So to Speak Podcast Transcript: Why you should talk to strangers w/ Fin Colleton and Kratima Divakar

Note: This is an unedited rush transcript. Please check any quotations against the audio recording.

Nico Perrino: Hey, everyone. Nico here. If you’ve been listening to “So, to Speak” for a while, you’ve probably heard me talk about the book I’ve been working on. Well, it’s finally coming out on January 19th. The title is Free Speech Generation: The Civil Libertarians Who Saved the First Amendment and Transformed America. And it’s now available for preorder.

To celebrate, we’re giving away a free, limited-edition t-shirt to anyone in the United States who preorders a copy. The shirt is pretty awesome. It features that iconic photo from the 1964 Berkeley free speech movement where these Men in Black-looking dudes in dark suits and sunglasses carry a banner that simply reads “Free speech” and they carry it through the campus’ iconic Sather Gate. The back of the shirt features the FIRE logo and says, “If it’s protected, we’ll defend it,” which is our unofficial tagline.

So, to get this limited-edition shirt, all you have to do is, 1.) of course preorder the book in any format, and then, 2.) fill out a short form with your proof of purchase on FIRE’s website. You can do that at FIRE.org/freespeechgeneration. We’ll be shipping the shirts by early February. Now, here’s the thing. Preorders are a huge part of a book’s success. Retailers, publishers, and the media look to them to figure out how much attention to give a book. If a book is producing a lot of preorders, it can create this sort of snowball effect. Also, best sellers lists incorporate preorders into their first week sales numbers.

So, if you plan to buy the book, and I hope you do, please consider preordering. You get a free shirt out of it and all royalties go directly to FIRE, so you’ll be supporting free speech in more ways than one with a simple preorder. Again, the link is FIRE.org/freespeechgeneration. You can also find the link in the show notes. And the offer runs through January 19th, so get on it. Now onto the show.

I imagine you might periodically get someone who’s drunk or acting irrationally coming into the conversation to derail it.

Fin Colleton: Yeah, yeah.

Kratima Divakar: We have had chairs thrown away in front of us.

Fin Colleton: Yeah.

Nico Perrino: Oh, chairs thrown away.

Kratima Divakar: Yeah.

Fin Colleton: Thrown – yeah. So, if you have somebody who is –

Nico Perrino: I kind of want to hear that story.

Fin Colleton: You want to hear the story? Okay. This is the FIRE podcast.

Martin Luther King: Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.

Nico Perrino: You’re listening to So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast. Brought to you by FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Welcome back to So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast, where every other week we take an uncensored look at the world of free expression through the law, philosophy, and stories that define your right to free speech. I’m your host, Nico Perrino. Growing up, most of us learned one simple rule: Don’t talk to strangers. But American Dialogues is betting on the opposite. In parks across New York City its organizers set out folding chairs and invite whoever walks by to talk about politics, culture, and everyday life. The goal is to get strangers to sit down, speak honestly, and keep listening when the conversation becomes difficult.

Joining me today to talk about how American Dialogues began and the importance of creating space for open discussion are two of the project’s organizers. To my left here is Fin Colleton. He is the creator of the public conversation tables that grew into American Dialogues. And to my right here is Kratima Divakar. She is a graduate fellow at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and a Trust Collaboratory student fellow who leads American Dialogues’ outreach. Fin and Kratima, welcome to the show.

Fin Colleton: Thanks for having us.

Kratima Divakar: Thank you for having us.

Nico Perrino: So, Fin, let’s start with you. This started six years ago, right? The idea was you were feeling maybe a little bit lonely during COVID, all that social distancing, and you decided to set up a table and talk with people. Or set up a chair, I should say.

Fin Colleton: Yeah, indeed. I spent most of my adult life in Philadelphia, which is also the headquarters of FIRE, incidentally.

Nico Perrino: Yeah.

Fin Colleton: COVID was bleak for a lot of people, myself included. And I thought “What’s a way that I can actually connect to people while social distancing or whatever.” And I thought “What if I just held up a sign that said, ‘What’s on your mind?’”

Nico Perrino: And that’s all it said?

Fin Colleton: Something like this. “How’s your day going?” And I was like “Oh, what a silly thought.” But then, I was like “Unless… why not?” So, then I started going out to Rittenhouse Square in Center City, Philadelphia and doing just that.

Nico Perrino: Well, tell me about that first effort at dialogue. Were you a little anxious going into it? Did you think anyone was actually going to come up and tell you what was on tehri mind? What was your expectation? And what was the reality?

