More In Common

What nobody tells you about staying curious. Part 2 of a multi-episode arc with Mónica Guzmán — journalist, founder and CEO of Reclaim Curiosity, senior fellow at Braver Angels, and author of I Never Thought of It That Way. This is the honest episode about the cost of the work she teaches. Mónica opens up about a footnote in her own book — "sometimes I'm too curious for my own good" — and what that's actually meant across her career. The friendships lost with people who share her politics but not her style. The exhaustion of being the person the room turns to for the answer. The reality that curiosity is contagious, but only if you have the capacity to keep offering it. And why "waves crashing on a cliff" is the right metaphor for what she does, and why sometimes it's still too insurmountable. Keith and Gerren push into the harder questions: what happens when the framework is asked of people whose humanity is on the table? What does curiosity look like from the non-dominant culture? Mónica lands somewhere honest — the luxury of not asking questions when you're in the dominant culture, the reality that curiosity aimed inward is also curiosity, and that if the choice is always "I'm never safe so I will never be seen," the non-dominant group is never made visible at all. Ends on a cliffhanger — how does the system itself stay curious? Part 3 next week. Key Topics:The cost of being professionally curious, friendships lost to stylistic disagreement, the exhaustion of the framework, the uneven ask across dominant and non-dominant cultures, curiosity aimed inward, Julia Minson's research on receptiveness language, and why "your uncle isn't talking to you, he's talking to all liberals." Guest:📚 I Never Thought of It That Way by Mónica Guzmán — Available on Amazon🌐 Reclaim Curiosity → reclaimcuriosity.org🌐 Braver Angels → braverangels.org The Full Arc:🎧 Part 1 — When the Conversation Gets Political, Can You Stay Curious?🎧 Part 2 — What Nobody Tells You About Staying Curious🎧 Part 3 — [coming next week] Find Us:🌐 https://www.moreincommonent.com📸 https://www.instagram.com/moreincommonent🐦 https://twitter.com/MoreInCommonent📘 https://www.facebook.com/moreincommonpod Gerren Taylor:🎵 https://www.tiktok.com/@gerrent💼 https://linkedin.com/in/gerrenT Thinking out loud about what gets in the way of connection. Like what you heard? Leave us a comment in your podcast app. See you next week.

You're not for everyone. Neither is anyone else. That's Keith halfway through this week's episode — and it might be the sentence that closes out the whole two-part judgment arc. Where Part 1 was the intellectual framework, Part 2 is the personal application. Gerren opens with the answer he almost didn't say out loud last week: "It's kind of a white guy thing." Then he goes into what it's actually like to be both hyper-visible and invisible as a Black man in American society, what it's like to be a Black American content creator in Mexico who represents an entire community every time he steps outside, and the fear of his own success creating a level of surveillance he doesn't want. Keith gets into who he still lets judge him and why he still wants everyone to like him — plus the friend he almost wrote off after 10 minutes who is now closest family. Also: karaoke Hamilton, the traffic stop math (the 10% racist cops who will kill you make the gamble bigger than any statistic), why the biological default explanation of judgment doesn't hold up, and how literacy in 1517 actually reshaped the physical structure of the human brain. Ends with: this isn't for our lifetime. It's for our kids. And their kids. And that's why we keep showing up. Key Topics:The dual experience of hyper-visibility and invisibility, being a Black creator in Mexico, the traffic stop math and percentage-of-consequence, how judgment shapes our judgment of others, The Weirdest People and how literacy reshaped human cognition, the friends we almost wrote off, and every situation not requiring all of you but every situation requiring a sincere reflection. Find Us:🌐 https://www.moreincommonent.com📸 https://www.instagram.com/moreincommonent🐦 https://twitter.com/MoreInCommonent📘 https://www.facebook.com/moreincommonpod Gerren Taylor:🎵 https://www.tiktok.com/@gerrent💼 https://linkedin.com/in/gerrenT Thinking out loud about what gets in the way of connection. Like what you heard? Leave us a comment in your podcast app. See you next week.

You don't have to be happy to be grateful. That's the sentence Jonathan Pride lands on at the close of this week's episode — the distinction between contentment and happiness that reframes everything the three-part arc has been circling. You can be in a hard season and still be intentional about gratitude. That's not fake-it-till-you-make-it. That's the actual work. Part three closes out the arc with combat veteran, author, and Caterpillar Leadership Institute founder Jonathan Pride. The why we still do it episode. Jonathan tells the story of the young man in the bathroom before a networking event who never learned how to tie a tie. Chris the welder from New Orleans, who Jonathan pushed into a sales role no one thought he was qualified for — and who became the top salesperson in a 7,000-person company within a year. What Jonathan wants those 37 promoted people to say about him when he's not in the room. And a moment worth flagging — Jonathan names, live on air, that he might be in a cocoon moment right now, and that this podcast conversation might be the prompt he needed. That's a rare thing to catch on tape. Practice intentional praise. Never stop learning. Contentment is not happiness. Big brisket energy. Key Topics:Faith and the unseen outcomes of meaningful work, the individual stories that keep leaders going, systems change thinking, the moment of naming an in-progress transformation, Chris the welder and validating what others can't see in themselves, the difference between contentment and happiness as etymology, and practicing intentional praise. Guest:📚 Caterpillars Don't Fly by Jonathan Pride — Available on Amazon🌐 Caterpillar Leadership Institute → caterpillarleadership.org💼 LinkedIn → linkedin.com/in/jonathan-pride-831b3875 The Full Arc:🎧 Part 1 — Who Are You Proving It To?🎧 Part 2 — Who's Holding Space for You?🎧 Part 3 — You Don't Have to Be Happy to Be Grateful Find Us:🌐 https://www.moreincommonent.com📸 https://www.instagram.com/moreincommonent🐦 https://twitter.com/MoreInCommonent📘 https://www.facebook.com/moreincommonpod Gerren Taylor:🎵 https://www.tiktok.com/@gerrent💼 https://linkedin.com/in/gerrenT Thinking out loud about what gets in the way of connection. Like what you heard? Leave us a comment in your podcast app. See you next week.