Everyday Bias, Updated: Insights from Howard and Jake Ross

You’ve heard countless people talking about bias and how it impacts the workplace. But how often do you get to hear about bias from the author of perhaps the single-most influential book on the topic?

In this wide-ranging and important episode, Dr. Michael Baran interviews two guests: (1) legendary thought leader, author, and workplace consultant Howard Ross, and (2) his son Jake Ross who is collaborating with Howard to write the second edition of the book, Everyday Bias, to be released in summer 2026. Michael and guests revisit the insights from Howard’s 2014 book Everyday Bias and then dive into what is being updated for the second edition. This includes updating the research and context in the book as well as new chapters on AI and social media. We also dig into ways that political opinion has moved from a bell curve to a barbell shape, the lack of white men in DEI work, how to avoid triggering defensiveness, and how to make real human connections. We close with some reflections on activism and change and some optimism for the future.

Resources mentioned:

Everyday Bias by Howard Ross book

Reinventing Diversity by Howard Ross book

Our Search for Belonging by Howard Ross book

Bowling Alone by Robert Putman book

The Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker book

Biography of Andrew Jackson by John Meacham book

Ken Burns: The American Revolution series

Transcript

Everyday Bias, Updated: Insights from Howard and Jake Ross

Is your company struggling, navigating through high turnover, toxic leadership, or a culture that's holding your team back from reaching its full potential? Well, you're not alone. So here's your host and guide, Michael Baran.

Michael Baran: Hello everyone and welcome to the Culture Advantage podcast. I am your host, Michael Baran, and I'm also welcoming you to the very last episode of season one of the Culture Advantage Podcast. So we have had a journey over several months. This is going to be the last episode before we take a little break and gear up for season two, early next year.

Um, it's been wonderful to start this podcast journey with you, to get your [00:01:00] feedback, to hear from you, to get to have these incredible conversations with people that have been our guest. So I'm really looking forward to season two for now, though, I've got another legend to bring you today. Um, this is Howard Ross, who you probably know if you have anything to do with organizational culture, diversity, equity, inclusion, bias, belonging.

Um, he's been doing this work for a long, long, long time. And today we get to talk to him and his son, Jake, who is also writing, co-writing the second edition of his book, everyday Bias with Howard. So this is just a fantastic conversation where we talk about all sorts of things. We go deep into bias, but we also talk about.

Belonging and AI because that's part of the book and social media and fear and doing this work as [00:02:00] white men and what the future could look like and just all kinds of wonderful stuff. Um, I'm not gonna talk too long here. I'm gonna get right into it. But also I wanted to let you know that after the interview, I'm gonna do maybe some kind of season one wrap up reflections.

So, um, I would love to have you stick around until the very end. All right, everyone, if you don't stick around, because look, I know things happen. You have all the best intentions of listening to a whole episode and then, you know, whatever things happen. Um. So if you don't make it all the way to the end, let me just say right now, if you're celebrating holidays, um, at the end of the year, I wish you wonderful holidays.

If you are not, I wish you just a wonderful break maybe from work, just lots of health and just a wonderful end to the year. Um, I'm wishing you all the best, sending you lots of [00:03:00] love. Okay, here we go. Diving into our interview. With Howard and Jake Ross.

Okay everyone, I am so thrilled to be talking today with Howard and Jake Ross, Howard and Jake, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Michael. Hey Michael, it's great to see you. It's so great to see you. Let me tell the listeners about you guys first and then we'll dive into the conversation. So Howard Ross is the author of Incredible, some incredible books, reinventing Diversity, transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People Purpose and Performance, and our Search for Belonging, how our need to Connect is tearing us apart, everyday Bias, which we're gonna talk a lot about, um, because he's co-writing that with Jake.

The second edition of that book. Hi, uh, Howard's work has been published by Harvard Business Review, Washington Post, New York Times, Forbes. He's worked with Fortune 500 companies across [00:04:00] a variety of industries. He's a lifelong social justice advocate, founding partner of the nationally recognized diversity consulting firm, cook Ross Howard still speak, speaks broadly with his new company.

Udar are Consulting and he lives in the Shenandoah Valley, just west of Washington, DC. If you have any familiarity with the DEI space, you know, Howard is a legend. Um, his son Jake is a specialist in interpersonal psychology with a background in the exploration of belonging and its influence on wellbeing.

He has masters of applied positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania with his consulting firm belong together. He consults with organizations, startups, individuals on creating cultures of belonging in the workplace. He also curates events and gatherings that create opportunities for community building and authentic connection, which scale from small community gatherings [00:05:00] up to corporate team building.

And Jake is working now on building mission-driven communities within the AI industry, bridging the gap between technical expertise and com, compassionate communication. So you can bet we are gonna talk about that. Uh. So can we just dive in? I know you two are both here because you're collaborating on the second edition of this book, everyday Bias that you originally wrote, Howard.

Um, it's certainly one of the most influential, if not the most influential book on bias in the workplace out of the workplace. Um, before we get into what's new with the second edition, Howard, what are the most important takeaways from that book that listeners should know before the, the discussion on what's changed?

Great. Thank you, Michael. Thank you so much for that generous introduction. I really do appreciate it. Um, yeah, you know, it's interesting, I, I got into looking at that, um, [00:06:00] looking at the subject of bias, uh, originally mostly because it was like, how can we fix people? You know, how can we make people stop doing things that are bad, you know?

Um. And, uh, like a lot of times if you do honest research and you're open to what you find, um, what I found was, oops, maybe people aren't so bad as I thought they were. And that underneath it is this phenomenon, which is very human in which we can all relate to. And that is that we make decisions really much more based on our feelings, um, than we realize that we do.

And much less on reasoning. In fact, um, my one line mantra for the, this whole body of study. 25 years of study is human beings are not rational as much as we're rationalizing. Mm-hmm. And I think that, um, that's, that's really was a breakthrough for me. And so it completely shifted for me the way we had to do the work of developing human understanding.

I mean, de and I, for me, is a subset of the work that, that I've always done, which is how do we raise human consciousness and develop human understanding? And if we begin to [00:07:00] realize that most of us don't even know why we think the things that we think and sometimes don't even know that we're thinking the things that we're thinking, it's very difficult to get to any kind of understanding either of oneself or of others.

Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, I mean, you're speaking my language. I'm fascinated of course by that human con cognition stuff, brain functioning, emotions, decision making. It's really fascinating. Jake, that obviously resonates with you as well with what you study. Like how does what you study fit in with what Howard originally wrote in this book?

Yeah, absolutely. Um, thank you for the question. So what I, I focus much more on the interpersonal dynamics and community dynamics within belonging and the way that it tends to meld together in, so in specificity, I mean, broadly it's all the same conversation, which is how do we come together and what is it that has us lean more or less into a certain group or community where we find ourselves [00:08:00] identified.

But the more, when we talk about bias and the way that it affects how we, how we engage with groups, what interests me and where Howard and I first. It is funny. I was gonna say cross paths. Um, where, where we first, where we first beca began intellectually collaborating mm-hmm. Is on the way that it bias informs the way we create our perception of the ingroup outgroup.

Mm-hmm. And that's actually what's directed a lot of my work. Um, and not to sort of spoil where the conversation is going, but looking at, with the upcoming edition of the book, how bias, bias in social media and the digital space as we evolve from physical third places and the physical face-to-face community into digital.

Uh, community bias influences our capacity to select where we show up and how we want to show up. And this self-selection bias and echo chamber cultivation [00:09:00] influences the way that we continue to grow forward because we can much more readily pick who influences us. There's, there's a, a notion, show me your friends and I'll show you your future.

Uh, and I think that it's a lot easier these days to choose who those friends and role models are when all it takes is a click instead of conscious. Physical realignment. And so that's, that's sort of where it shows up in my interests. Woo. There's a lot there. We we're gonna have to, uh, put a pin in that.

We're definitely coming back to that. Sticking with this idea of, of bias though, before we move on. Um, Howard, in terms of organizations and organizational culture, what's been the biggest impact of that book and that work for organizations? Is there and, and how have organizations been able to kind of incorporate the ideas from that book and actually do something about it?

Well, I think it's in multiple levels. Uh, Michael, I think first of all, there are lots [00:10:00] of leaders, thousands of leaders who we worked with over, over years, um, who, who I think saw their own decision making improved. Were able to see how they might have had blind spots about employees or coworkers. I think on an individual level, I think there are a lot of people who were able to use the awareness that that work brought to, um.