Fin Colleton: Well, I think I have to admit that I’m a big fan of people like Eric André or Sacha Baron Cohen, Andy Kaufman. I like to make a spectacle.

Nico Perrino: So, were you going into it intending to do a bit?

Fin Colleton: Partially.

Nico Perrino: Partially.

Fin Colleton: So, sometimes writing silly things on a sign. Sometimes the things I would write were really engaging, like “What’s on your mind?” Sometimes it would be nonsensical. But what I came to realize is this is a very low-stakes way to get people to very voluntarily interact with me. I don’t drink or any of that, so instead of going to bars, instead of interacting with people online, I could just go out and just meet friends this way.

And then, I found that it was valuable to other people as well because other people would sit down with me once I had multiple chairs and meet partners, meet friends. Sometimes it would create a sort of small group of friends just around the spontaneous conversation that that kind of format engenders. Yeah.

Nico Perrino: So, Kratima, was this how you met Fin? Did you come up and pull up a chair and have one of these conversations with him?

Kratima Divakar: Not really. I think I got associated with a similar initiative in Columbia, which is called Listening Tables by Trust Collaboratory. When I came here to New York, I came directly from India and it was one year ago. And I realized everything I was doing was either for school, for my classes, or networking for school purposes, career purposes and I was not getting a space for having an actual human conversation with people.

And that’s when I heard about Listening Tables, and people from all over from Columbia are coming in, sitting, having a conversation, and they have a rule that you don’t use a phone on those tables. And it’s literally Listening Tables, so people have to listen to everyone talking. And it’s not agenda-driven, so you don’t have to talk about a topic or debate about anything. And I’m a lawyer by training, so I’ve been trained to sort of make everything a debate, so I also wanted to unlearn that now that I’m entering into the public policy space.

And I went to a couple of these tables and that’s when I met Fin, on one of those tables. He was a facilitator. And I realized it was the only time I was having a human conversation. I had been to a couple of those sessions and I decided to join the team as managing host outreach. And then, that’s when we became part of the team and…

Nico Perrino: Yeah, the rest is history.

Kratima Divakar: The rest…

Nico Perrino: So, help me work through this, because you have these Listening Tables through the Trust Collaboratory at Columbia University and then you have what you were doing that wasn’t affiliated with any organization.

Fin Colleton: Correct. Yeah.

Nico Perrino: It was just kind of your effort to meet people. And you’ve sort of brought it together. Is that the correct characterization now?

Fin Colleton: Sure.

Nico Perrino: Did you know the Listening Tables existed when you went to Columbia?

Fin Colleton: I didn’t. And then, the Listening Tables were a product indirectly of the campus upheavals after 10/7/2023.

Nico Perrino: So, this is an effort to just bring people together and have a conversation where it seemed like people weren’t talking to one another.

Fin Colleton: Correct.

Nico Perrino: Or talking past one another.

Fin Colleton: Correct. Yeah. So, 10/7 happens and I can remember the next day on 10/8/2-23 there’s – Columbia is sort of symmetrical from right to left down the middle of the South Lawn and there was a pro-Palestinian demonstration on one side and a much smaller pro-Israeli one. It became something that people weren’t comfortable really disagreeing with each other. And not for nothing, right? It wasn’t slacktivism because you had a lot of nontraditional students like myself at Columbia who a lot of them are former IDF soldiers, right? And Columbia has the most international students of any Ivy, so there were a lot of Arab students. So, people had dogs in this fight. It wasn’t necessarily posturing.

So, the Listening Tables came about as a result of that. And I found out about the Listening Tables a semester or two into their existence, and I said, “Well, look, I do something similar.” And they said, “Well, that’s great. We’d love to incorporate that in some way in what you do – sorry, in what we do as the Trust Collaboratory.” And the director, Cristian Capotescu, said, “Well, hey, let’s do a version. We’ve done this on campus and it’s been helpful in that way. Why don’t we sort of take the synthesis of what you’re doing off campus, and we’ve done on campus and then take it out into New York City in a more structured way and see if we can do what we’ve done on campus off campus.”

So, that’s the birth of American Dialogues, which is a separate yet affiliated organization –

Nico Perrino: Project, yeah.

Fin Colleton: – that we’ve been doing primarily in Union Square. We tried lots of places around the island of Manhattan, but Union Square seems to be a really good confluence of people across class and all these different things. All of New York is coming up through that subway stop. And we’ve talked about things like how do people feel about ICE? How do people feel about Zohran Mamdani? How do people feel about the war in Iran?

