Make America talk again: the lab teaching sworn enemies to have decent conversations

Could the secret to healing a riven politics lie in a Difficult Conversations Laboratory?

This is an edited version of a longer piece that you can find here

In a hard-to-find windowless room deep inside a New York university, some difficult conversations are taking place. But this is not unusual, because this is a Difficult Conversations Laboratory.

Though it does not physically resemble a dungeon, it probably should. Researchers conducting experiments here routinely generate the kind of excruciating discomfort that most of us spend every family gathering trying to avoid.