responsibility that’s obviously important and wellbeing and thriving as a human, right? Yeah. Where do you draw that line between what you should take on for yourself versus what the university should be teaching. They should start in the school. Education systems don’t teach nearly the number of things that are important for living a successful life. Like finance. That’s right. Finances, finance, basic financial management, and how not to get into debt and be a responsible citizen.
[00:21:57] Evan Meyer: And there’s tons of this. So you’re [00:22:00] like that’s all math and science and English and history and physical education.
[00:22:04] Maria Madison: Yeah. Start physical responsibility in kindergarten.
[00:22:09] Maria Madison: Oh yeah. Sherry Glied was on. She’s the dean of NYU and said made a comment about all, I think it was in third grade, we should be starting to teach cognitive behavioral therapy techniques to people so they can manage their emotions.
[00:22:22] Maria Madison: Yes and coping skills and adaptation and self advocacy, all of that needs to start in kindergarten and first grade. I think the challenge there, again, as a structural issue is investing in that holistic approach to creating whole human beings as soon as possible.
[00:22:41] Maria Madison: But that’s actually the kind of funding that’s eroding and the investment in education.
[00:22:49] Evan Meyer: You’re in a position here at Brandeis right? Where you have clearly have made great impact from the DEI standpoint at a minimum you’ve seem to [00:23:00] bring a lot of people together to make change amongst many different groups.
[00:23:03] Evan Meyer: You’ve been awarded a number of awards as it relates to this in a very short period of time.
[00:23:08] Maria Madison: Thank you.
[00:23:08] Evan Meyer: And since you are part of the university system, it’s probably worth asking, what is the responsibility of universities do you think, to take on what we’re talking about in this conversation.
[00:23:22] Maria Madison: Yeah. Lots of answers to that because I think you’ve probably heard the same data I have that decreasing proportions of high school graduates wanna go to college because I don’t wanna be or incur that debt. And something like 30% of Boston high schoolers don’t wanna go to college.
[00:23:38] Maria Madison: And first thing, first things first is how do we build up the pathway to higher ed in an affordable way and a flexible way to make sure that wherever you are in the country or the world, regardless of your, socioeconomic status, you have access to knowledge. Fundamentally [00:24:00] access to knowledge will address quite a bit of what we’ve been discussing because those same individuals will go on to become the policy analysts, right? The individuals who go into government. So if you then assume that you’re gonna be successful in creating that pathway of equal access to quality education and information, and they do find their way to higher ed, then our job is to make sure that within that more inclusive approach to higher ed, that we create a system that looks at our structures, our institutes the psychological and behavioral aspects of the community.
[00:24:38] Maria Madison: Because the only way people are gonna learn is if they feel respected. Included and reflected in that pedagogy in the syllabi, but also in the building. And so that is the transformation that starts at the top and is filtered all the way through that educational community. And what you’re fighting against is [00:25:00] centuries, if not generations and centuries of people who have been alienated or segregated or discriminated against in the community who have probably experienced those four eyes of oppression, right? So you’re bringing into these environments hopefully an increasingly diverse population because of the demographic shift that is increasingly majority minority who are increasingly less able to pay for these expensive degrees.
[00:25:29] Maria Madison: And you’re putting them in a big, mixture of people, some of whom want that diversity, and others who believe in the replacement theory that these growing populations of other individuals will take away their resources and push against it. So you’ve got these folks coming in who have experienced not just the oppression of institutions or interpersonal, but they’ve also lost their self-confidence that interpersonal oppression, the [00:26:00] belief that you can’t succeed.
[00:26:01] Maria Madison: So there’s a lot that has to happen to get people to the higher ed and then once they’re in higher ed, there’s a lot that higher ed has to do to transform how it can meet the needs of every new incoming generation, right? And not settle them with debt. So inspire everyone to know and believe that they are going to be prepared for this next era of the workforce, which you and I both know, is this dramatic, inflection point?
[00:26:32] Maria Madison: The jobs that a lot of folks were going into in my generation when they left school, high school in particular, are being replaced by algorithm, by AI, right? Entry level jobs. So how are we then not just creating the pathways, not making high success outcomes for people in these institutions?