Nico Perrino: A lot more heavy than that original question that you had in Philadelphia: “What’s on your mind?”

Fin Colleton: It’s been a heavy time, right? There was COVID and the Trump presidency, of which there are very split views, and then the conflict in Israel. So, it’s been a momentous time, so no lack of topics.

Nico Perrino: Yeah. Well, I’ll start with you, Kratima, here. I’m curious, what’s the best conversation you’ve ever had as part of this project? Is there one that stands out to you?

Kratima Divakar: I don’t think I can rate the best conversations, but the most favorite, if you’re asking what my most favorite conversation –

Nico Perrino: Yeah, it doesn’t – yeah, what one stands out to you?

Kratima Divakar: – was, when we were doing this across-the-aisle format and there were two signs, one sign was “Do you like Zohran? Sit here” and “If you don’t like Zohran, sit here.” And initially we felt –

Fin Colleton: In two parallel rows.

Kratima Divakar: Yes, it was two parallel rows.

Fin Colleton: Two parallel rows, two signs pointing to each row to sort of create the visual of the opposition.

Nico Perrino: Okay, so it’s kind of like Fight Club.

Kratima Divakar: Yeah.

Fin Colleton: Except you do talk about it.

Nico Perrino: Yeah.

Kratima Divakar: I thought that it might get heated. And there were six chairs opposite to each other. Fortunately, I don’t know, surprisingly, it was not a debate. It was people coming, sitting on opposite ends, having the discussion for 45 minutes, and it’s so meaningful that they’re sticking on those chairs for more than 45 minutes.

Nico Perrino: And nothing’s keeping them there. They’re not signing up for it, are they?

Kratima Divakar: No, they’re not signing up.

Nico Perrino: So, they can leave whenever they wanted to if they weren’t enjoying it.

Kratima Divakar: They can leave whenever they want to.

Fin Colleton: Yeah, it’s just people coming off of the street or coming off their commute taking 10 minutes to sit with us or something.

Kratima Divakar: But yeah, from an observer point of view, if you’re not part of that conversation, you would realize that this is really fruitful because these people are maybe for the first time hearing the opposite end of the arguments that they have in their minds. So, I think that was the day when I realized that this is a really, really healthy practice for a democracy if you look at a very small scale. I think that was one of my favorite days of having – and this was Union Square, so we also get all sort of. of people, people from different fields of life. So, I think that was very interesting.

Nico Perrino: What about you, Fin? Do you have one that stands out to you?

Fin Colleton: I think we might be thinking about the same instance where typically, people have, to be honest, not the most depth to their opinions, just for the average person, right or left.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, they have very superficial knowledge of maybe what’s going on in politics unless they work in that space. And most people are spending their days going to work, raising their kids, spending time with their loved ones.

Fin Colleton: Very vibezy. But I think there was this one conversation where – I don’t remember when it was. Was it summertime? Maybe it was. But it was some of the most solid discussion that I’ve seen where people are like “Well, on that point, here’s how I feel about that. You brought something up a few minutes ago, and what occurs to me… have you considered…?” The sort of countervailing view. And it was like some sort of spell of good rhetoric had been cast over this group of six or seven people who were really, really meaningfully engaging without tracking errors, what the other people were saying. And I was like “That’s cool.” I don’t know what –

Nico Perrino: Have you guys thought about the ideal number of people in one of these groups? Can I imagine it can get too big and you have one person that dominates the conversation.

Kratima Divakar: If the group increases, we have –

Nico Perrino: You break them out?

Kratima Divakar: It was four of us when we started, but we have more people who have become regulars, so they can lead the facilitation. So, we make sure that there is a facilitator in each conversation. And we make three circles of these chairs if we are able to get more people. So, we don’t want it to be crowded and 12 people not being able to talk to each other.

Fin Colleton: Anecdotally, what find is that north of five or six people, it tends to break into more than one conversation. So, it seems like five, six people, you can all be talking about the same thing. And then if you have 10 people, it’s usually two or three conversations. There’s probably research about this, but that’s what I’ve observed.

Nico Perrino: Well, anecdotally, beyond the ideal number of participants in one of these conversations what are ways that you’ve learned a conversation can go off the rails and that you guys are trying to adjust for? I imagine you might periodically get someone who’s drunk or acting irrationally coming into the conversation to derail it.

Fin Colleton: Yeah, yeah.

Kratima Divakar: We have had chairs thrown away in front of us.