To, to impact relationship issues that they had with other people they were working with or with teams that they were working with. And in some cases, even the overall strategies of the organizations and the way they related to outside communities, understanding that they may not be showing up in the way that they thought or intended that they wanted to show up.

And so, you know, we saw that happen in hundreds and, and like I said, thousands of cases with individuals. I think one of the unfortunate things is that as a species we tend to look at the negative more than we look at the positive. And um, I think you and I both know, because I know you've done some really excellent work in the space as well, that when unconscious bias work became kind of the shiny new penny [00:11:00] if you will, that all of a sudden a whole lot of people jumped and started doing that work.

But as often happens when people pick up on the work that others have started, they don't necessarily do the deeper homework. And I think if there is one major insight that came out of doing the bias work for me, it was that it's not really. Effective. I mean, forget the moral, good or bad around it for a minute.

It's not very effective to go out pointing fingers to people and tell them that they're bad. They need to change, especially when they don't realize or intend to be bad, because all it does is say to them that you're not seeing them, you're not knowing who they are. And so defensiveness gets up. But unfortunately what happened when the, uh, bias work became so popular is that a lot of people with that old mindset that kind of find them and fix a mindset just stuck that conversation into that same old mindset.

So it became, oh, you may not be biased, but you're unconsciously biased. It became one more attack line, which is ironic because it's inconsistent with the very nature of what the science tells us. Mm-hmm. But, um, nonetheless, this is what we do as human beings. And, um, [00:12:00] and so, so we've seen a, a huge number of people who had extraordinary breakthroughs, both personally and collectively, but unfortunately a lot of that's being hidden by the noise that's around it now.

Yeah, that defensiveness is, can be intense. What have you found the best ways to get, to get around that or to prevent it in the first place or to kind of work through it? What are, what have been your most perspective strategies for that? Well, I think we start by knowing that, and this also comes from the same science we're talking about, knowing that uh, when people feel like somebody's trying to fix them, it triggers activity in the dorsal, posterior and insulin of the brain, which is the same part of the brain associated with physical pain.

And anybody who in a relationship has tried to fix their partner or spouse knows how well that doesn't work. And so I think this is in a fact the mistake that I think many people have made in doing this kind of work, which is, you know, we've strayed from the early days of the work, which really came out of Dr.

King's admonition to build the beloved. Community to say how can we build those kinds of communities [00:13:00] in organizations and in society where people trust each other, they value each other, they see each other, they feel each other and they see the value in each other. You know, that's really where we started.

And over time, for many people, that evolved to how do I change that person? How do I fix that person? So I think if we're gonna reach people, we have to start by trying to have an understanding of what they're feeling and particularly their fear. Because if you don't acknowledge people's fear, anything that you say will just cause them to dig in deeper, to defend themselves.

Once you acknowledge people's fear and acknowledge people's concern, um, and get into a conversation about that which recognizes the humanity and that fear and concern, even if we don't share the same fear and concern about the same kind of people, once we acknowledge that we have the opportunity for our conversation, I'm not saying it always works, of course it doesn't, but we have at least an opportunity to get to the heart of what's motivating people in their beliefs of behavior.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think the most, the most dramatic example of, uh, I've experienced of trying to [00:14:00] kind of help people see that, that a workshop wasn't there to say, you're doing something wrong. We're here to fix. You was working with a group of nurses at right after COVID, and the folks who are bringing me into this health organization were like, they do, they have no interests in.

Going to this workshop. Like there's, they're so tapped and so exhausted and do not wanna be told they're bad people. And I was like, right, of course. So we just started the workshop by saying, my gosh, the work you've been doing is nothing sort of heroic. Like this is not about you being bad people. Quite the opposite.

It's just a new way to think about how to do what you're doing even better. And, and, and so that just, that released so much emotion and, and defensiveness that we could then talk about while we are there to talk about. And so that was great. Um, yeah, I think look, I mean, I think you're speaking to something that's really important, which is you need to pay attention to the way people are listening to what you're saying.

What's the context for people [00:15:00] listening to what you're saying? And I've said for many years to people, even if somebody's starving, dude that's shoving food down their throats, not the answer. We still have to find a way to, to get to people. Yeah. Yeah. It. What about the climate today? Like how is that challenging for this thing that we're, we're talking about?

I like what, what are you finding in your work with how things have changed in the past, whatever we wanna say, 11 months, 12 months? Yeah, absolutely. It's been touched on this idea that there's a fear of people making each other wrong. But I think one of the challenges that we face when it comes to being with that fear is that it's so much easier to just lean away from the discomfort.

To track back to what I was saying before, Robert Putnam wrote a book called Bowling Alone, which discu, which discusses the dissolution of the American third place. And the, I think, I think the tagline of the book is, uh, the Death of American Collectivism. Um, and it, it's this idea that we, we lean into a more individualism, individualistic, excuse me, culture, [00:16:00] because we are just.

In the United States and in the, our particular flavor of capitalism, that's what it looks like. And so, so what ends up happening is that people have much more capacity to lean away from group identity. Um, and what we see amplifying that is social media and how, I mean, we need connection. It's, it's a fact.

Instead of physical touch and the actual sensation and experience of being present with people, sharing eye contact, being face to face. We can sit behind a keyboard and get all of the dopamine hits we want about being right. And so. What the result is, is that people lean away from places where they can be challenged in a healthy and meaningful way to self-examine, to grow, to actually have these difficult interpersonal conversations about things like how bias is affecting interpersonal relationships.

And instead, it's become a much more common part of the narrative to just drop people and walk away. [00:17:00] Because for better or for worse, the world is a lot smaller than it used to be. Yeah. Um, and uh, or our reach is a lot bigger. So somewhere in there is the, is the, the point. But the, the point of it is that, you know, Dunbar's number, which is the 150 people that we can keep track of, used to be this sort of gold standard for how we would frame our life, because that represents more or less surrounding community.

Whereas now, I mean, speaking for myself, I have 4,100 friends on Facebook. I don't even know most of those names at this point. Right, right. Yeah. Um, yeah, for sure. It's interesting when I say, is this current context affecting this today? There's so many ways to interpret that. Like there's social media, like you're talking about.

There's certainly AI and, and we'll get into that. There's also just the politics of the day and, and what's going on with that. Howard, you, you've been doing this work for so long and you've seen kind of the, the leaning into this work, the leaning out with [00:18:00] this work. What are your reflections on just where we are today in terms of just trying to do work with organizations to make sure everyone feels valued and included?

I have been doing this work professionally for 40 years and I've been engaged in it in my life for 60 years, so since I was 14 or 15 years old. So you do see patterns, and I do think that there's value in, in having a historical view because we know that this has never been a straight line. It's always been three steps forward, two steps back.

You know, if we look at American history, we go back, we had emancipation, and then we had reconstruction and reconstruction folds and the black boats come in. And then we had, you know, soldiers going off to World War I and. Lots of black soldiers and starting to send money back. And we see the riots in Tulsa and the anti-black riots in Tulsa and in 50 other cities across the country during the summers of 19, 19, 20, and 21.

And I could continue, but we all know that this is the way the pattern works. And right now, clearly we're in a retrenchment. Um, there's a, you know, it's a combination of things. I think on, on [00:19:00] one hand, there's what I call a terrorist campaign against de and ID, AI has been chosen as a target, not because of what it produced, but because of what it represents in terms of this whole anti woke movement.

And that is the notion that caring about other people doing things in the best interest of other people, worrying about other people's needs is somehow. You know, weak or whatever. But there's also, we have to acknowledge those, those who are in the space, as we were saying earlier, have to acknowledge that there were also some missteps.

And I think particularly post George Floyd, there was some overreach on people's part. It came out of people's pain, understandably, and frustration and, and all of that. But it, but it did give fodder to those who were trying to make up a story. I know I had a, a colleague call me for, for some advice, he's a man in his mid fifties who is a long time liberal.

You know, um, civil rights, da da da. And he has a stepchild who at 12 years old was talk, thinking about transitioning. And he was always pro L-G-B-T-Q rights including [00:20:00] trans rights. But he said, I just wonder if 12 years old is too early for them to be able to make this decision for themselves. Mm-hmm. And so I'm struggling with this.

I wanna support them. And at the same time, and he shared this with some folks in his organization, it was basically canceled out by the, by the people in the organization for mm-hmm. For inquiring into this. And I think when we see that kind of extreme, you're going to give people fodder to, to, um, to generate this attack.

But, but it's also important to recognize that that's not what the source of this attack is. Yeah. And that, and that those kinds of things weren't the norm. Right. This so is what happens when I listen to someone like a Robbie Starbuck who will cherry pick ridiculous examples of the right things that have happened, and then assume that that was the norm of what was happening, which it very much was not.