[00:26:51] Maria Madison: Not settling them with debt, but preparing them for the jobs of today and tomorrow that are, primarily [00:27:00] going to be influenced by Open AI and algorithms and new ways to approach policy jobs in every version of that, or medicine and health and healthcare and education. Everything that we’re training the new workforce of tomorrow to do, and they’re Gen Zers, they’re digitally savvy, but not every population has had access to broadband.
[00:27:24] Maria Madison: So how do we make sure that we’re a part of providing broadband access to folks who had to go to a hotel to access broadband, to do their high school homework? Study in the bathroom at the hotel to get access to broadband while, keeping the rest of your family quiet in the hotel room next to you if you were or a housing situation that you know already put you behind.
[00:27:50] Maria Madison: There’s a lot of work to do.
[00:27:54] Evan Meyer: Yeah. Those types of resource constraints can make a particularly challenging.[00:28:00] People seem to do it a lot of times remarkably, right? Yes. Beyond what you’d expect. There are these, there are people who don’t make excuses for stuff and somehow, in a lot of the way that I think about thing is you’re, and it’s hard to do this, but you are a collection of your ultimately a summation of your choices Yeah.
[00:28:20] Evan Meyer: But also a summation of your excuses. Yeah.
[00:28:23] Maria Madison: And your context, right?
[00:28:25] Evan Meyer: Yeah. It’s harder and it’s a lot harder for some than other to get themselves out of certain situations. Yeah. But at the end of the day, there is someone has to say, okay.
[00:28:35] Evan Meyer: This path, the path set out for me is that I’m told or that with all these restraints is not the one I’m gonna do and I am going to work in the bathroom if I have to study and whatever that is.
[00:28:46] Maria Madison: Yeah. Adaptive capacity in the same way we were saying kindergarten through third grade, we should be teaching kids, fiscal responsibility or whatnot.
[00:28:55] Maria Madison: They also would need to learn adaptive capacity. And sometimes the way [00:29:00] to teach adaptive capacity is for a parent to get outta the way, right? Yeah. And let students discover their strengths and their weaknesses at an early age. So they can also discover their inner innate superpower. And then, for those that have access to fewer resources to discover that in innate superpower sooner society still needs to try to address or redress the deliberate differential in how resources were allocated.
[00:29:32] Maria Madison: Those societies that have less access to broadband why can’t they have equal access to broadband if in the same zip code someone else has it? I believe in teaching and training and allowing for adaptive capacity to grow, but also discriminatory practices that create the differential access need to be addressed.
[00:29:55] Evan Meyer: If broadband is, I’m sure it’s a a large issue. I know I, I’ve learned [00:30:00] recently that something like 2 million people in this country don’t have access to clean water or no water at all.
[00:30:05] Maria Madison: Mind boggling, or polluting.
[00:30:06] Evan Meyer: Yeah. There’s a nonprofit out to work with that and that’s crazy.
[00:30:10] Maria Madison: It’s crazy. It doesn’t even happen by accident. The numerous number of cases from Flint, Michigan to Mississippi and across the country, where in some instances it was by design, not necessarily that someone said, oh, let’s put lead in that water. But someone said, let’s not prioritize those pipes to be upgraded so they’re no longer led pipes.
[00:30:33] Maria Madison: Or in the case of Flint where someone said, we’re going to change our water system. And so to do we’re going to divert The access to the current pipes, to less clean water and not worry about who’s on the other end of those pipes. And then even after recognizing the gradual levels, elevated levels, they don’t even have to be elevated levels of lead.
[00:30:58] Maria Madison: There’s no safe level of lead [00:31:00] discovering lead in children. It took a long time of the community having to advocate to be provided with bottled water, which you can imagine how difficult that is. So again, it’s a structural problem for which oftentimes the community has been historically the driver in writing a lot of those wrongs and correcting what sometimes non-representative governing bodies problems that non-representative governing bodies have created.
[00:31:28] Maria Madison: Again, it’s how can we create societies that have mutual respect for all its all its population?
[00:31:36] Evan Meyer: First you have to remove money from the equation.
[00:31:39] Maria Madison: Yeah.
[00:31:41] Evan Meyer: So this is like a— or
[00:31:42] Maria Madison: Do you, you just need to add money to the equation.