Fin Colleton: Yeah.

Nico Perrino: Oh, chairs thrown away.

Kratima Divakar: Yeah.

Fin Colleton: Thrown – yeah. So, if you have somebody who is –

Nico Perrino: I kind of want to hear that story.

Fin Colleton: You want to hear the story? Okay. This is the FIRE podcast. So, this is interesting. You want to hear about a sort of heterodox situation? So, there is a regular attendee who is a trans woman from Europe. She was sitting there and talking about trans issues, and then an American trans woman comes by and starts berating her. The trans woman who comes to the dialogue sessions a lot is German and she does not have the maximalist sort of online American sort of politics that you’d expect. She’s somewhat right of center in European terms.

So, this American trans woman starts berating her for not being a leftist, saying that she’s a Nazi, and at some point throws up the Roman salute – the American trans woman does. I think this person had psychological problems, but it was a sort of object lesson in members of groups aren’t monolithic, right? Or, the groups are not monolithic and the members don’t only have the opinions that you would expect.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, though often what you find is that if someone is expected to have an opinion because they are a member of a group and they don’t, apostasy is worse than heresy in a certain respect and they’re seen as apostates and –

Fin Colleton: This is, I think, a phenomenon of the anglosphere, right? I think this sort of whatever we want to call, wokeness or Woke 1.0, seems to be very much a product of the online anglosphere as opposed to all of the OECD world. A little bit of a tangent, but I think that since the person I’m thinking of, this regular attendee, is from Europe, her politics, the whole landscape is going to be a bit different than the United States when it comes to that stuff. And unless it’s immigration from the Middle East, Europe tends to be more chill about its culture wars stuff is my impression.

Nico Perrino: Is that your impression as well, Kratima?

Kratima Divakar: I can agree that there have been people with completely different definition of political alliances, and they somehow can get debated. Left from different reasons could be different left. And everybody sort of tries to draw their own definition. And that can also be very interesting to – from an observer point of view, that can be very interesting to see how someone self-identifying themselves as left can differ coming from a different region.

Fin Colleton: Yeah, in Latin America, to be “of the left” has almost nothing to do with pronouns and much more socialist, right? Again, a little bit of a tangent, but I feel like the United States or people with sort of American politics can sometimes superimpose our framework into our view of the entire world, that our gender politics apply to South America, or our view of sort of racial politics applied to Brazil or something.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, it’s a form of cultural imperialism. That’s what I’ve heard.

Fin Colleton: Well, it’s a form of solipsism or whatever, just self-focus. To be really culturally relative –

Nico Perrino: [Inaudible] [00:18:16] of the world, yeah.

Fin Colleton: To be really culturally relative is to realize the rest of the world slices and dices things a better than we might.

Nico Perrino: Yeah.

Fin Colleton: So, not to usurp the role of host here, but I have a question that I’ve never asked you, which is – so, you’re coming from India, which has polarization going on as well. It has arguably a more authoritarian government in power than it’s had in a while, like we arguably do. What are some similarities and differences you see in the sort of polarization that India is experiencing versus the US?

Nico Perrino: And then, a follow-up question to that. Would something like this work in India? Does it happen in India?

Kratima Divakar: A hundred percent.

Nico Perrino: Yeah?

Kratima Divakar: So, there was a huge protest recently in India. Students came together against the government for the first time. It was a Gen Z protest. And I realized amongst those Gen Zs, which are my friends, I saw within my friend circle that the people were on absolutely opposite sides. And there’s just so much divide that I see in India right now, and that has been – I think whenever extremist ideologies are being fed to people in general, that sort of divide increases. It might have existed always, but right now I see it more and more and more grave. So, I would love if something like this would happen in India. I don’t know if it would be a success or not, but it should be something that should exist.

Nico Perrino: So, what is the primary goal of these conversations? Do you have a goal? Or is the goal just to talk?

Fin Colleton: Yeah. So, I guess there’s two goals. One is just to get people to talk to each other. That’s just positive.

Nico Perrino: Which Kratima was saying is kind of necessary in a democracy.

Fin Colleton: Yeah, in and of itself. It’s like a civic virtue of being a citizen of a democracy. But then, also, it seems like it’s a partial antidote in the places where it’s practiced to polarization probably. Not that we purport to be able to solve it, but in those conversations people, I think, are more engaged with each other.

