To Find Connection in America, Look for the Curiosity Mobile

A: I felt there was a lot of frustration over politics in my family, and I was not alone in that. I'd talk to other folks in my community, and many were struggling because they didn't want to see a certain family member who voted for someone that they disagreed with.

The problem felt so big at the time, and I was reading everything on the news, and I was consuming everything on social media, and I was just like, ‘What can I do about it?’ I know that if I do something about the things that are giving me anxiety, it helps to reduce that anxiety.

That led me to UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, where I helped popularize science-based practices on how to build belonging and help people understand backgrounds and perspectives different from their own. Curiosity has become a big part of this work.

Then, in 2019, I spent a year living out of my car and driving across the country to talk to people who had different views and backgrounds than me, from Appalachia to the rural South. And that was what inspired the core thesis of my book, which is, How do we actually practice curiosity?

A: That first road trip was in 2019. After reading my book, Seek, a lot of people asked me to share videos from my travels, but I had barely taken any. And I told them if I ever went on this journey again, I would travel with a film crew. And for the road trip, which I'm on right now, I’m driving a giant purple van with “Curiosity Mobile” written on it.

A lot of us view video content, and a lot of the time, it gives us a sense of doom. So, my question was, ‘How do we move from doomscrolling to “hopescrolling”?’ How do we show people not just the problems that exist in our country but also that people are already working to address them?

There’s been recent research showing that most Americans want a country whose democracy includes everyone. But most Americans do not believe it’s possible to create this vision of belonging. I call that the belief gap.

How do you close a belief gap? You need to stoke the imagination of people and show them that it’s already happening.

A: I met this incredible man named Steven, who's part of a group called Coalfield Development. Steven and his team have taken an abandoned coal field and turned it into a regenerative agriculture farm.

The before-and-after pictures are incredible. It has grass that I walked in up to my thighs. There are happy animals grazing across the land. And they provide so much food for their local community and so many job opportunities for people in Mingo County, West Virginia.

It was such a great example of how spaces can be reclaimed by the people who live in those communities. That's the beauty of what's happening in this country.

I've talked to so many people about this amazing work happening in West Virginia. But I'm sometimes met with stereotypes and assumptions. So, I think, ‘Do you know anyone from West Virginia? Have you spoken to and shared stories with anyone from this state?’

We're living in a time when we create stories—without real knowledge—about people who are different from us and don't meet them with curiosity. And since we don't understand their true stories, we create separation.

A: One of the beautiful things about curiosity is that you're pursuing a better understanding of the person that is in front of you—but without any agenda.

And I think what people forget is that it's not just a gift that you're giving to the person that you're being curious about, but it's also a gift you're giving to yourself. That work of really seeing the people that are around you makes you feel more connected to them.

And if it feels scary or hard to connect with people in a meaningful way, try to see curiosity as this muscle that you can exercise. You can start in small ways, like saying hi to a neighbor and checking in with them.

I always talk about curiosity being on a spectrum from shallow to deep. And deep curiosity is where transformation really lives.

I find that when you’re honest and deeply curious about the people around you, you start to feel less alone. You start to feel like you are a part of something that's greater than yourself.

A: We are all co-founders of this country. We're all collectively building this country as we go—in our own neighborhoods, in our own families, and also at a larger scale.

And this anniversary reminds us of that. What can we each do in our communities to build that better future, right? And how do we get inspired by the wonderful people who are already doing that?

We should always remember that there are so many wonderful people—even if they have different ideologies than you—who often want the same things you do.

We're all wrestling with it and trying to figure it out together, and we can actually learn from each other's differences. There is strength in our differences.

We don't want to erase that or flatten that—we want to say, "What can I learn from you, and how can you learn from me as well? And how do we stay curious with one another as we're really trying to address these big problems that exist?"

A: It’s going to be an incredible day, with thousands of people in Philadelphia and at libraries across the country watching the livestream, people who are interested in talking about how we wrestle with the big questions in our country, what future we’re trying to build, and how we can work together across our differences to make that happen.

I hope that by the end of the event, people will have a deeper sense of what's going on in our country—and the world—and how they might play a role in making a better future, and that they will be inspired to actually participate in that work.