[00:31:46] Evan Meyer: Yes. In different capacities.
[00:31:47] Evan Meyer: Yeah. And this has now just come up where it’s becoming clear that the level of, when it comes to lobbying and corruption and government and policy making, that this is one of the larger pieces of the equation of [00:32:00] why things are done the way that they’re done, and why a lot of inequity can exist.
[00:32:05] Evan Meyer: Now you talk and then you add the level of like profit motive of companies and where they’re gonna put their resources. And you say, could it be a racial thing or could it just be, it’s possible. It could also just be, in some cases the idea that these, this group has nothing to offer us and we cannot profit.
[00:32:23] Evan Meyer: It’s too expensive to make the change and we can’t get a return back. So it’s not a problem for a company in a capitalist environment. That’s a problem, for government or nonprofit, unless we change the structure of what it means to make money. So it’s like prisons are a similar kind of thing, right?
[00:32:41] Evan Meyer: Oh, yeah. Like the conversation of what should be private and what shouldn’t, but the reason why has become it seems clearer to me that these, there’s like these levels of like corruption, lobbying, money. Who can we make money off it? Who’s providing the service and how much can be made?
[00:32:57] Evan Meyer: And Yeah. And even in Covid, this [00:33:00] was a conversation that’s right. Of like how much money firms are making and should people be able to make money on this. Maybe they should, if they’re solving a real problem.
[00:33:08] Maria Madison: But the ultimate question would be where are the regulatory authorities and agencies who were reviewing the profit margins, right?
[00:33:17] Maria Madison: So one could say in the case of pharmaceutical companies, that they need the profit margins to turn it back over into RND research and development, right? But then one could also ask, when did the gap between the C-suite grow and the worker, in the lowest ranks? When did that grow and why, and where does the profit go?
[00:33:37] Maria Madison: And what were the increases in salaries for that top C-suite? And did that need to happen? What’s the return on investment of that growing gap between the wealthiest and the worse off and the labor markets? When we think about All of this, I believe, again, going back to Heather McGhee, one of the answers and important thoughts is to help people [00:34:00] recognize that we’re all better off.
[00:34:02] Maria Madison: And as you said earlier, when the worst of us are cared for. And there are numerous venture capitalists that are beginning to show this. A couple of folks that are extraordinary are Mitchell Kaporand Freada Klein and they just published a book called Closing the Equity Gap. And what they’ve been demonstrating to the venture capitalist community is that investing in communities to help create their own capital in innovating ideas that move society forward actually has an incredible return on investment for the venture capitalists.
[00:34:38] Maria Madison: And you see the same with businesses and banks that have been investing in communities demonstrating, that investing in some communities will increase not just the health and wellbeing of those communities, but creates a thriving economy for many organizations or communities.
[00:34:55] Maria Madison: So there is evidence, there’s plenty of evidence that when you help marginalized populations [00:35:00] to come up with their own solutions, which they’ve been doing since time and Memorial, one has to ask, why are barriers always put in the way of successful thriving communities? Again, the first reconstruction is the greatest example.
[00:35:13] Maria Madison: And all the way through to, the modern civil rights movement there are examples of populations trying to do exactly that, create thriving, equitable communities. But the policies are put in place to redirect the funds to create profit for other groups.
[00:35:31] Evan Meyer: Yeah, so we have there’s levels of the problem.
[00:35:34] Evan Meyer: Yeah. I think, if a VC were to hear a business plan and get pitched a business that was in line with what you’re talking about, and they read the book and they’re like, oh. I see why this can make me 10 x in four years on my investment. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, I think they’ll do it.
[00:35:54] Evan Meyer: Yeah. Because when it comes to investing money and this, their goal is to make money back. So if they do believe [00:36:00] in it, and there’s enough people who really believe in this evidence from this book That’s right. It should be very obvious that VC should read that book and determine, oh, okay, I get it.
[00:36:10] Evan Meyer: That makes sense. I’m gonna put my million dollars or 10 million or whatever series round they’re raising, right? And it’s let’s do it. But why and how are you gonna get there and show me that this is a smart investment?
[00:36:21] Maria Madison: Yeah. And they go on speaking tours, they speak to their colleagues.