Kratima Divakar: I think what we’re trying to explore is a two-way street, which is addressing the loneliness epidemic that is going on, and that is more or less because of people not having enough face-to-face time with another human being and spending most of their time on a screen or over social media. And the other one is I see a parallel trend of loneliness and polarization. So, the world is more divided than ever. As Fin said, it’s almost an antidote for curing both loneliness and depolarization and polarization.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, one of the things that really kind of struck me initially about reading this Wall Street Journal profile of American Dialogues from, what, August of this year, which was –

Fin Colleton: “One Man Cures Loneliness.” Apparently. I didn’t pick the title. It was –

Nico Perrino: People who don’t work in the media industry don’t know that titles on op-eds and articles are often picked after an AB test to see what generates the most clicks. So, the title of this one is “How One Man’s Cure for Loneliness Started a Movement.” You’re a movement leader.

Fin Colleton: By the way, very, very –

Nico Perrino: And there’ you. You look very lonely in this movement.

Fin Colleton: I do. I do.

Nico Perrino: You’re hauling, what, your 24 –

Fin Colleton: Chairs.

Nico Perrino: – chairs.

Kratima Divakar: Chairs.

Nico Perrino: I have a friend who I used to live with actually in Philadelphia who’s a photos editor at the Wall Street Journal, although the photo here was taken by Mathylda, it looks like. But anyway, one of the things that struck me about this –

Fin Colleton: Oh, if I may?

Nico Perrino: Yeah, go for it.

Fin Colleton: The cool thing, just sort of parenthetically, is I met the photojournalist, Mathylda Dulian, while doing the tables. And then, yeah, she came up and sat down and played Uno with us. And then, apparently –

Nico Perrino: Oh, so, she learned about this through –

Kratima Divakar: Yes.

Fin Colleton: By meeting –

Nico Perrino: Just by being one of the participants.

Kratima Divakar: Yes.

Fin Colleton: By being one of the participants, and then pitched it to her editor. And apparently, even though she’s a photojournalist, then also was able to write the text because, yeah, the editor found it a compelling story.

Nico Perrino: Well, I love this photo because it’s like the Beatles photo with the crosswalk there.

Fin Colleton: Oh, oh, yeah. Except I’m a little bit more hunched.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, I don’t know what the album is for the Beatles.

Fin Colleton: I know what you’re talking about. The crosswalk.

Nico Perrino: But you know what I’m talking about and I think our listeners will know. But one of the things that stuck out to me here was that a lot of the conversation prompts weren’t political.

Fin Colleton: Sure. Yeah.

Nico Perrino: And when you guys are talking about the value of these conversations, a cure for the loneliness epidemic, a social outlet for you, Fin, it doesn’t need to be political necessarily. I actually think I would really enjoy just coming and sitting down with you based on a nonpolitical prompt. So, is it mostly political now? And how did you get to that place from “What’s on your mind?”

Fin Colleton: So, I know when I do things sort of on my own, I tend not to make it political.

Nico Perrino: And do you still do that?

Fin Colleton: I do. I do it – now it’s getting cold, but every – this is my fifth or sixth warm season where I go out and on a Friday night if I don’t have anything to do on a Saturday afternoon just go out and throw up a sign and then talk to people all day.

Nico Perrino: It says here “A lot of times what I write on the sign is total clickbait.”

Fin Colleton: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I’ve done things like write “Free tarot” and then people come and sit down. I’m like “I don’t know how to read tarot. That’s why it’s free.” Sometimes it’s a joke, but more often than not, it’ll be a prompt to actually get people to speak, because it almost doesn’t matter what you write. It doesn’t matter what you write.

Kratima Divakar: I think it’s either clickbait or ragebait. Sometimes there are signs, people will just stop to disagree with you and then we will be steelmanning, playing the devil’s advocate.

Fin Colleton: Like “Meat is murder” or something. “Meat is murder –” a statement followed by a question mark. “Meet as murder?”

Kratima Divakar: “If feminism boring?”

Fin Colleton: “Feminism is boring?” Something like this.

Nico Perrino: And this kind of reminds me of those conservative talkers –

Fin Colleton: Steven Crowder?

Nico Perrino: Yeah, who would go to college campuses –

Fin Colleton: Oh, don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t –

Nico Perrino: No, I have to go there, right? Because that kind of what he does on college campuses, to ragebait the libs, as he would put it.

Fin Colleton: Or Saint Kirk, who passed a year ago.

Nico Perrino: Sure.

Fin Colleton: No, but –

Nico Perrino: Yeah, it sounds like you’re trying to do something slightly different from what they were doing.

