2026-04-03 19:00:00
美国中部亚利桑那州的中央亚利桑那项目（Central Arizona Project）部分管道穿过格利菲斯市（Gilbert, Arizona）的一个住宅区。该地区正面临由气候变化引发的“三重气候冲击”——冬季降雪量创历史新低、早春高温以及干旱，导致水资源危机迫近。为应对这一问题，美国西部多个地区已开始实施严格的用水限制，例如丹佛市要求居民每周仅限两天浇灌草坪，餐厅除非顾客要求否则不得提供瓶装水。此外，超过一半的美国西部滑雪场因干旱关闭或提前停业，部分滑雪场甚至出现融雪导致的意外情况。专家指出，由于降雪减少，春季植被干燥，火灾风险显著上升，尤其是入侵性植被如毒草和红 cedar 的存在加剧了火势蔓延的危险。
与此同时，美国西部各州正就科罗拉多河的水资源分配展开紧张谈判。尽管早期冬季风暴缓解了部分降水短缺，但降雪对长期水资源保障更为关键。研究显示，气候变化正在加剧雪量减少现象，而2021至2023年全球范围内的干旱程度达到近百年来最严重。美国垦务局（Bureau of Reclamation）近期发布草案，计划从2027年起削减科罗拉多河的用水量，并给予各州至10月的时间进行调整。若谈判无果，内华达州和加利福尼亚州等可能采取法律手段。农业和能源行业尤其受此影响，例如亚利桑那州尤马市的农民担忧无法获得足够的灌溉配额，而科罗拉多州部分农民已转向种植耐旱作物。
专家强调，西部必须适应更频繁的干旱和水资源短缺。博伊西州立大学的地质科学家阿列霍·弗洛雷斯（Alejandro N. Flores）指出，创纪录的低降雪量可能是未来更温暖气候的预兆，今年的干旱为西部敲响了警钟。
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Officials were already sounding the alarm bells in early March across the Western United States after a winter with historically low snowpacks, which supplies water for communities as it slowly melts throughout the spring and summer.
Then came the heat wave.
As I reported last week, a high-pressure system brought early-season heat to the region, breaking temperature records in many states with help from climate change. Much of the little snow left in parts of the region melted, sparking fears for water supplies because it may evaporate or run off too early in the season, experts say.
Compounding the problem, more than half of the Western US is now experiencing drought conditions, according to the federal drought monitoring system.
So how is the West trying to prevent a looming water crisis spurred by this triple weather whammy? Some areas are cracking down on community water usage earlier than they’ve ever had to, disrupting many parts of daily life—from gardening habits to dining out. And bigger concerns loom as states squabble over shared resources from the Colorado River, a critical and increasingly strapped watershed in the region.
Many places around the world face similar dilemmas as climate change drives an “intensifying global pattern of more widespread and severe drought,” a new study finds.
The Denver Board of Water Commissioners announced last week a series of water limits with a goal to cut area usage by 20 percent. Restaurant owners have been asked to only serve water if a diner requests it. Customers of Denver Water — a public water utility in the city — must limit lawn watering to no more than two days per week, and there are more cuts on the horizon, depending on forecasts.
“The situation is quite serious,” Todd Hartman, a spokesperson for the utility, told NBC News. He added that although Denver Water’s reservoirs are roughly 80 percent full, the city can’t rely on snowpack like it typically does to refill them as levels drop. “We’re in such a dire situation that we could be coming back to the public in two or three months and saying you’re limited to one day a week.”
In the northern Colorado city of Erie, residents and businesses were told earlier in March to halt all irrigation until early April, with a target to reduce usage by more than 45 percent. Officials threatened to shut off the tap altogether for violators.
Recreation has also been hard: More than half of the 120 ski resorts in the US West either closed, will close early, or never opened this year, according to a Reuters analysis. In Wyoming, one of the locations that did stay open experienced a slushy surprise last week as snow melted beneath skiers on the slopes.
“It was a swimming pool. We should have been checking for floaties and not lift passes, it was pretty warm,” Dalan Adams, general manager of White Pine ski resort, told Wyoming Public Media.
Many areas in the region are also contending with fire restrictions as hot, dry conditions increase the risk of blazes. Experts say spring rains could help mitigate fire risk, but climatologist John Abatzoglou told CBC that everything is “lining up for a potentially nasty fire season across the west.”
My colleague Michael Kodas, who is based in Boulder, Colorado, and has long reported on wildfires and climate change, has seen these threats firsthand in past parched years. I asked him how water restrictions, drought, and lower snowpack could influence wildfire behavior in the coming months. Here’s his inside scoop:
Most wildfires this time of year are fueled by grasses, which firefighters call “one-hour fuels” because they can dry to the point of burning in 60 minutes, so they don’t need a winter-long drought to get them ready to carry flames. As one fire behavior analyst pointed out to me from his truck outside of Denver last week, most grasses this time of year are dead, with or without a drought, and they can’t get much drier, or more flammable, than that.