[00:36:25] Maria Madison: They’re, we just have to keep describing this. We have to go to Congress and show them the numbers. It does make you wonder then, what are the barriers since the evidence is there, what are the barriers? And again the barriers are where we began. We are now trained by dopamine and going into our cell phones and looking for news to go down our rabbit hole.
[00:36:51] Maria Madison: And in the most altruistic descriptions of this one could say the extremists in however you’d like to [00:37:00] define it, but I’ll just say sort of alt-right extremists for example, felt disenfranchised possibly at a certain point. No one was speaking with them frustrated economically left out. And all of a sudden, they’re dopamines, beginning to be fed through these social rabbit social media rabbit holes.
[00:37:18] Maria Madison: And what they’re being fed is, essentially that replacement theory. If Migrants are coming across the border, they’re taking their jobs. If black and brown folks are roaming the streets they’re gonna threaten their safety and security. If you can go through numerous communications coming out of those tracks and begin to see that they’re not even always necessarily driven by finance, right?
[00:37:46] Maria Madison: It’s driven by the growth of fear and hatred. That’s taken on a life of its own. And that goes beyond economics. That goes to the fundamental question of individuals. [00:38:00] Being exposed to others. There’s lots of science on this as well, Esther Duflo Banerjee I think as well as Patricia Devine, they’ve all, come about at providing evidence that society could move forward.
[00:38:14] Maria Madison: Together better if there was more exposure to different populations. In that, by design we have these segregated populations, and in that segregation, less of a familiarity and understanding of each other, which means you’re less likely to even wanna think about sharing resources. But in a lot of that research contact theory, one would say that greater exposure means a greater respect.
[00:38:38] Maria Madison: Little children aren’t born to be racist, right? They’re not born to–
[00:38:41] Evan Meyer: It’s the purpose of traveling very often. One or one of the benefits rather. Yeah. Is that exposure to see how people live.
[00:38:48] Maria Madison: It is exposure. But then the flip side of the exposure is it shouldn’t be toxic exposure because then you begin to get, what’s often referred to as, even weathering or the [00:39:00] epigenetic presentations of constant exposure to discrimination and racism, which wears on people over time. So society needs a transformation that says perspective taking, stereotypic replacement and exposure through whatever means can provide respectful presentations of other cultures. So that one begins to build a sense of empathy for others, and then add some sense of sharing resources.
[00:39:31] Maria Madison: Because the more that happens, yeah. Yeah.
[00:39:35] Evan Meyer: How do you handle information that you radically disagree with? What is your process, your cognitive process when you hear something that it doesn’t resonate with your inner being or your knowledge or your, anything that you’ve experienced.
[00:39:55] Evan Meyer: Yeah. But yeah, there’s a lot of people, who feel that way. [00:40:00] What do you do with that?
[00:40:01] Maria Madison: Honestly, my complex answer to that begins with make sure that I’ve put my oxygen mask on, right? Because hearing these things has a physiological manifestation in me, a mental and physiological manifestation in me, which makes my blood pressure rise.
[00:40:19] Maria Madison: My cortisol goes out, dysregulated and out of whack and thing number one is recognizing that we need to put our oxygen mask on first and breathe. Ironically, the process of breathing slows down our thinking and now this is more like right thinking fast and slow in the common and sense.
[00:40:38] Maria Madison: But if you practice these sorts of things in the moment, it’s something along the lines of recast theory. When you practice these sorts of things, and imagine scenarios where you’re constantly experiencing some sort of microaggression or aggression or any kind of assault, think about how first can you protect yourself, right?
[00:40:59] Maria Madison: You might [00:41:00] actually need to use your flight or flight response and separate yourself from the situation, but let’s say you have breathed into it and you want to help move the conversation forward. All of this sounds beautiful as I’m describing it, right? Because you’re not, we’re not in the moment right now, but in the ideal world, you would be able to build your adaptive capacity to get to these levels of thinking, where after breathing, you ask yourself, what question can I ask this person That will help me understand where they’re coming from and open up their willingness to have a conversation on it.
