- Tired of the toxic level of polarization in the United States?

Interested in talking with people whose perspective differs from your own in ways that stay constructive?

We invite you to join us for a year focused on creating a culture of conversation rather than division.

(upbeat music) (music dies down) The Padnos/Sarosik Center for Civil Discourse, Kaufman Interfaith Institute, Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies and WGVU Public Media are pleased to partner for "Talking Together: "Strengthening our Communities Through Conversation," a dialogue initiative aimed at interrupting polarization and investing in the principles of civil discourse and respectful conversation.

The aim is to assist community members engaging in conversation with one another across differences in perspective, identity, and life experiences.

Today, we're on the Grand Valley campus in Allendale with photographer and storyteller, John Noltner, who is the founder of "A Peace of My Mind."

How are you doing?

- I'm doing well.

Yeah; thanks, Patrick.

- You're on the road.

You're traveling the country in your van - Named Vinny.

- Named Vinny.

And this is what you are producing.

You've crisscrossed the country for three years.

What, 40,000 miles traveled?

- Oh, it's worse than that.

It's 70,000 by now.

- 70,000?

- Yeah.

- And you're on a mission.

- The goal is to use storytelling to try to bridge divides and build community, to try to see some of the complexity of the issues in our country and to try to remember some of the humanity that connects us.

- That is a heavy load.

(John laughs) When did you say, I'm gonna commit to this?

What was happening in your life, in your world where you said, this is something I need to tackle?

- Yeah, it's an interesting question.

I had spent my career as a freelance photographer.

And I shot for national magazines and Fortune 500 companies.

Back in 2008, 2009, two things happened simultaneously.

And the first is that I was frustrated with the quality of our national dialogue.

I was concerned about all the things that would ask us what can divide us: whether that's politics, ethnicity, religion, gender, class.

You've got all sorts of tools at your disposal if you care to divide.

But I wondered if there was something I could do with my photography and storytelling to remember what connects us, to sort of rediscover that common humanity that we all share.

The second thing that happened about that time is I like to say the economy handed me some free time.

You know, the world of freelance photography changed quickly and dramatically, and my workload plummeted.

And if I was a better business person, I might have used that time to look for new clients.

But, you know, I think my soul was hungry.

I wanted to feed it something different.

And so I started this process of interviewing and photographing people, really rooted around the question: What does peace mean to you?

- And so taking this on the road, meeting individuals all stripes of life, you take that but then how do you, I guess, make it public, get people involved to come to some of the conclusions that you've come to?

Like how are you bridging this divide through the photos and the stories and then getting it out there to the masses to make them maybe think twice about where they are in life or their ideologies?

- Yeah, there are three really specific audiences that I have as I'm gathering these stories.

And the first audience is myself, because I wind up learning so much in the conversations.

The second audience is the subject, the person I'm talking to.

My goal is to say to people from all different backgrounds: I see you, I hear you, and you matter.

And the third is the broader public, to use these stories in public venues not to tell people the secret meaning of peace but to encourage people to recognize that if there are challenges in the world, and there are, that these are our challenges.

And if there are gonna be solutions, and I think that there can be, that they'll have to be our solutions.

And so we've produced online content.

We've got a website, we've got podcasts that people can listen to the stories.

But we also have four traveling exhibits and we've got three books.

And so we'll bring these stories into colleges and conferences and community centers and places of faith.

And we'll use them to encourage dialogue around conflict resolution and civic responsibility and social change.

- So for you, how does this all work?

Are you just blindly knocking on doors?

Or take me through the process.

- To find the people I interview?

- Yeah.

- Oh, sometimes.

- But how does it start?

- Sometimes.

- Who was the first person?

- So the first person is a woman named Barbara Nordstrom-Loeb who is a Jewish community activist in Minneapolis.

When I started this project, so this question, what does peace mean to you, really is just an entry point.

It's an opportunity for people to talk about what's on their hearts, to talk about their values, their mission and vision in the world.

And so it opens the door for conversations about race and gender and class and ethnicity and politics and all of these different things.

It's really an opportunity to listen broadly.

When I was interested in the project, I simply sent out this broad broadcast email.

And I said, I'm kind of thinking about this thing.

Do you know anyone I should talk to?

Sent it out to 50 different people.

At that point, I had a pretty low bar.

Anybody who will talk to me, I'd love to have this conversation.

And Barbara was recommended to me, and I started there.

You know, a coalition of the willing, so to speak.

- So the question of peace, it kind of humanizes everything, right?

Because peace transcends most religions.

So it's like a great starting point, right?

It kind of softens the conversation.

- It really is.

I mean, most people I've encountered, and I've worked as a travel photographer for decades.