Um, yeah. And naming a profession where you don't have some people who do stupid things. I mean, you've got doctors who do stupid things. You've got lawyers who do stupid things. I mean, there's no, there's CEOs of corporations who do stupid things all the time. So, so yes, of course there are diversity [00:21:00] practitioners who've done stupid things.

Yeah. That doesn't mean the entire field is not of value. No. Not to mention malicious things, not just stupid things. Yes. But actual malicious things. Yeah. Jake, uh, just, you know, to touch on that element about the sort of cancel culture element as well. I think that one of the things that, that I'm seeing, uh, particularly in my social and professional spheres, is that there's a lot of sphere around curiosity and, you know, curiosity being one of the most foundational elements of the human condition.

When we start to be curious about how other people think, how other people feel, how we create the world around us, that's when we can learn and grow. And there's this narrative that. Having curiosity about how our viewpoints might not be nurturing to the, the narrative at large inherently makes us a bad person.

And, you know, it, it leans into this conversation of bias. And I mean, the [00:22:00] title of the first chapter is, if you are human, you are biased. Which is true. I mean, bias is a, a self-protection and survival mechanism, but it's become so readily demonized to have curiosity about how these biases show up, that people become afraid to self examine.

And when we're not looking at the way we're the ways that we're biased, they're gonna come out anyway. They just come out without intention. Before we leave that point, if I could just, yeah, I, I think it's important for us to recognize too, that all of this happens in the context of this tribalized.

Society that we're in right now, that we've moved from sort of a bell curve society, which most of us spend most of our lives in, where you had, you know, people in the extremes, but different points of view and people could share different points of view. And it was basically, um, you know, basically issue oriented.

I might disagree with you about. Foreign policy, but agree with you about civil rights, for example. That sort of the thing. We've moved from that into what I call a dumbbell curve society now, where everything's on the end and nothing's in the middle, and it's no longer [00:23:00] about issues, it's about identity.

So it's no longer, what do you believe? It's You're one of them and I'm one of us. And if we put that in the context of what Jake was just talking about, we can see that if I'm feeling challenged now, I wanna go to a safe haven. I wanna go someplace where I feel secure. And if the only choices I have are these two more extreme ends, I'm gonna choose one of them and be pulled into a more extreme point of view on either side than I might normally do.

The nuance goes away because now I'm part of the group membership instead of really engaging in kind of curiosity and nuance that Jake's talking about. Yeah, for sure. For sure. It is not helpful. That sort of polarization. Sometimes there, people feel scared, like you're saying, and then sometimes I think a lot of it is disingenuous.

It's like this excuse like, I'm just being curious what I, I can't say this, I can't ask about this. Right? But it's not genuine curiosity. There's no listening. If someone does take you at your word and try to share with you. Right. What's [00:24:00] changing in the second edition of the book? I wanna go back to that, like in the years that it's, it's taken since you've written it.

Like what's changed? What are you adding? What are you actually editing? Like what, what has changed and what is new? Jake, do you wanna start with what's new? Yeah, why don't we start with Jake? 'cause he's, he's really added the new stuff. Yeah. More than I have. Sure. Yeah. Um, I mean the core, the core two pieces, uh, I wrote two chapters in full, uh, one on bias and social media and the impact that that has on our, uh, I mean, talking about collectivism and the way that that influences the way that we, we show up and engage with each other and the other on bias and ai and how, um, there's a sense of over alliance on truth and I guess desire, a desire to have truth be easy.

Um, and, and I think that's, that's sort of the, the broader impact of AI as a whole is that at [00:25:00] present AI is startlingly sycophantic. And we as human beings, I mean, we're talking about this, this relationship that we have with curiosity, and the fact is the curiosity can be really challenging. Yeah. You know, when we wanna, we want to explore all the narratives of, of the world, but there's so much information right now, and to streamline it just makes things easier.

And so there's this, this fixation on the ease of access to truth, the result of which being, I mean, we, you know, just for, for the sake of argument, we asked to see what Cha GPT thought of the, the chapter that we wrote, and it wrote a glowing recommendation of the part where I called it a sycophant. This is terrible.

It was so, it was so appropriate that I put it in the book. It's true. It was so, it was so on the nose. It was like, it was like the, the, the, the element on sick of fancy is the, the moral and [00:26:00] emotional heart of the chapter. I was like, I read the room. Um, Hey, can you, I, I think people know what that word is, but can you just get a simple definition in case people are wondering what that word means?

Sure. Yeah. I guess I would define it as the shameless and unthoughtful celebration of whatever the case may be. Uh, shameless and thoughtful, uh, unthoughtful, celebration of a person, a person's word, um, et cetera. Think. Think sucking up. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, there you go. Um, yeah. And so, but anyhow, that's, that's sort of what we were writing on with ai mm-hmm.

Was so social media, and I keep coming back to this just because I do think that relative to the notion of bias, uh, belonging and community, social media is actually arguably one of the most dramatic influential pieces of our time, at least to date. [00:27:00] And, and what I write about in that chapter is how the, the directions of the algorithms and the ease of access to being unchallenged by people we don't wanna face in combination with the accessibility to.

Dampening empathy and compassion that comes from not looking a person in the eye. And the capability of, uh, experiencing, experiencing them, excuse me, as less than human mm-hmm. Has allowed for us to self-select for our own biases in a much more aggressive way than we ever have been able to in the past.

And the result is that people, and we'll sort of circle back on this, but there's a, a fellow named Darrell Davis, who we write about in the book as well, who was a black man who started going to KKK rallies, um, because he didn't believe that somebody could sit down across the table from him and hate him.

Mm-hmm. At least not in the way that they did. Right. Um, there are plenty of, [00:28:00] of deeply admirable, uh, upstanding people who I don't wanna sit face to face with, but, um. The, the point being that this, this notion of self-selection has allowed for us to turn off our empathy as a broader scale. Uh, and I think for myself and what I contributed to the book, that is the core element that I believe in, is that it's, it's more important than ever to sit face to face with people we don't agree with, and remember that they are human.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's, you know, confirmation bias was bad enough. Like without, without these algorithms, it's like confirmation bias on steroids. Um, well, it is that, that's really, that's a really interesting component of this, Michael, because if you think about it, you know, what are the things that we, what, what's our experience of relating to ai?

One is the, the ay effect of this. As Jake's talking about this sort of obsequiousness that it's like, uh, [00:29:00] we, uh, this machine likes me, it talks nice to me. It always, it always, you know, says Great question, you know? Yeah. And all these great things that it build in and it builds, it builds knowledge. So, you know, for example, I'm a musician as I think you know, as well as my interest in some of these other things, and I asked Uhhuh, go.

To look for some research and said, well, as a musician you'd probably be interested in this. You know? Um, so, so it's resonating with what I'm interested in on one hand. And secondly, I inherently know that it knows more than I do. And so if you've got something that you think likes you and you believe knows more than you do, you're gonna have a tendency to listen to it more.

And what we found in the research was that in fact, AI in essence generates more rigid bias than face-to-face interaction does. Yeah. Oh gosh. And it's, it's, it's scary the way it works. Like I remember first starting to use chat GBT and asking us some questions, and at the end of a response it told me like, you're doing great work, Michael.

And I was like, the fact that it felt good freaked me out. [00:30:00] And, and here's a, I mean, and I don't know, maybe you probably know this, Jake, like. So my chat, GBT is telling me I'm doing great work. It is Robbie Starbucks chat, GBT telling him he's doing great work. Like it's just sycophantic for you. Yeah, absolutely.

And it's, it's interesting because the root of the Syco fantasy is, it's not that it wants, how do, how do I describe it? It's, it's not that it's just there to suck up. That's not its purpose. That's not what it exists for. It's there to, and, and our friend Lauren actually wrote a great piece on this. It's purpose is that it wants to be right, much like human beings do.

Uh, but it wants to be right. And if it can't be right in a way where it can appropriately challenge you, it wants to be right in a way that you [00:31:00] will still feel. Like it showed up for you, I guess is the best way I can describe it. And it's the reason why in the first iterations chat, GPT would do things like make up sources, uh, or fabricate scientific journals in order to substantiate its arguments.

It has a really deep desire to be competent because it's trained to believe that its sole purpose is to demonstrate competence, which, I mean, if we can really, if we can scale it out and really look at it like that, how many of us were, were taught otherwise. Mm-hmm. I mean, I happen to be very fortunate that I wasn't directly told that.