But if grasses that would normally still be covered by snow are exposed to sun, wind and dry air earlier in the season, they’ll be able to burn that much earlier in the season too. And in some cases where no substantial snow has fallen on tall grasses, the stalks haven’t been matted down by the weight of snow but are instead still standing upright like match sticks and that much easier to ignite. And out on the plains, where vast, fast grassfires during droughts threaten livestock and croplands, highly flammable invasive species like cheatgrass and red cedar are making drought-primed fires much more volatile.
The bigger problem is that the snow drought has likely left many heavier, woodier fuels like trees drier than they would normally be in the spring, so they’re ready to burn much earlier in the year. Soils desiccated by drought are unlikely to recover, even with soaking spring rains, so the vegetation growing on them may not have enough moisture available to green up and resist flames.
And fire weather conditions are making wildland blazes more likely to burn big in much of the West, regardless of the fuel conditions. Warm temperatures through much of the winter and early spring, including the recent heat wave, along with low relative humidity and unusually strong and frequent wind storms, have led to an unusual number of “red flag” fire weather days right through the winter in much of the Rocky Mountains. Those fire weather conditions led utilities to cut power where I live in the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies several times since December to prevent power lines from starting wildfires.
Though early winter storms helped maintain relatively average precipitation levels in much of the West, rain does not help support long-term water security for the region as much as snow.
“A gallon of winter rain that immediately runs off downstream is not nearly as helpful come July as a gallon of snowpack that melts in April or May,” Casey Olson, a climate scientist with the Utah Climate Center, told ABC News. “They are not equivalent gallons of precipitation in terms of our ability to use them when we need them the most.”
As much as 75 percent of water supplies during certain years come from melting snow in some states, including Colorado and Utah. A growing body of research finds that climate change is triggering more frequent snow droughts.
Traditional droughts are also worsening due to global warming: A study published this week found that the period from 2021 through 2023 has seen some of the most widespread and severe drought conditions in over a century across the globe.
These events contribute to shrinking the Colorado River, which around 40 million people depend on. Representatives from the seven Western states in the basin have met several times over the past two years to determine how to divvy up the dwindling resources, but intense debates over who gets what have stalled the process despite the federal government stepping in, as my Inside Climate News colleagues Jake Bolster and Wyatt Myskow reported in February.
In January, the US Bureau of Reclamation released a draft environmental impact statement that outlined proposed cuts to Colorado River water usage starting in 2027.
The agency gave states until October before it will impose more aggressive cuts. The outcome of these negotiations could have profound implications for water users (so…everyone in the Southwest), but are especially impactful for the agriculture and energy industries. The Bureau of Reclamation recently estimated that water managers in the basin must conserve an additional 1.7 million acre-feet of water to keep Lake Powell’s levels from falling so low they can’t spin the hydropower turbines at Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona.
Meanwhile, farmers in Yuma, Arizona — who supply much of the country’s winter vegetables — are concerned that they won’t get enough water allocations to support their crops, the news station ABC15 reports. Some farmers in Colorado are already adjusting their operations to grow more drought-tolerant crops.
But industries don’t know what to expect as representatives remain at a stalemate on negotiations — and several states, including Nevada and California, have pledged to sue if they don’t get their way.
No matter how it plays out, experts say the Western US must learn to adapt to more parched conditions in the face of climate change.
“The record-low snowpack may be a harbinger of what a warmer future will look like in the region,” Alejandro N. Flores, a geoscientist at Boise State University, wrote in The Conversation. “This year’s snow drought presents a timely, albeit high-stakes, stress test for the West. Everyone will be watching.”
2026-04-03 18:00:00
2017年，凯瑟琳·保罗（Catherine Paul）曾大量制作粉色“猫咪耳”帽子，作为对特朗普言论的抗议，这些帽子成为当时妇女游行的象征。然而，随着时间推移，这些帽子逐渐被视为排他性且尴尬的“老套”符号，尤其在2024年被批评为无效的抗议形式。但随着特朗普第二届任期的开始，针对ICE（美国移民与海关执法局）的抗议再次兴起，工艺行动主义（craftivism）重新受到关注。如今，从编织帽子到刺绣布料，各种手工艺品被用于表达对移民政策的不满，例如“融化ICE”（Melt the ICE）帽子、反ICE刺绣作品以及带有政治信息的日常用品。这些作品不仅跨越了年龄和种族，还强调了社区团结的重要性。
尽管早期的“猫咪耳”帽子因缺乏包容性而引发争议，但如今的反ICE艺术更注重具体政策的抗议，并通过手工艺传递愤怒、恐惧和关怀。历史上的工艺政治形式，如美国革命时期的纺纱活动和黑人社区的故事布料，早已存在。如今，工艺行动主义被重新赋予意义，成为一种更接地气的抗议方式。然而，仍有人批评这种形式只是“表演性善举”。文章最后指出，尽管妇女游行提出了关于女性运动是否真正包容的问题，但这些问题仍未得到解答，而当前的工艺行动主义则以更小规模、更贴近社区的方式持续发挥作用。
“Back in 2017, I made a ton of pussyhats,” Catherine Paul told me. “I just knitted pink hats like there was no tomorrow.”
At the time, Paul appreciated “the way that craft could be part of a demonstration of affiliation and belief,” the artist, writer, and longtime knitter told me.