Most people I've encountered would welcome a little bit more peace into their lives, whether it's their immediate family or their community or the bigger world.

You know, even my friends who serve in the U.S. military I think would prefer to stay at home whenever possible.

But there's this disconnect between what we say we value and how we live our day-to-day lives, right?

Sometimes we think we value something but we don't always live that out in our experience.

And so there's a conflict there.

There's a disconnect.

And I was fascinated and moderately alarmed by that disconnect.

And this was an opportunity to have those sorts of conversations.

- Much of this "Talking Together" program with Grand Valley State University it's about having those conversations.

Let's get back to conversations that don't always include the politics.

So for you, when you're having your conversations with the folks here who you are photographing and talking with, is there a line of questioning that you like to turn to to to get the dialogue going?

- Mm, I do have a certain list of questions that I tend to lead with.

You know, I start all of my interviews by asking: If I didn't know anything about you, what would you want me to know?

You know, letting the person sort of self-identify what's important to them.

We eventually get to: What does peace mean to you?

How do you work towards it in your life?

What are some of the obstacles that get in the way?

One of my favorite questions is: Tell me an example of when you saw peace happen in the world, you know, to get out of the theoretical and to get down to the practical.

When did this unfold in your life?

That personal experience is really interesting to me.

But as an interviewer, my most important follow ups are simply: Tell me more about that.

Or what do you mean by that?

You know, a lot of times in these conversations, people will drop these little seeds.

They'll drop these little suggestions of a bigger story.

And then it's my job to pay attention to that and dig a little deeper.

- How long do these conversations typically take?

- They're usually about an hour long.

And we record 'em, and we share 'em essentially unedited as a podcast.

So you'll hear most of the bloopers and most of the rephrasings.

You know, it's just a human conversation.

Backing up a little bit to how I find the people, you know, we talked about how I found Barbara Nordstrom-Loeb.

But as we travel the country, it can be logistically challenging.

And I wanna make sure I'm productive when I come into a town.

So I'll usually find an ally in a community, someone who appreciates storytelling, someone who has a particular interest in civil rights or the environment or faith or whatever I'm trying to talk about.

And I'll invite their help to identify some people in the community who would be interesting to talk with.

- How many people have you interviewed so far?

- Oh, hundreds of these long-form interviews.

Just in the last couple years, we've done over 100 interviews.

And I've been working on this project for 12 years.

We also do these short-form studio captures which we'll ask a question and people respond in 25 words or less.

We combine their image and their quote.

And in a day, we can do 30 or 40 or 50.

Or, God forbid, sometimes we've done 120 in a day.

And that's a different format, it's a different methodology, but it allows us to really gather a large body of work from any given community in a short period of time and then reflect it back to them.

- As a photographer, the image itself, how important is that and the role in the story?

- Yeah, it's interesting.

I used to always call myself a photographer first.

And that's the way I thought about myself.

I now have come to call myself a storyteller.

And sometimes, those stories are with words and sometimes those stories are with images.

For me, when I sit down to get to know somebody, we always always do the interview first.

We build a rapport, we build an understanding, we get to know one another a little bit.

And very often in that conversation, I will hear things that will inform what we should do for the portrait.

You know, it helps the people get comfortable.

It tells me a little bit about them.

And then we can figure out how to represent that visually.

- What is the common ground that you have discovered?

Hundreds of people, what is it?

I guess, what's that thing that makes us all human that you have discovered?

- Yeah, I really think at the end of the day...

I think there are so many themes that we could address, but as I try to refine that and recognize that in myself as I'm traveling around talking to people, I really think it comes down to our desire to be heard and seen and valued.

And I think so often in our day-to-day lives, we don't get that.

And then that manifests itself really poorly in politics, in personal relationships, in all of these other ways because we don't feel seen, because we don't feel heard and because we don't feel valued.

You know, everything else can ripple out from there.

- So for you, in this political atmosphere that we now live in, you talk about 2008 when you got involved in this.

- Yeah, it hasn't gotten better, right?

- No.

- I'm not doing my job very well, I think.

- So what have you noticed over time?

And take me to the point where you can give advice to people about how to have these conversations, have good conversations without letting the politics seep in.

Because I'm gonna guess politics tend to get elevated in a lot of these conversations.

- Yeah, we definitely get there.

We don't often lead with that.

When I ask people, you know, define who you are, interestingly, it doesn't lead with that.

But very often, the conversation gets there quickly.

You know, for me, the process is about listening.

And when things get difficult... Because I promise you, I've interviewed people in this collection who have voted differently than me and believe differently on every political issue that you would wanna check in the box.

But that doesn't mean that I have to ignore their humanity.