[00:41:35] Maria Madison: Then after you’ve breathed through it, the next thing I would do is think about what question can I present to help us come about it, a better understanding of each other. So it’s like reading the situation, beginning with myself and the other person, making sure it’s safe, and then re casting the conversation and hopefully, coming about it, you don’t have to come about it in agreement, but at least coming about it respect for each other’s different opinions [00:42:00] and or continuing the conversation so that you begin to share resources and References so that either you discover that your critical thinking on the topic is poorly informed or insufficiently informed or there is, but some way to open up the conversation to continue having it if you desire to do otherwise, always safety first. I don’t know. Does that help answer?
[00:42:22] Evan Meyer: Oh yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And there’s a follow up to this which is, say you begin to agree. Now, I’m not even going into right or wrong here. Like right or wrong is such a strange thing to talk about when it comes to like plex issues that I believe most people are coming from a place of decent values that they want the right things for the world and he send no homelessness in good schools for their kids in safe places.
[00:42:48] Evan Meyer: Just have the approach. Some people think there needs to be a lot of guns, some people think there needs to be no guns. But how do you, then start to open your mind to be [00:43:00] willing to hearing something different and I guess what I’m trying to get is how to encourage people to do that where there are times, I’m sure in your life and in mine where I’ve felt this escalated commitment for 20 or 30 years, where I’ve thought a certain way, my parents told it to me.
[00:43:15] Evan Meyer: Whatever it was that you’ve read, you’ve got new arguments with people about it and how to walk out, I dont know, maybe Yeah. I, but whatever that was you’ve grasped on and then you may have to feel a new piece of information and accept it.
[00:43:28] Evan Meyer: Yeah. How do you do that?
[00:43:30] Maria Madison: Honestly, it also has to do with how the information is conveyed, right?
[00:43:35] Maria Madison: And so I truly believe that we have to first go down the journey of cultural humility, which means suspending disbelief in your own judgment and doing that all the time. It’s a constant practice of asking yourself where you. Developed your own belief so that when you do get into that conversation, you are more [00:44:00] prepared to suspend disbelief, as crazy as that sounds. Suspend disbelief so that you can entertain perspective taking, why that other person came to that thought.
[00:44:10] Maria Madison: And you’ll either come out on the other side validating what you thought originally, or you might even say, huh, I’m gonna go back and investigate this further. So allowing yourself, before you even get into those conversations, to constantly be an estate of humility and inquiry. About your own beliefs and judgment.
[00:44:32] Maria Madison: And I think, that’s a scary place for people who feel their entire careers are about having to demonstrate, improve their knowledge. You can’t, couldn’t go to a surgeon and say, suspend your belief and the best practices for a particular case, and yet they do it all the time.
[00:44:48] Maria Madison: Yeah. They’re always, which is the scary thing about ChatGPT and OpenAI, but they’re always going to second guess themselves and get a second opinion to make sure that what they think they see is actually accurate, even if they’ve seen it a [00:45:00] thousand times. They’re always gonna have something in their mind that says, what if I’m wrong?
[00:45:04] Maria Madison: How would I prepare for that? If I am, what can I do? In the instance where I discover that I am, or if I could be wrong, what kinds of alternative plans or approaches could I take? If that’s the case? Yeah.
[00:45:17] Evan Meyer: Yeah. And that cultural humility or, as Pete Peterson calls it, civic humility.
[00:45:22] Evan Meyer: The ability to do that gets harder depending on the issue and it gets harder. It depends on where you’re triggered and a lot of people are triggered at different things where it doesn’t, if you just say something, they’ll just flip out. It doesn’t matter what the situation like.
[00:45:34] Evan Meyer: You can make one comment and it, again, it comes down to the approach as well. But and then on the, of course, on the other side of this is like what things don’t deserve skepticism at all. Where climate’s an interesting one, right? Where I have spoken to about a lot of people now, and I haven’t spoken to any including people in Congress and I’m not hearing a lot of people, at least [00:46:00] the ones that, that are denying climate change, they deny the severity. They deny not the severity. They have different priorities around the issue. There’s an extreme group that denies, specificities like it’s not happening at all. We shouldn’t be responsible. I do believe that most people especially people who are like armors and into energy and resources, like these people need to maintain land and think about land in a healthy way.
