civil dialogue

As the product of immigration, integration, and innovation, Desh Amila is a Documentary Filmmaker and a Serial Entrepreneur who founded This Is 42 and Think Inc. His life mission is to make being intelligent cool.

In this conversation, Allie and Desh explore: 

• His journey from growing up in Sri Lanka and living through a civil war for over 2 decades to moving to Australia and becoming an entrepreneur, entertainer, and educator on a global scale
• How Desh is out to revolutionize the ultimate cool — intelligent conversations — and how this vision started by running large scale events for hip hop and R&B artists
• Desh's passion for ‘edutainment’ — part education and part entertainment — and how he creates global movements led by scientists, philosophers, and the greatest thinkers of our time around this concept
• How progress has happened throughout history in 2 ways — violence and conversation — and why now is the time to advance humankind and lead societal change through civil dialogue
• Tools for productive conversations with people and communities we fundamentally do not agree with
• The truth about overnight success: it takes over a decade of hard work to create it
• The keys to living a life full of confidence, drive, and freedom
• Desh’s second documentary Better Left Unsaid about the current polarizing environment of politics

Resources: 

• Desh’s Instagram: @iamdesh
• Desh’s Website: deshamila.com
• This Is 42’s Instagram: @thisis_42
• Watch the trailer to Desh’s second documentary Better Left Unsaid here.
• Watch Desh’s first documentary Islam and the Future of Tolerance here.
• Allie’s Instagram: @allienunzi
• Nunzi Consulting Group’s Website: www.nunziconsulting.com

This episode was co-produced by Lucca Petrucci and Allie Nunzi mixed and mastered by Alec Kwo.

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome novelist ZZ Packer, the author of a story collection, “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere,” fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research and editor of “New Short Stories from the South.” Born in Chicago and raised in Atlanta and Louisville, Packer has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, Tulane, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. 

When is stability at duty and when is it a trap? This was the thought provoking and insightful question delivered in the New York Times Magazine last year. 

“The reality is that our instability often reveals much more profound ruptures and that the obvious kind of civility, the civility of niceness is only the most superficial marker of much deeper moral obligations,” Packer wrote. “This indeed demands us to differentiate between the civility of manners and that of morals after all,” she so compellingly writes, “Deep down we probably all know it's not just civility we're missing, but decency.” 

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome novelist ZZ Packer, the author of a story collection, “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere,” fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research and editor of “New Short Stories from the South.” Born in Chicago and raised in Atlanta and Louisville, Packer has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, Tulane, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. 

When is stability at duty and when is it a trap? This was the thought provoking and insightful question delivered in the New York Times Magazine last year. 

“The reality is that our instability often reveals much more profound ruptures and that the obvious kind of civility, the civility of niceness is only the most superficial marker of much deeper moral obligations,” Packer wrote. “This indeed demands us to differentiate between the civility of manners and that of morals after all,” she so compellingly writes, “Deep down we probably all know it's not just civility we're missing, but decency.” 

Many Americans have become intellectually soft, floating about in their own echo chambers of self-selected news and social media channels. Critical thinking seems to be vanishing and civility and civil dialogue have all but disappeared. Could the solution be found at a college that doesn't even allow current politics in the classroom? The answer may surprise you. Mark Roosevelt, president of St. John's College, joins the conversation on this week's episode of Therefore, What?

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