Um, but the unfortunate side is that being raised by somebody who gets an introduction like you've given is that the, uh, the, the inherent, the inherent bar is, is as such. Yeah, I mean, sticking with this topic, you know, certainly there's tons of research [00:32:00] about the bias, the racial biases, the gender biases that are built into to ai.

Um, and so, you know, there are so many examples of that. Right. Then I've also had people who are very optimistic about AI's ability to potentially reduce bias, like to get rid of the biases and performance reviews or whatever. Like where, with all your research and thinking on this, where did you end up coming down on this, on this idea?

Um, well, well, I, I think that, you know, the point you make is exactly where it came back, which is, this is a both end. Like any other new technology of sufficient impact, it's going to have both. Its life sided and its shadow side. And I think that, um, there's no, I mean, look at a very material level. I could tell you, you know, I, I originally wrote Everyday Bias back in, it came out in 2014 and then I did a, a, an update.

Wasn't considered a new edition, but just an update a few years after that. [00:33:00] The amount of time it took to do research now versus then was astonishing. You know, something might have taken me 10 days to find, then took me two minutes to find. Now, now, now, I always included extra time to check that research for the very reason that Jake said, because one of the challenges that people forget about with AI is that as AI goes out into the world of the internet and every place else to gather information, if you ask about a topic, it may not be able to discern between what's in a scientific journal and what's on newsmax.

You know what I mean? It, it's, it's, it's gathering all this data and it's saying, here's what people are saying. Um, but. It that, that you still need to go in and say what is, this is credible and where comes from a credible source? Where is this information coming from? And of course, it's easy to do, the links are right there so you can go click on the links, but, but unfortunately most people in our rush to get something out or just laziness, um, don't bother to follow up on that.

And then people put something out thinking that it's legitimate holding to that. It was, like I said, it was something that somebody said in an interview somewhere that has no credibility at all. [00:34:00] So I think, I think that, um, you know, we have to be really careful about that even as we do see the value of this amazing capability of.

Bringing the entire world's intelligence to our fingertips in a matter of seconds has obviously huge potential positive impact as well. Yeah, for sure. That need to check. Chad GBT came on so strongly one time when I, when I was first getting excited about it, and then I was having it give me trivia questions to ask my kids, and we were playing a game and it ended up coming back and telling me that Arizona was one of the states that didn't have a Z in its name.

Buddy. I can't trust you with anything now. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And that's the kind of stuff that you need to watch out for. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And if I may, I would also like to clarify that the book is not anti ai. Mm-hmm. Um, in, in fact, I think that being anti AI is not, I mean, my personal opinion is that I don't think it's a, [00:35:00] I don't think it's an appropriate standpoint because it's here.

And it's not going anywhere. It's pervading every single corner of our lives. And in the next 10 years, it will become arguably the most pervasive technology on the planet, um, ubiquitous in every form. And, and 10 years is probably conservative in that regard. That's probably, that's probably true. But I think that the level to which it becomes integrated in society at that, at that time, will be to the point where ubiquitous can be taken as a definition.

Um, but, but I think that there's, and I mean for goodness sakes, the, the Nobel Prize this year in, I wanna say chemistry was awarded to the people who designed alpha fold, which is a, a. Uh, protein folding predictor, uh, AI algorithm that helps with drug discovery and genetic research. And I shouldn't speak more because I don't understand too much more about it, but the po the point is that AI [00:36:00] nurtured the Nobel Prize.

This the, in. Either biology or chemistry is here. And you know, there's an another layer to it as well, which is that the company that I work for is actually designing a system that allows multiple AI to answer the same question simultaneously and then summarize the ways that it agrees and disagrees.

Mm-hmm. So you can look at where they think similarly, where they think differently and where they make unique points. Um, similarly, uh, a friend of mine runs a, an AI recruitment firm and his firm uses an AI system to remove racial identity signifiers from resumes before submitting them to the broader database so that certain things that might otherwise be flags are, uh, are, are not there.

And of course that still leaves, you know, things like college education bias and stuff like that, but that's a little bit more deeply ingrained, but. You know, this, this idea that AI [00:37:00] can be the solution to a lot of the things that we are leaning on to highlight the problem at the moment is, is a very real one.

And, and there's a lot of these opportunities for these systems that we've built, that we're leaning into to also be supportive of the solution of reducing the bias that we wanna see in the world. I think what it really comes down to is this sense that we live in a virtual space where self-selection for what we wanna see for confirmation bias, but more, I, I think confirmation bias is, I think active confirmation bias is more mm-hmm.

More what I wanna say or yeah. Is this sense that, that we can, we may be aware of it, but we, there's so much opportunity to. Choose it that, you know, what we really drive home in, in the book, and certainly for myself and the parts that I contributed, is that we encourage people to choose to be [00:38:00] curious, choose to be challenged.

Yeah. That's great. Is the, is the writing for the second edition done? When does it come out? Yeah. The manuscript's in the publisher and, you know, we're in that little nip and tuck stage. I mean, it won't be out until, probably until the summer. Um, but, uh, we're, we're publishing through, uh, Roman Littlefield, who's now owned by Bloomsbury.

And Bloomsbury has a little bit of a longer, um, uh, publication cycle, but, uh, but yeah, it's in and we're getting, um, uh, John Powell, who's the director of the, um, uh, otherness and belongings to Berkeley is, is writing a forward for us, which we're very excited about. Yeah. Uh, you know, we're looking forward to getting it out in the world and particularly these, these new conversations.

Um, and so how, how has it been working together? You, you're, you're, I, you're not the first parent child duo that I've had on here writing a second together just recently, actually, I'm Yes, of course. Our, our good friends. Yeah. Yeah. [00:39:00] Yes, yes. So, how's that going? The collaboration? Jake, why don't you, you jump in that first.

Sure. Yeah. Um, I, I think that there's a, a. Unique advantage that we have, which is that we came into this having spent a decade, I mean a lifetime truly, but, but particularly the last 10 years of really intensive interpersonal relational work to focus on how we can treat each other with respect, acknowledge how our parental relationship has influenced our, our active, you know, collaborative and, and other facets of our relationship.

Before we even began to endeavor into this, but also did, I did make a, a bit of a joke about this earlier, but there is, there is a reality to this sense of the desire to step up and earn a seat at the table. Mm-hmm. And, you know, it's been interesting because I have a historical wound around, I mean, you, you said it to start out, but I'll reiterate, I very much admire and [00:40:00] respect my father.

Um, and as anybody who has read or experienced his work, your work knows that, uh, it's, it's a worthy admiration. And so it's not just a professional, but a personal admiration. And so for myself, one of the things that's come up there is this sense of desire around, um, wanting to prove myself, uh, as, as, as worthy of that.

But it's been really lovely in that regard because our interpersonal relationship has given space for the sloppiness of any given collaboration, let alone with, uh, historical context to, to grow. And in fact, just. Probably a week and a half ago, we had a moment where I got frustrated. I reacted, I called someone for advice, and then I called and apologized and recognized that who I was showing up as was the son who still feels a sense of frustration as opposed to a [00:41:00] collaborator.

And so it's great because I actually feel like my capability as a collaborator has been strengthened by the grace with which Howard is willing to receive me in my unrefined edges so that I can lean more into how I wanna show up professionally, um, in this and all that is to say it's been a blessing.

Um, it's an absolute delight and I would say that, you know, it's, it's wonderful to have the excuse to talk every day about this, but the truth is we talk on the phone every day anyway, so that's awesome. Yeah, I, I would say, Michael, that, um, I started this process writing this book with my son. And I ended it writing it with a colleague.

Mm, that's lovely. Um, I think that anybody who's listened to our first half hour or whatever it's been together here can see that Jake has substantive knowledge and experience and, and incredible ability to articulate this stuff on his own Right. Having [00:42:00] nothing to do with me. And, um, I think as a parent, you know, one of the things that we always experience, I know you have children and we always experience is, um, that individuation process.

You know, it's sort of this tethering process that starts under, they're two years old and you decide how high is the sliding board? Do you wanna let them try, you know, and, and they go on and on and on out into the world. And, you know, I've been really blessed 'cause I've got four sons, all of whom have been really successful in the world, but Jake's the first one who really has gone into my field.

Mm-hmm. And so, um. We sat together a, a few weeks ago, uh, we were in, in Philadelphia because we went to the, um, annual summit for the, uh, MAP program, the Master's of Positive Psychology program. He invited me to go with him, and I just watched him interacting with his colleagues. And afterwards we were having dinner and I said to him, I, I'm releasing you from being my son in this professional relationship.