[00:46:27] Evan Meyer: And funny enough, a lot of them are actually even Republican. Yeah. Who, right? Yep. And they do think responsibly. They do think about how to care for nature and the environment. Yeah. It’s almost but when it comes to the policy, yeah, there’s so I guess the question is where’s the skepticism?
[00:46:45] Evan Meyer: What do we allow for in that conversation? Because the thing that the media and the thing we want to thank, is that like those people, they’re climate deniers. And I even hear, I’ve had other people on [00:47:00] this podcast, yeah, call them climate deniers, and I’m like, that’s like a group. Very, that’s not the mainstream amount of people who believe in responsibility around, around this issue.
[00:47:11] Maria Madison: Yeah. Again I think it’s about root cause of our ideology, trying to understand what brings someone to their level of opinion or perspective on a topic and climate change. Again, what’s the true driver behind that belief? And it comes back to asking the question of, One way to put it is what’s in it for you?
[00:47:37] Maria Madison: If you believe one way or the other, who’s worse off and who’s better off based on your opinion and engaging in that conversation. And if they’re less familiar, and here I sound a little patronizing, so my apologies, but if they’re less familiar with the people who are worse off because of the drivers for climate change, then it’s an educational opportunity.
[00:47:57] Maria Madison: Sure. But how you go about that education in my mind [00:48:00] is storytelling. Yeah. And if possible, asking them to tell stories about either moves that their ancestors had to make and why. So coming back to things that are both stories that they could share that might help ring about an intimate relationship to the topic.
[00:48:22] Maria Madison: Again, everyone’s got a migration story. What was your ancestors migration story? Why did they move from one place to another? And was it because of the geography or the people, or the place? What are all the different reasons in which your people moved around? That sounds like a story I heard from a small population, an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea, who they have you know, no technology in relationship to the US.
[00:48:53] Maria Madison: It’s contributing to global climate change, and yet they’re the worst off, and so they’re gonna have to move. What do you think that would be? Like, what do you [00:49:00] think the kinds of issues are for them right now that might relate to your family? Relative scenarios. Can help everybody’s got some sort of trauma or hardship in their ancestry or their own lives coming out about.
[00:49:17] Maria Madison: Its some area of mutual understanding. Can help in self-reflection, but also in connecting and relating with others, making it a personal conversation or experience. Because fundamentally what you wanna do is respect the humanity of each other. Have someone respect your humanity and respect theirs.
[00:49:35] Maria Madison: So it’s that mutual exchange of trying to understand who they are as a human as a starting point, their positionality.
[00:49:43] Evan Meyer: Yeah, of course not at the expense. It comes down. A lot of times it comes down to back to that resource thing where they feel like with, that’s gonna take away from their resources.
[00:49:51] Maria Madison: That’s right. And so there, the beauty of that, which is also the challenge of our times, is every time there has been an industrial[00:50:00] revelation or inflection point, there’s been innovation. And I would say that one, you would engage in a conversation about the kinds of technological leaps we’ve made historically that have helped us recognize that resources depend entirely on innovation and ingenuity, and that a lot of the ways in which we’ve overcome adversity.
[00:50:27] Maria Madison: Historically have been through challenging times where we had to create heat where we had to create, the wheel Yeah. Where we had to create telephones and cell phones. And so honestly, there’s so much reason for hope, and hope and optimism because the digital natives coming up after my generation are extremely savvy in navigating ways to hopefully come up with ways to create clean water where we’re going to increasingly experience drought in some of our largest metropolitan [00:51:00] areas and throughout the south and southwest and across the country.
[00:51:04] Maria Madison: Yeah. I forgot your question, but yeah.
[00:51:07] Evan Meyer: Yeah, there’s a, there, there’s just so much to digest and I, I think it starts with a few things. One is to stop name calling. Yeah. Even climate denier is a name call. Like it’s a nice little category we like to create to call throw people into that bucket.
[00:51:21] Evan Meyer: That’s right. I just think that’s the wrong we like to do that. And of course it sells on sells ads. It’s click bait. That’s right. And I think that’s the first thing.
[00:51:31] Maria Madison: Stop the name calling. Stop.
[00:51:33] Evan Meyer: You gotta just stop the name calling. It’s like whether you agree or disagree, name calling’s bad on all levels to categorize people and genericize in that way.