Fin Colleton: Sure, yeah. Even as I am provocative, I don’t – I have my own views, but I never, whether with American Dialogues nor doing it for fun, I’m never trying to move forward any particular political agenda, especially not with American Dialogues, because the point is, yes, you might say something provocative, but the point is to get people who feel strongly about it in both directions to speak to each other. Whereas, I would say that some of the examples that we just talked about want to convince people and are making a spectacle of it.

And in a pretty crucial way, that’s the opposite of what we need. We need people not to see each other as ridiculous, but as having some semblance of a point with which to engage. So, even as we are being a little bit provocative in the framing of the prompt, the conversations are not designed to be that way. It’s just like “Oh, you think this? What do you think? Oh, what do you think?” So, if we have two different people that think differently, that’s more of the format.

Nico Perrino: Yeah.

Kratima Divakar: I think one thing we have successfully been able to do is, as Fin said, not taking a side. So, it doesn’t matter what standing you have, the person approaching us. We will try to play the devil’s advocate in that conversation and try to force him to think thoroughly what he very strongly believes in.

Nico Perrino: And do they know that you’re playing devil’s advocacy?

Fin Colleton: We just tell them. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, what would you say to…?”

Nico Perrino: Oh, okay.

Fin Colleton: Yeah. Yeah.

Kratima Divakar: It warms up the muscle that challenges you to think analytically and put more logic to what you believe in.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, John Stuart Mill in his famous 1859 treatise on liberty talks about how – snaps here in the studio. Oh, this isn’t the John Suart Mill studio.

Fin Colleton: No, it’s Lenny Bruce.

Nico Perrino: It’s the Lenny Bruce studio.

Fin Colleton: Lenny Bruce. He got pulled offstage in the ‘60s for saying curse words.

Nico Perrino: He sure did, offending the wrong sort of people. We have a John Stuart Mill conference room, I believe, somewhere els. For a second I was like “What is the name of the studio? Is it John Stuart Mill?” But anyway –

Fin Colleton: And then you pick out one person who the craziest opinion and listen to them. All of humanity, save one?

Nico Perrino: Yeah. All of humanity, save one. But he also talks about how an argument that doesn’t go sally forth and confront its enemies is held as dogma or a prejudice rather than a living, breathing idea. And I often use the example, if I’m confronted with a flat-Earther, I’m probably not going to win that debate because I never have to exercise my “Earth is round” muscle very often. But if you’re a flat-Earther, you’re probably going out all the time arguing with people who believe the Earth is round and you know every counterargument and it’s going to sound good even though it’s not right. And so, going out there and flexing those muscles is real important.

Fin Colleton: “Oh, you don’t know these six papers by these cranks?” “You don’t know about the whatever?”

Nico Perrino: Sure. But they come at it so confidently –

Fin Colleton: Indeed, indeed, indeed.

Nico Perrino: – because they’re often – if you get to that conclusion and you actually believe it, you’re really having to confront some serious headwinds on a regular basis in a way you’re just not if you believe the Earth is round, is I guess what I’m trying to say.

Fin Colleton: Indeed. Yeah.

Nico Perrino: But the question for me is in this context – and I kind of asked you this earlier, Fin, and I’d like to get your perspective on it, Kratima, is I think we all have kind of preconceived notions as to how a conversation with a stranger is going to unfold. I would probably be fairly anxious to put out a chair and put up a sign, but what were your expectations going into these Listening Tables, Kratima? And how did they change as a result of having the conversations?

Kratima Divakar: I started going to Listening Tables to meet people from different streams. So, they were undergrads. They were graduate students. They were PhD scholars from different fields of life. I also say that New York is the best city to do such a kind of pilot because you can’t believe there are people from all sorts of fields. There are artists, there are people running nonprofits, there are people who are very politically active running advocacy campaigns. And then, there will also be people who are homeless.

Fin Colleton: Billionaires.

Nico Perrino: Do you get a lot of homeless people coming to these?

Kratima Divakar: We do.

Fin Colleton: Sometimes.

Nico Perrino: And billionaires?

Fin Colleton: Yeah, or sons of daughters of them typically.

Kratima Divakar: No, we have had CEOs of these nonprofits randomly coming to our tables because they’re crossing by. And that can only happen in New York. So, my expectation was to get that New York experience. And what I came out of was I realized that there were so many people that I met who were so comfortable having a conversation and they were so lonely deep inside because they were not really comfortable talking to strangers – sorry, talking to the people they’re surrounded with because they do not really understand them maybe. And this was sort of one hour of time with strangers who are there intentionally listening to them gives them more opportunity to share their lives.