And you know, my commitment to you is that moving forward, I'm gonna relate to you as a younger colleague, uh, who has [00:43:00] substance and something to offer it in I myself, because that in fact is the, is the transformation that happened. Um, and I think that, um. There are times when, and, and Jake just mentioned this thing that happened a week and a half ago.

There are times when, um, I have to stop and say, which relationship is running the show here? This is another form of unconscious. You know, am I reacting to this like he's my kid? Um, am I reacting to this? Like he's a colleague, like, you were supposed to get me that thing last Tuesday. If you were a colleague, I would've called you Wednesday morning and said, where is it?

As his kid? I'm, well, I know he is busy, you know, and I had to get off that and say, no, I'm relating to him as a colleague. Where is it? You know? So, um, so I think it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's an interesting dance, but I think like everything else in life, it starts and ends with awareness. And I think that, uh, you know, the more aware we are, that's where the learning comes from.

And in the end, what I had was an ability to write this book with somebody who had a base of knowledge and a perspective that was deeper than mine in some very important areas. And also who brought a generational perspective that was [00:44:00] incredibly important to this topic in this day right now. And so, um, so it ended up being perfect in, in that sense, not just because I love my son and I, you know, it's great to be working with my son, but also because I think he added exactly what was needed for the book to take it to another level.

Yeah. Oh, that's great. Yeah. I, I love talking about issues in the world, serious things with my kids and getting that generational perspective. I mean, they, their ages run from 22 down to 12, so I get a, a wide variety, but, um, but I do love that there, if, if I may, yeah, go for it. If I may just, just add one more thing, um, to that, and thank you Howard, dad.

Yeah. Um, for, for that. Uh, you know, the, the one thing that I'll say, and I do, I do mention this in acknowledgements, acknowledgements as well, is that. A big part of what's been so inspiring about this, you know, that it's a quote, I think it's often a contributor to Isaac Newton, but, uh, it's, if I've seen farther, it's only because I've stood on the shoulders of [00:45:00] giants, uh, not for context.

And those of you who don't know Howard is six five. But, um, there's, there's, uh, there's the element of it as well, which, which is a, a source of deep and profound gratitude, which is that I got to ha do an amazing thing working with my father on a project. But I also had the immense privilege of co-creating and collaborating with the extraordinary Howard Ross in this field.

Um, and so, so my grad, my gratitude is twofold in that, which is that it was a really powerful experience for my personal wellbeing, but also on a, a professional level. I mean, he's awesome. Yeah, I just wanted to say that. Thanks. I, I'll second that. Um, that's, that's really beautiful. I was thinking about, you know, being a dad and being.

Being in the work that we do. And I, I recalled this funny thing where, um, I was being interviewed for the BBC and, um, there were, it was when Disney movies put like warnings [00:46:00] on, on, in the beginning of the films about like mm-hmm. You know, outdated cultural representations or, and Right. So they're, they're asking about it and I explain that like, yeah, there's some maybe problematic messages around race or ethnicity or gender or sexuality.

And so I don't. Stop my kids from watching Disney movies, but I'll watch it with them and we'll pause and we'll talk, um, about it. And uh, one of the comments was, I would hate to be his kids. Like, and I just, we, we had a good laugh about that. Um, there, there are some others that are funny too, where somebody called me as a sanctimonious Killjoy and now whenever my kids are mad at me, like when my 12-year-old mad at me calls me a sanctimonious, killjoy,

no. That, that, you know, you're in trouble when your kids are getting insults from your internet trolls. You know, that's his I know, I know. But it cracks me up 'cause it's like funny. [00:47:00] I can tell, I know he is mad, but he is also making an inside joke. Right, right, exactly. Um, he got a sense of humor about his anger.

Right. You know? Exactly. Exactly. So I was gonna ask, I was gonna ask Jake if you have any funny stories of growing up with your dad in that respect? You know, I, it's, it's funny, I, I'm sure that there are funny stories. I more lately I've been reflecting on the sort of deeper, deeper meaning level of the things.

Um, I'm sure that a funny story will come, but I, I do think that there's, there is an important element to look at when it comes to these types of things, which is actually something that I'd like to celebrate about the current generation, which is that, you know, I'm, I'm in my thirties and when I was growing up in the nineties, it was, we hadn't really come to talk about the conversation of the act, the, the depth of impact around bullying and teasing and all of these things.

And so there was sort of this, this way of being [00:48:00] where the bullies were still the cool kids. And the cool kids were still the bullies. And, you know, no shade on anybody who I grew up with. Um, you know, I, I will say that just about everybody who I ever could called a, uh, a bully has, has grown up to be a really respectable human being.

And I've kept in touch with a number of them, but, but there's this sense that it was, it was cool to be aloof or disrespectful or what have you, uh, to not care, as it were. And I, I feel enormously grateful for what was at the time, very challenging, which is the sense that, that Howard really taught me how, and my mother, uh, and I don't wanna write off my mother.

I know that she's not here. This is a conversation between all of us. My mother is an amazing woman and an amazing mom. Um, and I wanna really highlight that there's this sense that it was instilled in me, this, this narrative of empathy and of thoughtfulness and consideration around how do we. Address people [00:49:00] who are different.

How do we acknowledge that people are different without drawing attention to it in such a way as to other people? Um, and what I found at the time was that being raised to have emotional, uh, vocabulary and thoughtfulness and empathy and compassion made it really hard to have friends my age. Um, and, and it's really interesting when we look at this, that this is, this is a true thing of a lot of people who are like me.

Actually, a lot of, uh, hypersensitive kids had a really hard time relating to people their age because it just, it wasn't what was talked about. It wasn't how, how kids were taught. And it made adolescents particularly difficult because I wanted depth in my relationships because I had depth in my relationship with my parents and I had depth in my relationship with my parents' friends.

I was raised in a beautiful community and that, that's continued throughout my life. Um, so, so it was really challenging to. [00:50:00] You know, to have, I mean, uh, I, I, there there was a thing that we, we stopped the, stopped the movie to point out the, the racial and, and unconscious implications and why things are challenging and problematic or whatever.

Um, but we would also stop to look at why it was that someone had their feelings hurt and how it was that we can be better. And so, you know, one of the things, uh, just to come back to the original point that I'd like to celebrate about the current generation, and obviously it's not a blanket statement because those aren't appropriate at any level.

Yeah. But there's this narrative that being kind, being compassionate, calling out microaggressions, calling out macroaggressions, holding bullies accountable, all of these, these things that, that the younger generation is doing, it's, it's become cool. Mm. You know, and we celebrate this sense that actually acknowledging people for their humanity.

Is what has [00:51:00] people be popular and celebrated and cool and. It's, it's a really beautiful thing. I'm enormously grateful to have been raised that way, but I'm also grateful to live at a time when I could watch that expand. And, you know, Howard has, has six grandchildren and watching my nieces and nephews grow up into a world where it's more appropriate to call a person out for using a slur than it is to use a slur.

Mm-hmm. Um, and, and get a laugh. Uh, it's a, it's a really wonderful thing and I feel enormously grateful for having been raised in such a way, not only where that's what I was taught, but where at, you know, almost 32 years old. That's what I get to celebrate in others. Yeah. That's beautiful. I love that. And it's so important being able to have those conversations at, at young ages.

How are, are, are you familiar with any research. That looks at whether, you [00:52:00] know, young people in this generation, uh, have the same biases, same unconscious biases as as other generations? Um, yeah, I mean, I, I have seen some research that people specifically ask that question. Generally speaking, what it points to is the biases are different, but the tendency to bias is no different.

Uh, because, as Jake said before, it's a survival mechanism. We wouldn't survive without bias anymore than we could survive without breathing. I mean, the, the simplest way to think about it is what does bias do? Bias says, watch out for this thing. It's dangerous, or Watch out for this person. It's dangerous, you know, imagine.

Walking through a city and not knowing, not having already filtered that cars are dangerous. You know, it's not like we step out in the street and say, I wonder what happens when the big heavy metal object on wheels comes. You know, we instinctively know to jump out of the way. And, and so, um, and so bias is always going to be with us as a fundamental struck.

Functioning. Um, and I think one of the challenges we made in the early days of diversity work in dealing with bias is [00:53:00] we explored the sort of fanciful notion we can make bias go away. You know, we talked about anti-bias trainings and anti, you know, and like, you know, non-biased decision making when in fact what we realized over time was it's actually not trying to make it go away that's going to do anything.