[00:51:42] Maria Madison: You stop the conversation and the learning when you do that, and when really what you want is to open up the conversation through neutral respect and recognizing each other’s humanity and asking how people have developed their thinking, their thoughts.
[00:51:55] Maria Madison: Yeah. But thinking’s easy. And that’s why people judge Karl [00:52:00] Young.
[00:52:00] Evan Meyer: And I love just thinking fast. It’s what we do. We don’t take the time, we don’t have always the time to sift through the millions of bits of information, not economical. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great, I love that book.
[00:52:12] Evan Meyer: Yeah. I think it was one of the most influential books I’ve read around just the cognitive bias. That’s right. And like how many filters we have before we actually get to what could be truth what, what is, so then you start to ask yourself, and I love asking this question what is truth?
[00:52:29] Evan Meyer: What is a fact? Do we even speak from the same lexicon when we’re talking about even these categories? That’s right. What is your definition of a Democrat and a Republican? In this country or another country based on what information your parents like, what is that definition?
[00:52:42] Evan Meyer: What is a fact that’s people throw that word out oh, I have the facts. And it’s what facts do you have? The news? The news is interpretation. Of an interpretation of an you weren’t in the room, so how do we get closer to that other than, I think people need to read the bills personally.
[00:52:58] Evan Meyer: If you want real information, you gotta read [00:53:00] the bills. Just go right to the bill. Spend the time, learn it now. That’s what the bill says. But source at least.
[00:53:06] Maria Madison: On the other hand, the bills have margins. They have margins on the side, between the lines.
[00:53:11] Maria Madison: And it’s in the interpretation, which is why we have a Supreme Court, which is why we still are in an era of questioning whether politics are influencing our most supreme of Supreme Courts. We have legislation, we have laws, we have policies, we have a constitution, we have bills. But they’re only as good as the individuals we vote on to represent us to interpret the bills in an equitable way.
[00:53:50] Maria Madison: So the same.
[00:53:51] Evan Meyer: So how do you get more good people to run for these positions? Who know that, look, it’s hard to be a politician. Like whether you like [00:54:00] ’em or don’t, they have some level, they have what it takes to be in that position. Call it narcissism. Call it whatever you want. They’re willing to do the work.
[00:54:08] Evan Meyer: And I, yeah, would degree respect all politicians, because if you’re on the, in your armchair pointing at the tv, yelling why they didn’t get the touchdown, and why they didn’t change the bill and why didn’t get it, then yeah. Then that’s your attitude on things instead of getting involved and like figuring out how to be part of the solution.
[00:54:25] Evan Meyer: But those people are the ones doing it. So then, if you are not willing to do it, what are you supposed to do? How, what? You should prob, I think you should take a little bit of a backseat of like how emotionally invested you get into the pol, into the intellectual sports you’re watching.
[00:54:40] Maria Madison: Yeah. Again, the oxygen mask, you can’t even make your best decisions when you allow, for your fast and emotional self to make decisions. Our, that’s right. Our reptilian part of our thinking. And that’s right. At the end of the day It’s so simplistic to say, but at the end of the day, and I know this this [00:55:00] wonderful book The Brain-Friendly Workplace, the author I can’t remember his name says Maslow’s got it wrong, right?
[00:55:07] Maria Madison: In order for society to succeed, Maslow borrowing from the Blackfoot Indians, created man’s hierarchy of needs and said that the base of it and the shape of the TB from the individuals for whom this is created the Blackfoot Indians was, food and basic resources.
[00:55:25] Maria Madison: But the author of this book literally says again, it is actually community that we first need to be in community with each other to build, and share I always say share pheromones. But build that community social fabric and exposure so that when you are sitting in front of your TV and yelling at your team, honestly, I don’t watch that much sports, but when I do, I like both teams.
[00:55:53] Maria Madison: I’m always rooting for the guy on either team that’s not, doing as well, that people are getting upset over [00:56:00] if one of those football players falls, and looks like they’re about to be exposed to or have CTE, I’m screaming. I don’t care which team they’re on, I’m screaming, help this guy, right?