And so the goal is not to change their mind.

The goal is not to change my mind.

The goal is to listen and to recognize that humanity, to realize that there are complexities to all of these issues.

There are subtleties to all of these issues that really don't get explored fully in the black-and-white rhetoric that we hear in our political discourse.

And so, in the process, what I hope these stories will encourage people to do is three things.

And the first is to listen deeply, to take the time to actually hear what somebody else is saying, to be willing to challenge your own expectations, you know, to acknowledge that we have confirmation bias in our lives.

And we will spend an awful lot of energy finding all of the research and data that proves that we are correct.

And we will work overtime in order to ignore anything that refutes our beliefs in life.

So challenge your own expectations.

And the third one is to encourage people to stay at the table, to stay engaged.

Because I really believe that as long as we stay in communication, as long as we stay engaged, that there is some hope that we can find a peaceful resolution to most of these issues.

But when we walk away from the table, the hope walks away with us.

And so, you know, my question for people is: At the end of the day, will you stay at the table?

- Staying at the table but finding ways to defuse the political conversation?

- Yeah.

- How do you do that, I guess?

Or what do you recommend for anybody who gets into that?

'Cause it can be pretty intense at times.

And really, you wanna be friends with that person across from you.

So, you know, how do we do that?

Again, since 2008 to now, not getting better.

- Right.

Right, and there are some willful attempts in the world to make it worse.

You know, there's political expediency to inflaming passions.

You know, there's market share to be gained by riling up people's emotions.

There always is a moment of potential tension.

We've all felt them in a conversation where you sort of catch yourself and you say, oh, where is this gonna go?

Or here it comes, here we go.

We all know what that feels like.

And at that moment, you have an opportunity to either bridge that divide, to reach out to try to further the conversation in a productive way, or to dig in your heels and fire back.

And we all know what happens when we do that.

It doesn't lead anywhere productive.

So my question is: When you sit in that tension, how do you recognize it?

And how do you make a reasonable, thoughtful, and an intentional choice to do something different?

If you're at the Thanksgiving table and somebody throws a barb at you not to bite on that hook and fire a barb back yourself but to say, "You know what, "that's not the way I have understood it, and here's why.

"Can you help me understand how you got to your conclusion?"

You know, that's way different than saying, "Hey, look, Uncle Bernie, you're dumb.

"You need to think about this."

Or "What about that?"

You know, those gotcha moments that really feel good for a moment, (laughs) that really feel like you're fighting for your position but don't do anything to build relationship, don't do anything to further understanding, and certainly don't do anything to get closer to a solution.

- And a lot of the research will tell us now that when you provide the data, oftentimes the other side will just become more defensive or will dig in with their own position.

It doesn't really get you anywhere in the end.

- Well, and that's to me what's so profoundly interesting about human experience and these personal stories.

You know, no one person in this collection has a lock on the truth, but they have a thread of the truth.

And so for me, each of these individual stories is fascinating and holds a little gem of truth.

But when you start weaving those threads together, it becomes this really rich fabric and really rich tapestry.

And I think there is deep truth in that.

- So taken together, I mean, we've got all of these beautiful photos and stories here.

What are they telling you collectively?

- Hmm.

There is a mindset that focuses on personal wellbeing and making sure that you have everything that you need in order to thrive and be successful.

There is another mindset that has a collective and communal approach that concerns itself with the wellbeing of others.

And I've found that that is the secret answer to most of these stories.

That when we can take the focus off of ourselves and we concern ourselves with the wellbeing of those around us, that that leads to connection, that leads to community, that leads to network.

And there's richness and there's strength in that.

- Interviewed any politicians?

- I have interviewed politicians from both sides of the aisle.

Yeah, yeah.

And I've also interviewed politicians who have left politics because they feel like the capacity for that sort of bridging and understanding has left our ethic, you know, and they've become profoundly frustrated with that.

My deep concern is what fills that vacuum once they have left.

- Of course, we haven't told the audience yet.

This is election day when we are recording this conversation.

- It is election day; it's a big day.

- It's a really big day.

So for you today, and with this exhibit, what goes through your mind on election day, hearing these voices and knowing where we are as a community and with politics always hanging in the background?

- Hmm.

That's a big question, Patrick.

- It's what I do?

(both laugh) - You do it well.

I guess I could answer that in a few ways.

You know, we voted a couple weeks ago because we happened to be passing through Minnesota which is where we still receive our mail, which is where we're registered.

And so we voted knowing we would be on the road wanting to make sure that our voices were heard.

You know, again, that notion of the common good is top of my mind.

