Why it's so hard to listen when you disagree | Emily Kasriel

Host Elise Hu introduces journalist and author Emily Kasriel’s argument that people often avoid conversations across political, cultural or personal divides because they confuse listening with agreement. Kasriel says this confusion begins early: adults are taught that “listen to me” often means obey, stay quiet or comply. As a result, when someone expresses an idea we find morally or politically unacceptable, we fear that listening will contaminate us, weaken our principles, force us to change our minds or somehow make us lose ourselves. Kasriel argues that the greater danger is not losing our moral codes but losing the ability to connect with people across generations, cultures and political divides. Instead of listening, people usually explain themselves more loudly and insistently, hoping the other person will finally understand. She calls the alternative “deep listening,” a practice developed from her work as a journalist and executive coach and informed by psychologists, scholars and peace builders. Deep listening does not require agreement or surrender; it requires enough curiosity and self-awareness to understand another person while remaining responsible for one’s own values.

Kasriel illustrates the problem with an early-career BBC assignment in Ethiopia. She had secured what she considered a once-in-a-lifetime interview with Meles Zenawi, then Ethiopia’s president and later prime minister. The political context was serious: opponents of Zenawi’s government were being tortured or disappearing. Zenawi wanted to discuss his record production of maize, sorghum and barley—an important achievement in a country with a history of famine—but Kasriel repeatedly redirected the interview to human rights. She does not say that holding the president accountable was wrong. Instead, she recognizes that her questions were partly “masks” for her desire to confront him, and that she lacked curiosity about what he wanted to explain. Zenawi moved farther behind his large wooden desk and ended the interview early, leaving her with no meaningful answers. Kasriel concludes that her inability to listen made him defensive and cost her the opportunity to understand a powerful, controversial figure. The lesson became central to her later framework: effective listening can make accountability and inquiry more productive, whereas an interview driven only by confrontation may close the conversation before understanding is possible.

Kasriel says ordinary listening often fails because everyone assumes they are rational while being shaped by judgments, emotions and past experiences. In her deep-listening approach, the first task is to take time out and listen to oneself before trying to interpret the other person. A listener might notice that a neighbor evokes the feeling of being eight years old and powerless, triggers a judgment such as “she’s selfish,” or attracts qualities the listener has difficulty accepting in themselves. Kasriel summarizes this with the idea that “we see the world not as it is, but as we are.” She describes practicing this approach with Latvians and Russian-speaking Latvians after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Latvia has a traumatic history of Soviet rule, Russian speakers make up about one in three residents, and fears of reinvasion made suspicion fall on the Russian-speaking community. One participant, Ilona, initially found it unnatural to remain curious about what a neighbor might think. She did not succeed every time and sometimes remained tight-jawed and defensive, but she learned to notice those reactions and put them aside enough to stay present. She also practiced a warm, empathetic silence that gave the other person room to reflect. Kasriel calls listening for what matters but remains unspoken using a “third ear,” which she imagines as located near the heart.

Kasriel says Ilona eventually saw that careful listening could help her neighbor feel safe, trust her and share a deeper story. She connects this individual experience to a global research project conducted with the BBC and the British Council, in which more than 1,000 people in 100 countries trained in deep listening. Participants reported feeling safer expressing themselves and more connected to others, but they also began questioning their own attitudes. Kasriel cites additional research indicating that when people feel truly heard, they often soften their beliefs. She then tells the story of Hurrah, a Lebanese Muslim whose father had encouraged her to restrict her friendships to people with similar backgrounds. As an adult, Hurrah said she had opposed Syrian refugees in Lebanon and avoided them, partly because she believed some permitted girls to marry at 11 or 13 and were not living a “proper Lebanese life.” Her breakthrough came when she understood emotionally, not just intellectually, that listening to people with different perspectives was not surrender or betrayal. She now works every Tuesday with teenagers at a school for Syrian refugees. Listening to them showed her that more than one perspective can exist. Hurrah remains firmly opposed to child marriage, but she is trying to deepen her understanding without abandoning that value.

Kasriel says deep listening is not limited to conflict zones. She asks listeners to choose someone they know who sees the world differently—not necessarily the most extreme opponent, but someone whose disagreement genuinely hurts. The exercise is to take time out, listen with as much curiosity and openness as possible, and notice discomfort and resistance instead of pretending they are absent. The risky part is trying to move past those reactions, even when the exchange feels awkward. Kasriel says that, over time, these encounters have made her feel more alive because they allow her to connect profoundly with another person regardless of that person’s beliefs. For her, deep listening is ultimately an expression of respect for another person’s dignity and full humanity, not an endorsement of their position. She closes by asking what might be possible in a polarized era if people “firmly and permanently separate listening from agreement.” The episode identifies that separation as the central practical and moral goal of her framework.