[00:56:09] Maria Madison: And get him the resources he needs. And I think it’s how do we create a communal moral compass such that you respect diversity and root for all members of every team. And I think the same goes true for politics that people could argue again, what does it mean to be Democrat or Republican?
[00:56:36] Maria Madison: But at the end of the day, the Constitution is supposed to represent all of us and having a two-party system was a way to create checks and balances, just like with the House and the Senate. But that every member of those different constituencies is supposed to have a moral compass and say, [00:57:00] what we’re arguing about is what’s the best way to get to our agreed upon objective, which is to make society better off so that when they say the word society, they mean all its members.
[00:57:11] Maria Madison: One can ask what will it take to help people recognize the humanity of every member? Cuz once again, I believe fundamentally it’s that. There is, a proportion of the population if you do not respect the humanity of other people, regardless of whether they’re driven by finances or not, that for whatever reasons historically stories told Transgenerationally it’s the devaluing of populations of what had been historically minoritized or marginalized populations.
[00:57:47] Maria Madison: And if you can overcome that, if you can recognize that as the new base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that we should be in commune together while respecting each other’s difference then, that’s how you [00:58:00] could watch that’s how you could move society forward and respect each other’s language as long as it’s not, as you were saying derogatory or inflammatory .
[00:58:10] Evan Meyer: We should change the word different with interesting.
[00:58:12] Evan Meyer: Yeah. Isn’t that why you are interested in anything because it’s novel or new or different or so interpret different with curiosity and interest and intrigue than you. You’ve got yourself a different way of framing things.
[00:58:27] Maria Madison: The beauty of that, and I will add is at the end of the day, not only, do we wanna recognize the humanity of everyone, but we wanna lead a life full of joy and happiness.
[00:58:38] Maria Madison: And so happiness theory and those courses, they’re just thriving all over the world. But in the simplistic course, Most elemental way awe feeds our brain. And being in a state of awe means always being exposed difference or interesting things because they fuel our sense of wonder and they fuel happiness as well.
[00:58:58] Evan Meyer: Yeah. Oh, absolutely.[00:59:00]
[00:59:00] Evan Meyer: Absolutely. We’re coming up here on time and I’m loving this conversation. I hate to end it, but I think the best way we can end it is, or one way I’d like to end it, is tell people based on your experience in traveling and all your work, if you had to give people, I’m sure you had plenty of lessons, but if you had to encourage people to do or think do something or think in a certain way or how to be what would you encourage for people based on your life lessons in today’s day.
[00:59:32] Maria Madison: Yeah. There are so many books and courses and the most popular course at Yale last year is taught by Laurie Santos on happiness. And as simple as a lot of those concepts sound, we need to commit to practicing them. And, they include such simple tropes as practice random acts of kindness practice gratitude for yourself and others, get enough sleep,[01:00:00] entertain exposure to others.
[01:00:02] Maria Madison: It doesn’t have to be interpersonal If you know that you hold deeply different views of different demographics. Get the education online first before harming someone and asking them, hard questions about, who they are or whatnot, but exposure to others in whatever way you can. Through music, the arts, the sciences, discover and investigate the the brilliance of every kind of demographic that has contributed to making, this country and every country in the world.
[01:00:37] Maria Madison: Phenomenal. The US exports a lot of science and culture and so much more, and it’s from the diversity that was created here. So the thing, the very thing we’re proud of happened because of the variety of voices and opinions and demographics. [01:01:00] Of this country and how they’ve come into conflict and how they’ve come into a accord.
[01:01:04] Maria Madison: And that’s how we’ve come out the other way at what we try to export around the world. The good stuff we export around the world has come because of that. And so practice the appreciation for one’s self, which includes health and wellbeing of oneself and one’s community and gratitude, random acts of kindness.
[01:01:24] Maria Madison: Get enough sleep, aim for a good diet for yourself and others in making the change of creating equitable communities.
[01:01:33] Evan Meyer: Beautiful. Thank you for being here and thank you for your wisdom.
[01:01:37] Maria Madison: Thank you.
[01:01:37] Evan Meyer: And imparting that here today and I will thank our guests for listening and we will see you again on the next episode, Meyerside Chat.
[01:01:50] Evan Meyer: And Have a wonderful day. Thank you, Evan. Take care. Take care.