'cause it will never go away. And trying to make it go away will actually force it underground, even more deeply unconscious. But what actually does help is acknowledging that it's there and acknowledging, taking responsibility for it and saying, okay, I do have this tendency to like this kind of person more than that kind of person.

I don't know where that came from maybe, or maybe I do, but one way or the other, I'll have to keep that in mind when I'm interviewing people like that. And make sure that the questions I'm asking them are not leading one way or the other. Then make sure that my interpretation of their answers are not influenced by that.

Now, that's not gonna a hundred percent fix it, but it's a hell of a lot more likely to address it in a constructive way than by pretending it's not there. And, and I think that that's, that's, that's true. And I, and it's also true for this need for a sense of belonging, particularly in a culture, as Jake said before, which prides itself on [00:54:00] individualism.

And we can do it on our own when the truth is human species needs to be around other people. We now know in looking at, at Maslow's famous pyramid, that Maslow is wrong, that belonging is actually the baseline of the pyramid. And even Maslow, by the way, Kate was starting to come to that towards the end of his life.

Mm. But um, so, so I think that, that, that all of those things are, are critical in terms of our understanding that, that when we acknowledge something's there, we can work with it. Yeah. And, and we can bake into, you know, policies and procedures, a way to mitigate against the impact. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And you've done some great work.

The work that you did with Tiffany Jana was great work in that, in that regard. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Um, what would be, I mean, you both work with groups and with organizations. What would be something surprising that people who are listening to the podcast might not realize about the work that you do?

Like, what's something that would just kind of shock people that maybe is counterintuitive. [00:55:00] Gotcha. You know, I, I, I think that if I were to really boil it down. It's that all of this work, uh, illuminating bias, taking accountability, coming with curiosity relating to the person near us, e every, every layer of what we talk about when it comes to community building, acknowledging bias, et cetera, can be explained in the inexplicable experience of sitting across from a person making eye contact.

Mm mm-hmm. It is uncomfortable. It is vulnerable, it is raw, it is scary, but at its core, it's human. And, and so to answer your question that would really surprise people is the simplicity of it. Mm-hmm. Which is that our goal is, I mean, the lofty goal is improve organizational cultures, build community, create a more equitable future where people are more gentle [00:56:00] and and open minded to each other.

But the real root of the goal is, at least speaking for myself and obviously Howard will answer. Next, is I want the people that I work with to recognize they are human and so are the people in front of them. And that when we can really get down to this shared humanity, we can, we can start to realize that none of the labels, none of the defenses in the armor actually really matters.

All that matters is that we are. Built, you know, we, we are, we are evolved into this place where our inclination is to celebrate, protect, and honor the people in front of us. It's in our code. And if we can really get down to that, the rest is just semantics. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Love it. Love it. Mm. What about with your work, Howard?

I think, you know, think what I would say is, is, is, um, [00:57:00] you know, I used to tell my staff when, you know, when I was still writing Quick Ross years ago, we had 50 people on, you know, I, I would say, um, I want y'all to know I'm not committed to unconscious bias work. And then it would look, their jaw would drop, you know, and then I would say, in fact, I'm not even committed to diversity work.

And then their jaws would really drop. What I'm committed to is creating organizations. Along the lines of which Jake was describing a minute ago. And I believe that these are great tools to get there, but if I find better tools to get there, I'll use them. And I think that this is one of the challenges that we have as human beings, and it's really showing up for people in the de and I space right now, I think, who are dealing with the frustrations that you and others are dealing with, trying to, you know, continue to do work.

You know? Um, and it, it's a, it's an interesting human phenomenon. We create a commitment to something and then we develop a strategy to get to that commitment. And then if we're not careful, our commitment shifts from the ultimate commitment to the strategy. So, just to give you a very easy example, I have a friend who started running when she was like 40 or 45 years old because she wanted to get herself [00:58:00] healthy.

She had never exercised a lot at some point. 20 years later, her hip started to bother her. But at that point, she was committed to running that marathon and she kept running herself right into a hip replacement, right? Mm-hmm. If she had remembered that she was committed to being healthy, she said this to me later, she, if I remember, I was committed to being healthy, I would've started swimming 10 years ago, right?

And stopped running, you know, but, but the commitment shifted. And I think similarly, um, what's happening right now is that there are a whole lot of folks who, who were using diversity as a tool to create the kind of environment similar to like Jake just described, in which everybody had opportunity, was seen as human, was given their opportunity to be their best self and could contribute fully to their organization.

So whatever other language we wanna put around that vision, and then we decided this kind of work. Whether it's leadership work for some people or coaching work for some people, or diversity work for some people, this kind of work will get us there. And then when people challenge this kind of work, we're like, oh my God, what do we do?

Mm-hmm. But my response is if the door's locked, look for the open window. Now I'm not saying that's easy because as [00:59:00] we were talking about Right when we started before, I think we got on on the call. Yeah. Um, de and I works is not the only work that's being restricted right now. It's almost any work around culture building and organizations has been slowed.

Yeah. Uh, but nonetheless, we also know because of the history that that will come back. The pendulum does swing back in the other direction. And, um, and if we can remember what we're here for and start to find ways to move our focus towards that and not so much to any one way of getting there, then I think we'll be able to continue to move in a direction.

Because I think that those are the kind of environments that people do wanna work in ultimately. Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. People wanna work in environments where they're respected, they wanna work in environments where they're seen as included. But the reality is that. A lot of people especially, and we have to acknowledge that people who look like the three of us have been not welcomed into that conversation in a lot of cases.

And so as a result of that, they went where they could find a home. Mm. Can you say more about that last point? Yeah, I think that, that for years, you [01:00:00] know, it's, it's been very sort of in and out being a white man doing this kind of work, and I completely understand it, of course. You know, and, and you know, there's a lot of justification, reasoning behind that.

But the challenge is that, you know, when you have a body of, of, um, of work that's designed to change the overall structure of the way organizations are run, and when the people who are in those. Power and positions of power are whatever numbers we see, 70 to 80% of a particular group. And you don't welcome that group into that conversation.

You're inherently setting up a challenge. And I think this is what happened was a lot of corporate de and I work got aimed at white men as opposed to inviting white men into the conversation. And it is now and always will be an enrollment conversation. You can't force people to change their attitudes.

You've gotta enroll them in why it's in their best interest and in their organization's best interest to potentially look at or inquire into, into new kinds of, of beliefs and attitudes. And I remember standing up, oh gosh, it's gotta [01:01:00] be. Probably around 2018. Um, there was a meeting, I, you may even been there, right?

We, at that meeting at Princeton, there were about a hundred DEI practitioners brought together by the folks who do the, um, the best practices, the, um, you know, uh, Alan and, and Julian and those folks. Great, great session. But at some point I stood up in the room and I said, I'm gonna say something to people in may not like to hear.

There are about a hundred people in this room, and there are two of us who are straight white men. Now, that's 2% compared to 70% in leadership. That's a problem, you know, but, you know, I can understand where people feel on the other hand, like given white men's history of taking over environments that we come into.

Why, you know, some people would like to have an environment for themselves. So I'm not suggesting it's easy, it's very complex. Um, but it is something I think we have to be aware of, which is that if we really are gonna win, um, with this conversation, it's gotta include everybody. For sure. I mean, it's interesting the way you're talking about it.

'cause it's not the way I've [01:02:00] tended to think about it. I've tended to think about that problem more as white men not wanting to join those conversations, thinking that a, a de and I conversation doesn't have anything to do with them if they're a straight white man. That it's not as, they, they don't have anything to contribute.

It's not for them. And so they kind of self-select out often. Um, have you noticed that too? Sure. There's no question that that's the case, and I think that some of that is that people are, some of it is that people have what we may call regressive attitudes. There are certainly a certain segment of people like that.

I think there's also a, a large number of people who don't know how to engage in that conversation, and they're afraid. Of the, of the consequences of not engaging correctly or well, so when we're doing things like, and a lot of this stuff came up post George Floyd we're doing things like saying, well, you may be trying to be an ally, but being a white liberal ally is worse than being an overt racist.

You remember some people were saying things like that. You gotta say, people say to me, [01:03:00] well, I'll just stay outta this, you know, 'cause I'm damned if I do it, I'm damned if I don't. So I think it's a both and I think that that, um, you know, we have to help people understand that they can have this conversation without being afraid of it being a gotcha game, which is how it's felt a lot of times for folks, uh, as soon as they say the wrong word or use the wrong phrase, or the wrong pronoun or the wrong this.