And when I hear rhetoric that marginalizes any group, you know, if it's immigrants, if it's LGBTQ folks, if it, you know, fill in the blank, when you hear rhetoric that marginalizes anybody from that group, odds are pretty good I have a friend in that group.

And so that concerns me.

That makes it very real.

You know, early on in this project, there were no Muslim people in my circle.

I didn't know a single Muslim in my life that I was aware of.

But as I was building this body of work, I knew given the politics of the day that it would be really important to include a Muslim voice.

So I became intentional about reaching out.

I connected with a group called the Islamic Resource Group in Minnesota.

And I said, here's what I'm trying to do.

I'd like to talk to somebody who is Muslim.

Who can you connect me with?

And you know, Zaphar introduced me then to Oday who introduced me to Amani.

And all of a sudden, I've got this huge network of Muslim people.

And so I can understand when I see a news story that might marginalize a Muslim person, that's personal to me.

And I think that there's real value in assessing our networks and expanding our networks.

Because when you know somebody's name and their story and their face, it becomes really much harder to marginalize, much harder to distance, much harder to hate somebody.

And it becomes personal.

It becomes human.

- Right, they're individuals.

They're not part of a monolithic- - Turns out, yeah.

- Got a lot in common with individuals.

So when you look at it that way, I'm curious to know what you have discovered along the way and your background.

I mean, you've told me the story: the photographer, journalist, recession.

But I feel like there's more to you that got you to this point.

So what is your background, your religious background, your family, your mom, your dad?

What is it that sparked you, that voice in you, and who you are that took you on this journey?

- Yeah, yeah, great question.

And if we rewind back far enough, you know, my mom was an educator and my dad was a social worker.

They were also Germanic, which means that we dealt with most things with stony cold silence.

We didn't talk a lot about these things, but there was this underlying understanding of the common good.

That if someone is struggling in school, you know, my mom's methodology was give 'em an extra hug, you know, give 'em a little bit more love, give 'em a little bit more attention.

You know, my dad's understanding working in Social Services: Yeah, maybe there's somebody in there who's working the system, but by and large, most of the people who he was working to help needed a little bit of help.

And so there was this understanding of working together to make sure that everybody had the resources they needed in order to thrive.

Add to that, my career as a freelance photographer: shooting travel stories, shooting human interest stories.

I might one day be working with pig farmers, the next day be working with artists, the next day be working with an HIV hospice nurse, and the day after that somebody who was homeless.

But I found beauty and wisdom in all of those conversations.

Like I found as much richness in a conversation with someone who was homeless as a CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

And so I knew that beauty and wisdom was all around us.

And even in the midst of this toxic and polarized dialogue, if we take the time to see and hear that beauty and wisdom, we can find it.

- How much of it is, life is short.

- Boy, Deanna Thompson, who I interviewed six years after her diagnosis with Stage 4 cancer which was supposed to take her in five years, she would tell you it's all about life is short.

I interviewed Deanna six years after her diagnosis.

The book book came out 10 years after.

And I just saw her recently.

And she's about 14 years after her diagnosis and still doing well.

There are a lot of stories in here of people who have found themselves at a crossroads: whether it's substance abuse, whether it's PTSD, whether it's suicide prevention, whether it's being through the Holocaust who have decided that no matter how difficult their situation is that they can make an intentional choice to create positive change in not only their lives but in the world around them.

And that's really what inspires me about these projects.

- I saved this for the end.

We have two minutes left.

- Two minutes?

- Two minutes.

What does peace mean to you?

- My understanding of peace is rooted in the common good.

I feed peace in a lot of ways in my life.

I love the outdoors.

I love quiet time.

I like to write; I love music.

I love being with my family.

There are a number of paths that get me to peace.

But I think my understanding of peace is making sure that the noise around me doesn't change who I am as a person.

That's the inner peace.

The outer peace is doing what I can.

I'm sitting here as the poster child of privilege: middle-aged white guy, college educated, married, two kids, live in the suburbs till I sold it to live in a van.

What do I do with that privilege?

Is there some way that I can use my voice to help amplify others who maybe aren't heard as well as they should be?

- The website, the videos, where can people check out your good work?

- Yeah, "A Peace of My Mind," P-E-A-C-E.

If you listen to podcasts, you can listen.

Just search anywhere you get your podcasts for "A Peace of My Mind."

The website is the acronym, APOMM.net.

And our latest book is available wherever you buy your books.

It's called "Portraits of Peace, "Searching for Hope in a Divided America."

- John Noltner, founder, A Peace of My Mind.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you, Patrick.

- And thank you for joining us.

We'll see you again soon.

(peaceful music) (peaceful music continues) (peaceful music continues) (peaceful music continues) (peaceful music continues) (music dies down)