#67: David Smith and civil conversations in an angry age

For this podcast, I am posting a talk titled “Civil Conversations in an Angry Age,” given by University of Washington Professor David Smith recently at the Wenatchee Library. The talk was hosted by the Wenatchee YWCA was sponsored by Humanities Washington.  In the talk, Smith gives some perspective about why we are at each other’s throats and a recipe we can use to become better at engaging in these difficult conversations. Smith comes from a fascinating background. He was born into a fundamentalist Christian family and was devoted to that view. He later spent 15 years evaluating that belief system piece by piece.  He emerged from that intellectual and spiritual journey viewing the world from a progressive mindset but also committed to teaching people to think for themselves about issues that matter to them.