Nico Perrino: Have you guys ever seen or participated in the Sleep No More theatrical performance in New York?

Fin Colleton: No. I’ve heard of it but I –

Nico Perrino: So, in Chelsea, they have this, I don’t know if it still exists, interactive theater experience that takes place over four, five, six stories. It’s a play on Macbeth and Hitchcock’s Rebecca and the last witch trials in maybe Ireland or somewhere. And they tried to do this, if I’m remembering correctly, in London and it didn’t work because part of the experience is you’re opening doors you’re not supposed to open; you’re opening drawers you’re not supposed to open. You’re supposed to interact with the artists – or, the actors and go into rooms alone with the actors. And I guess the English queue culture or whatever it is, people wanted to be directed and told what to do.

And so, the director was saying that it works in New York because New Yorkers are willing to open any door. They’re willing to open any drawer. They’re willing to talk with people that they don’t know. They’re willing to be pulled into rooms with people they don’t know. And so, it had gone on for years and years and years and may be even still going on. It’s at the McKittrick Hotel in Chelsea. And so, that always struck me. When you were talking about how unique New York is, that you get people across the socioeconomic spectrum who are often outgoing in ways that you don’t often find in other cultures even within the United States.

Kratima Divakar: I think one of the best things about American – one of the niche about American Dialogues is the spontaneity that we receive in terms of crowd. If this was a West Coast city, then there would be mostly engineers coming to these conversations, –

Fin Colleton: Who would drive to it.

Kratima Divakar: – which would not make them very versatile. It will naturally become a directional conversation. But here it could be anyone. And that brings that sort of spontaneity to the conversation, which I think is the best part about American Dialogues.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, Fin, I got a note here from our producer, Emily, who cited to this 2026 Nature Communications paper that found that “Spoken disagreement produced greater perceived understanding less conflict, more favorable impressions and greater attitude alignment than written disagreement.” I’ve kind of found that as well.

Fin Colleton: Sounds right to me.

Nico Perrino: But I’ve found that on a few occasions, I can be on social media, I can be on X, when I get into knockout, drag-out arguments there, particularly with people who are in our space at FIRE, sometimes I’ll just say, “It seems like we’re talking past us. Here’s my contact information. I’d love to hop on the phone with you.” And sometimes we do hop on the phone. And it seems like the conversation just takes on a totally different tenor once we pick up the phone and start talking with each other. We seem to understand each other better. And the same knockout, drag-out conversations rarely, if ever, are going to happen with that same person again because now we know each other. There’s a humanity to the sparring partner.

Fin Colleton: Yeah, I wish we had some of our sort of sociologist colleagues here to comment on this, but –

Nico Perrino: It just seems right to me. I don’t know.

Fin Colleton: Well, it seems right to me. But I know –

Nico Perrino: And your guys’ project kind of demonstrates it anecdotally.

Fin Colleton: I know enough to say that empathetic cues are – it’s all by body language and tone of voice and whatever. And this is what has made some online spaces such nightmares, because you would never speak to people in person in such a way as you’d speak to them on X or whatever, watching their body language. You’d have to be a sociopath, right?

Nico Perrino: Yeah.

Fin Colleton: So, if you have to pay the toll of actually observing somebody’s behavior in front of you, you’re going to be a lot more measured in your treatment of them. And that’s a good thing, because people far away are easy to mistreat.

Nico Perrino: Kratima, you’re in charge of outreach. Are there any plans to extend American Dialogues beyond New York City? Or is this a uniquely New York City thing, with the exception of Fin’s excursions in Philadelphia, which it seemed to work there. Right?

Fin Colleton: So, I started in Philadelphia in 2021. I went back to Philadelphia because we got an email after the Wall Street Journal article from a guy who wanted me to show him how to do it. So, he’s a guy that, I guess, sort of teaches part time at Villanova and we did a session over a weekend. So, this is the plan.

Kratima Divakar: I think scalability is not a problem for American Dialogues because right now I think – we started with New York because it was convenient for us, but it can be done anywhere. And we’re happy to have people over. I think we were just discussing it, we’re happy to train people to sort of tell them how to do it, and then more – the intention is to get more and more people to talk. And it’s very simple and it can be done anywhere. It doesn’t have to be restricted at one place.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, bring your folding tables. There are other organizations that try to do something similar to this. What is it, Braver Angels, that will try and have dinner conversations by bringing red and blue America together.