And all of a sudden I'm one of them and I'm cast out. Maybe not physically truly cast out, but nonetheless, I'm now seen as an other for having done that as opposed to can I. Can I invite you to see it somewhere differently? Very different. To say to somebody, you're being a crummy ally than is to say, look, I know you're trying, can I give you some coaching as to how you could do that better in a way that could serve us better?

You know, very different conversations. Yeah. I mean that for sure. That's, that's, that's what I feel like is my responsibility, right? Like, as an, as a white person, because I don't have the same frustrations and marginalizations that other [01:04:00] people have had, and I don't. Mm-hmm. And I, it's my responsibility to have the patience, whereas I can imagine people getting so trying, like you're saying, trying genuinely so many times and then saying, forget it, like mm-hmm.

People don't really wanna listen. The information is out there and they're not hearing, they're not seeing what my experience is. They're not o they ask and then don't care. Like, forget it. Right. So I can understand it's. Yeah. And I can see why people are frustrated. And then I, so I take that on as like, I'm trying to get white people to see what other people might be too frustrated to explain another time, you know?

Mm-hmm. Well, and I think that, I think that there's, there's another element as well, which is that there's been this, this narrative in the contemporary, uh, diversity culture, that privilege is a dirty word when I think that the reality is, I mean, you talk about allyship, but the truth is that. You know, privilege, privilege can be a weapon.

And [01:05:00] so it is, it is an important thing to realize that privilege when utilized can actually legitimize the conversations of the underprivileged. And, and it's, it's a, it's a delicate balance when you look at this, the opportunity for white saviorship versus actually trying to make a difference. And that's when, when conscientious allyship becomes the real, the real opportunity is that if you have a person of color whose voice is underutilized as a white person who might have an overvalued voice, you have a really lovely opportunity to turn the door handle.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. People have a hard time with that. Knowing when to step forward and try to be an ally thinking that maybe it's none of their business if it's not happening to them. This, this, you really have to, it's something you have to kind of practice and experience and occasionally mess up and it have it feel uncertain.

Like, did I do that right? Was that a [01:06:00] good thing to do? Was that not a great thing to do? How could I have done that better? It's just. It's complicated. And I think too often people just because it's hard like that, they just kind of stay back instead. Well, I think that, yeah, and I think that there's no question that's true.

And I think what if we've learned anything from intersectionality, we know that this is not a unique conversation. You know, it's, it's one that cures, you know, we hear most the conversation about, you know, white men versus men and women of color, that sort of a thing. But, you know, we also know that we are responsible if we're really looking at creating healthy environments for creating environments that are psychologically safe for L-G-B-T-Q people.

Even if we're not in that community, um, we know that we're, we want to do it for younger people, even if we're older, we know that we want to do, you know, and, and, and you know, I like to say, look, we're Jewish. I know Jewish people who rail against antisemitism, but then make questionable racial comments. I know.

People of color who make questionable comments about gay people. I know gay people who make questionable comments about immigrants. I mean, do you know [01:07:00] anybody who done got something going on with somebody? Um, and so I think that, um, you know, we have to accept that, that this is the common reality of the human experience.

And for me, I don't see any way to get to the ultimate community we're getting to unless everybody rolls up their sleeves and participates in it no matter what their identity is. There've been times when it's been seen as an advantage. People said, well, yeah, why don't you come in? 'cause you're a white guy.

The the leaders will like you better. So maybe it's been, then there are times when it's been a disadvantage. I could never hire somebody like you. People in my company would go crazy if I brought in a white man to do this. I'm sure you've heard the same thing, Michael, on both sides. Yeah. Yeah. So all look, all we could do is, all I can do is get up every morning and say, okay, what, what do I wanna contribute today?

And let the chips fall where they may. Yeah. How do you, this is great conversation. How do you, um, think about the future? Like what are your, what are your fantasies for a world where we're doing something real about bias? What are your fantasies for this world that are realistic? We're not realistic. [01:08:00] Jake, you wanna start?

You know, if, if I were to say, you know, what is my fantasy for a world, for myself, uh, for my, you know, maybe prospective children for my nieces and nephews for the people I care about, is I would love to see a world in which people really take a moment to be curious about why do I feel that way? Where does this resentment come from?

What's this judgment? Uh, and most importantly, what am I really afraid of right now? You know, what is, what is having me? Come to this with reactivity instead of thoughtfulness and consideration, and what is the root of that fear? And how can I, how can I be in conversation with that? We're supposed to be cautious and thoughtful and conscientious.

Fear is, is a defense mechanism, and fear is also a necessary part of discerning life. And we don't have to like everyone, I don't, you know. No. Right. And, and, but, but it would be [01:09:00] an ideal world for me if, when I don't like someone, I have enough spaciousness to come with curiosity as to what does this trigger, why does it remind me of my father?

Um, how can I, how can I really look at, you know, the ways that this person's humanity can meet my humanity? You know, as Baba Ramdas said, we're all just walking each other home. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Lovely, lovely. What about you, Howard? I remain an optimist. Um, you know, I think that if we look at the experience of human history, and you know, Stephen Pinker wrote a great book about this called The Enlightenment Now, a few years ago you may have read.

And, and he looks at measures every standard by which we measure human performance. And every single one of them is better now than it's been at any time in human history, with the exception of one human happiness, ironically. Yeah. So, you know, that's an issue that we need to deal with. And that's why this work that Jake is doing is in positive [01:10:00] psychology, I think is so important because we, we do by our nature, tend to look at the negative.

And I think that's something that we can, you know, we can reorganize ourselves towards flourishing, towards having a mindset of flourishing. Um, it'll take work, but we need to embrace that. But, but you know, when we look at human history, like I said before, it's always been three steps forward and two steps back.

But it always has been progressed. And even when we look at, you know, there's been a lot of, uh, tension right now in totalitarianism, obviously because of what's going on with our government and not just our government around the world. I'm a historian by training, so that's the, you know, that's sort of my.

Orientation by my nature. When you study what are called U-turn democracies, and that is democracies that have turned towards fascism were torn towards totalitarianism like Italy and Germany in the thirties, as as great examples. In almost all cases, they came back to being more committed to their democracy over time.

Now there's damage done in between, and I'm not minimizing the amount of damage that's been done when a boilers are being dragged out of their homes and, you know, put in zip ties and, and in, in black trucks and things like this. [01:11:00] Obviously there's damage being done and I'm not in any way minimizing that, but when you ask me what the long term view is, I think in the long term what we've seen is that humanity continues to grow and expand.

Um. And, and my hope is that that will continue. Um, but the only way it's gonna continue is if not by sitting back and say, well, we'll just wait for that to happen. It happens. And if we look at history, it happens time and again because people stand up and say, enough of this, this is harming people. It's not right, it's not good for us.

And it's not, as Jake was saying, what we want as human beings. And we tend to slide back out of the fear, back into being more reasonable, more thoughtful, and creating the kind of environments that we wanna create. So my hope and prayer is that, is that the damage that's done on the way to get there is, is, is as minimal as it can be.

Yeah. I hope so. I hope so. Um, those, those are lovely. Thank you both. I feel like we could talk for hours and hours and hours. Easily. Easily. Certainly. Um, but we'll pause it. We'll say, we'll pause it here. Yes. Um, but one of the [01:12:00] things I love to do is give people, uh, a sort of optional homework assignment. If they wanted to go read something or watch something or do something or journal something, what, what would you assign them to do if they wanted to do something immediate?

Well, I'll, I'll jump in this time. I would say study history. I just recently read, um, John RA's biography of Andrew Jackson and also just recently watched Ken Burns new, you know, American Revolution. Yeah, I wanna see that. Like I said, I'm a history major, American history major, so I love that stuff anyway, but, but it's amazing to see how the same patterns that we're seeing now, we're showing up in slightly different format in Jackson's administration.

You know how, you know, for example. When George Washington was forming the Revolutionary Army, the continental army, he required all of the soldiers to get vaccinated for smallpox. You couldn't be in the army if you didn't get vaccinated with smallpox. And then you put that in the conversa, in, in the context of [01:13:00] people's going batshit over, I'm sorry, this technical term going crazy over, um, over having been told to get COVID vaccination so you can help save the lives of people around you.

So, so I think history is really helpful for us in that it gives us context for, for things. And I think at a time when we are losing, when a lot of people are, are turning away from American history, from an honest telling of American history, for sometimes nefarious reasons, it's more important than ever that we, that we educate ourselves.

For sure. It is. It, it, it's always been hard to get the real history from a multiracial, multicultural perspective, but, but now with deliberate erasers, it's, it's a whole nother ball game. Howard Zinn is more important than ever. I, I was just thinking about that. I was just thinking about that. All right, Jake, what, what homework assignment would you give people?