Fin Colleton: Yeah.

Nico Perrino: The thing I like about this is it seems like it’s so low-cost, low barrier to entry. Anyone can find a couple of folding chairs and a permanent marker and sign and say, “Let’s have a conversation about X.”

Fin Colleton: I wouldn’t say you can do it anywhere. I would say you can do it anywhere where there’s a minimum sort of density of people where people.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, where people are coming and going.

Fin Colleton: People are coming and going. And it might be – even the difference between Philadelphia and New York is somewhat noticeable. If you –

Nico Perrino: Yeah, Rittenhouse is not Union Square. The thing that’s unique about Union Square is it’s a convergence center for a bunch of different subway lines.

Kratima Divakar: So, all summer we were doing – we started this as an experiment. So, we did it at different places in New York. We did it outside Columbia. We did at Central Park. We did it in different –

Nico Perrino: Washington Square Park.

Kratima Divakar: Washington Square Park.

Nico Perrino: That seems like a natural plan to try.

Kratima Divakar: Yeah, we did it outside the UN also in fact. And we realized different sorts of people come to these different places. For example, when we were doing it near Bryant Park, then it was more sort of people not in an intention to have a political conversation. People –

Fin Colleton: Played a lot of Uno.

Kratima Divakar: Yeah.

Nico Perrino: Bryant Park, for the listeners who aren’t aware, is right where the library is, the big library, right? Isn’t Bryant –?

Fin Colleton: It’s really close to Times Square.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, yeah.

Fin Colleton: Yeah.

Kratima Divakar: But we stuck to Union Square because I think in all our pilots that’s where we got the most versatile crowd and continuity of people because it was right outside a subway.

Fin Colleton: Literally right as people are coming out of the exit.

Nico Perrino: Oh, yeah.

Kratima Divakar: And I think logistics is also one factor because you wouldn’t be allowed to have these chairs organized at any place in New York, and there could be some places where you can get a lot of – I don’t want to use the word, but antisocial elements which would threaten the whole –

Nico Perrino: Project.

Kratima Divakar: – project.

Fin Colleton: But yeah, I guess to finish, our goal is to get other people who are interested in doing this themselves following the general format, but wherever and however it works for them. And if that sounds like you, hit us up at info@AmericanDialogues.org or follow us and DM us, @American Dialogues on Insta.

Nico Perrino: All right, guys. Well, I think we’re going to leave it there. The project is called American Dialogues. Fin, Kratima, thank you for joining me today.

Kratima Divakar: Thank you for having us.

Fin Colleton: Thank you so much. I’ve been a fan of FIRE for a long time.

Nico Perrino: Thank you. Thank you. And I’m a fan of this. Maybe one day I will just get a folding chair, go out to a local park, and –

Fin Colleton: We’re in front of Union Station.

Nico Perrino: Well, let me know. I’m going to be in New York a couple times over the next couple of months.

Kratima Divakar: You should come.

Fin Colleton: Unironically, reach out to us. You have our contact info.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, I have your contact info. So, maybe we’ll try it.

Kratima Divakar: You should come to one of our sessions and I think that would be –

Nico Perrino: How do I know when the sessions are happening?

Fin Colleton: So, you can go to @American dialogues on Instagram or go to AmericanDialogues.org. Although, the Instagram is going to be the most up to date.

Nico Perrino: So, when you guys are doing things, it’s going to be on the Instagram?

Fin Colleton: Correct.

Nico Perrino: So, we’ll put that in the show notes so people can easily find it.

Fin Colleton: Sounds good.

Nico Perrino: And I’ll reach out to you guys next time I’m in New York. Sound good?

Fin Colleton: Yeah, please, please. Please do. Thanks so much.

Kratima Divakar: Sounds good.

Nico Perrino: Wonderful. I am Nico Perrino, and this podcast is recorded by a rotating roster of my FIRE colleagues, including Bruce Jones, Ronald Baez, Jackson Flegal, and Scott Rogers. The podcast is produced and edited by Emily Beaman. To learn more about “So To Speak,” you can subscribe to our YouTube channel or Substack page, both of which feature video versions of this conversation. We’re on X by searching for the handle “freespeechtalk” and feedback can be sent to SoToSpeak@FIRE.org. Again, that is SoToSpeak@FIRE.org. And please leave us a review if you enjoyed this episode. Reviews help us attract new listeners to the show. And until next time, thanks again for listening.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, FIRE, and the flame logo are registered trademarks of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

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Duration: 39 minutes