Yeah. You know, I think that, uh, there's a lot of things that I could say, but what feels, feels most [01:14:00] aligned for me internally right now, and particularly on the heels of Howard giving a more academic answer, is find an opportunity to be kind, but not just passively. Like, go out, find somebody who seems like you wouldn't agree with them.

Find somebody who looks like somebody you wouldn't hang out with. Uh, somebody who, who has a quality that intimidates you and offer a hand, buy 'em a cup of coffee, um, you know, go to the grocery. One of my favorite things to do at the grocery store is if I see somebody buying flowers in front of me, I try and or behind me, I try and pay for 'em.

Um, you know, so something, something simple. And my best advice for this is if you can do that and not. And not give your name, not tell them who you are. You know, carry a couple extra bucks for somebody who, who might need it on the street. Go outta your way to tell somebody they look great. You know, like if you really like their outfit, or even if you don't, but you think they do.

Um, like, you [01:15:00] know, and as somebody who dresses on the more, uh, outlandish side, uh, it makes a difference. But really, like, you know, this, this sense that, that we dehumanize people as a matter of protection against having to look at the way that we are afraid to be confronted. Um, we need to take more opportunities to really drop into that experience of being human.

Make eye contact with somebody. Thank somebody. For whatever it is that they do, thank them. Um, it's, it's, it's more important than ever, both for people who don't get the opportunity to be acknowledged for being human. Um, you know, I'm thinking in my mind, uh, delivery drivers in particular, you know, we treat, I mean, we treat delivery drivers like drones and we work towards a place where they might become that.

Um, but if, if certain forecasts of AI are to tell us anything, it's that there will come a time when there are a lot of people who are [01:16:00] really struggling with the fact that parts of the ways that they've cultivated their humanity, namely work might be replaced, will be replaced. People need to be reminded that we're human.

Um, so my best advice is go out and treat somebody like a human being. Yeah. Love it. Love combo. The good news, the good news about that too, is that we now have research that shows it's not just a bumper sticker to practice random acts of kindness. When you do the things Jake's talking about, not only does it benefit the person you're doing it for, but you actually get a hit of oxytocin yourself.

So actually you'll find you'll be happier and feel more mentally balanced by doing the very things Jake's talking about as well as the service it provides for others. Yeah, beautiful. There's one other thing that I'll add to that, and it's, uh, it's a part of my coaching practice that I'm still cultivating, which is the sense of lay, just one domino.

Um, and, and the idea being that, uh, the great example, my fourth grade teacher, I don't remember her name, and if I bumped into her on the side of the road, I probably [01:17:00] wouldn't recognize her. But her particular level of attention and care ended up having me move schools to make sure that I could get the kind of education that I needed, which opened up enormous doors for me, led to me getting an incredibly high quality education in, uh, in middle school, high school, and then led to amazing opportunities for undergrad and graduate.

And so, you know, like I said, I, I don't remember her name, but that woman who took the extra bit of time to. To treat me like I was a real, I had a real opportunity instead of just a failed student, made all the difference in the world for me. And so if we can just lay one domino, you know, it would be the greatest gift in my life if I were to never live, to see the reach of my desire to treat the world with compassion.

Yeah, yeah. Beautiful, beautiful. Um, y'all, this has been amazing, this conversation. Um, there's [01:18:00] gotta be a part two at some point in the future, but, um, absolutely. Just let us know. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to come talk with us today. So appreciate both of you. Oh, thank you, Michael. It's always good to be with you.

Really lovely. Absolutely. All right. It's a real pleasure. Thank you for having us. Absolutely. All right. Bye everyone.

Okay, everyone that wraps up our interview with Howard and Jake Ross. I just love that dynamic of a parent and child working together. I think I've gotten kind of sentimental these days, um, as my kids get older, as they go to college, one even graduated college. It's just so sweet to see children fascinated by the same things as their parent and then collaborating on these books together.

Ugh. You hear that kids? I'm open. I'm ready whenever you are. Just say the word. Okay. Let's talk about your homework assignment. You got [01:19:00] two, right? The one from Jake. Pretty self-explanatory. I think the one from Howard about learning history. You know, that can be a lifelong pursuit. It's so interesting to do though.

You know, the things we think, we think, we think we know things and that's not really the way it happened, but then we can learn about the reality of what happened. Um, I've been on a documentary kick. Remember we had the episode with Caroline Waterlow, documentary filmmaker. Uh, I watched the, uh, Peewee Herman documentary on HBO Max, uh, recently, and.

Gosh, I just loved it. I mean, first of all, it was a great documentary. Excuse me. It was a great documentary, but second. It's just so fascinating. Like, here's this guy who loomed so large in my childhood in a certain way, and yet it turns out I barely knew anything about him. I, I didn't know anything about his story and I certainly didn't know [01:20:00] what happened to him since the, you know, the scandals and all that.

It's just fascinating. It's not like it's far away revolutionary war history, but it is history. It is from the past. So, um, Howard mentioned a book in a documentary. I'll put those in the show notes too. Just so many fascinating things to watch and read in terms of history. I mean, bringing AI into the conversation again, you can literally, like I just did, um, ask.

GBT or whatever, AI for some history recommendations. Right? Tell I what I told it is, look, I, I fall asleep really easily when I start reading at night. So I need it to be really engaging. I want things that blow my mind about history. I wanna know history from the perspective, that's not just the perspective of white men.

Uh, what are your top five recommendations and got some great books. I just bought one of them, in fact. Um, okay. Now, this is the end of season one for this [01:21:00] podcast. And so just a few quick reflections. First, and maybe this is obvious, but making a podcast is no joke. It takes a. It takes a lot of time, you know, whether that's scheduling guests, writing questions, doing the actual recording, the editing, writing the summaries, promoting and posting and writing about it, all of that.

It's like a, it's a full part-time job. Right. Um, and that probably should, should be obvious to people, especially when you're just learning it right, uh, as I was for this season. Um, the second thing though is I really enjoyed it. I mean, I, I really enjoyed the first 10 episodes when it was just me talking, like, thinking about you and where you were and what might be on your mind and what I might be able to share with you, um, from what I was thinking and, and how [01:22:00] to give you kind of both that deep understanding.

Practical tips that you could put into practice right away. I hope that you were able to incorporate some of them right away and they'll, we'll definitely be bringing more of those in season two as well. I also loved the, just fascinating people that I talked to on the podcast. I mean, many of them I've known for a long time, but I still really learned a lot just from speaking with them in this particular way.

Um. And it's also like this little joy, um, that I have to be able to introduce you to how wonderful they are. So we'll definitely have, we'll be lining up more interviews for season two and probably some more solo episodes. Um, what else it is, you know, to get a little serious. It's really also nice to be in [01:23:00] conversation with these people, these people who are really wise and thoughtful and caring and empathetic.

During what's been a tough year, right? It's been a tough year for a lot of people in very different ways, whether we're talking about the 600,000. Black women who have lost their jobs this year, or you know, citizens of Hispanic descent who are scared to go to work or go to the grocery store because they're scared of being grabbed up off the streets, or people who work in social services.

And have gotten their jobs cut or their funding cut. People who work in the arts and have gotten their funding cut, um, federal workers who've seen their, you know, maybe they got fired, maybe their whole agency got cut. Um, speaking of the people of, at usaid, the recipients around the world who got [01:24:00] support from USAID and who saw that support abruptly stopped sometimes.

Doing real damage to those people or the people who are about to see their health insurance premiums go way up. Or the people in this country who are just struggling with rising prices. I could go on and on. Um, and there's, there's nothing political in saying that. It's just facts. Um, do I wish that wasn't so?

I sure do. But being in it together with these wonderful people, being in it with people who have a long view of history, being in it with people who know how to hold peace and joy as sacred. And as resilience and as resistance, that has certainly made it better and I, I really cherish that So. Folks, uh, not to leave on a depressing note or anything, [01:25:00] but this is, this is where we are this year.

Um, so again, I wanna wish, wish you some of that peace and joy and resilience and also health and love and connection as we round out this year. We will be on break for a little while. We'll come back again with season two. I know I will miss this. Um, please do feel free to reach out anytime. In the meantime, you can reach me atMichael@cultureadvantagepodcast.com or if I'm checking that email less frequently, you can also reach me at.

Michael at Iris Inclusion. Iris, IRIS iris inclusion.com. All right, everyone, take care. Be well, and I will talk with you soon.​[01:26:00] 

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