Soon the pussyhat became a symbol of something else: a brand of feminism attuned to the concerns of a subset of middle-class, mostly white American women, and nobody else. By 2024, the hats, and the 2017 Women’s March at which many demonstrators wore them, were being held up as examples of ineffective protest. More than that, the hats came to be seen as cringe — not just exclusionary, but also kind of embarrassing.
Then came Trump 2.0. In the face of an administration whose agents have kidnapped and deported children and shot more than a dozen people in the span of a few months, craftivism is back in the spotlight, with knitters, quilters, nail artists, and more getting renewed public attention for their political designs.
Paul, for example, has been knitting red “Melt the ICE” hats, from a pattern sold by Minneapolis yarn shop Needle & Skein. Friends and acquaintances are begging her for the headwear, just as they did nearly 10 years ago.
Before I started reporting this story, I thought the rise of knitted and quilted protest under Trump 2.0 might be a sign of the left reembracing cringe — of a softening toward forms of political action once deemed uncool and annoying (and, not coincidentally, feminine). But in talking to artists and scholars about craftivism right now, I’ve come to think the explanation for its popularity is both more complicated and simpler.
“The news is so ugly all the time, you can’t really find peace,” Needle & Skein owner Gilah Mashaal told me. “So what do you do? You find people and you do things with those people. And since we’re crafters, that’s what we’re doing.”
As thousands of ICE agents swarmed Minneapolis earlier this year, “my regular knitters were all feeling kind of desperate and unsure of what we could do,” Mashaal said. Employee Paul Neary had the idea to create a pattern inspired by Norwegian anti-Nazi hats called “nisselue.”
Neary posted the pattern for the “Melt the ICE” hat on knitting website Ravelry in January, charging $5 per download, with all proceeds going to immigrant aid agencies. As Mashaal recalls, the Needle & Skein team thought, “maybe we’ll raise a couple thousand dollars.”
But the pattern quickly rocketed to the top of Ravelry’s most-popular list, where it’s stayed ever since. People from 44 countries have purchased it, generating at least $720,000 for immigrant aid groups, Mashaal told me.
Meanwhile, at this year’s QuiltCon, billed as the largest modern quilting event in the world, anti-ICE quilts grabbed attention, bearing messages like, “Our government abducted hundreds of people based on race while I made this.” Anti-ICE quilts are also blowing up on Reddit, where one user recently shared a quilt reading, “Japanese American families remember: We were taken from our communities too.”
Even Maine senate candidate Graham Platner recently sat for a Pod Save America interview wearing an Anti-Fascist Knitting Club T-shirt, though his recent social media activity doesn’t make him a particularly good ambassador for the cause.
Beyond the needle and thread, nail artists are showing off “FUCK ICE” manicures. And anti-ICE artwork is cropping up on shirts, stickers, and other accoutrements of daily life. When Nadia Brown’s students at Georgetown University open up their textbooks, she sees anti-ICE bookmarks inside, the government professor told me.
Using handicrafts to send a message is far from new. Leading up to the American Revolution, women in the American colonies boycotted British textiles and staged spinning bees “in which they spun wool and flax yarn to make cloth called homespun,” Shirley Wajda, a curator and historian of material culture, told me in an email.
Story quilts — visual narratives sewn in fabric — have been popular in Black communities for generations. “During slavery, when African Americans were not allowed to learn how to read and write, it was an easy way to tell stories,” Carolyn Mazloomi, an artist and curator, told me.
Such art forms never left the American landscape — artists like Faith Ringgold have brought story quilts, often with political and social themes, to the walls of museums and the pages of beloved children’s books.
“Yes, knitting a hat is performative. But it’s also a way to show your anger, fear, frustration, rage, care.”
Gilah Mashaal, owner of Needle & Skein
But political crafting gained a new level of media attention — and notoriety — in the wake of Trump’s first election. Photos of the 2017 Women’s March were a sea of pink, as demonstrators donned headwear knitted in response to Donald Trump’s comments about grabbing women “by the pussy.” But the march soon became controversial — though the Washington, DC, event boasted high-profile speakers who were women of color, most attendees were white. Many women of color felt pushed out of the march and the larger movement that — kind of — grew up around it.
Organizer ShiShi Rose, for example, worked on the first march and wrote a widely read Facebook post calling on white would-be marchers to pay attention to the experiences of Americans of color. In return, she got death threats, from which she said the Women’s March organization did little to shield her.
The pink hats became, for some, a symbol of this exclusion, even their color and shape appearing to represent white, cis women’s anatomy (knitters have since said the hats were supposed to look like cat ears, not vulvas).
When Trump was elected a second time, even some who marched enthusiastically in 2017 began to wonder if their efforts had been for nought. Meanwhile, concerns that started with women of color were appropriated first by liberal white men and then by conservatives, until questions about a movement’s racial inclusivity became a kind of all-purpose derision. As my colleague Constance Grady has written, “who wanted to be like those awful women with the pink hats? Everyone knew they were cringey and unfashionable, complaining over nothing.”
Given all this, it’s been a surprise to see the return of knitted headwear. But for Brown, today’s anti-ICE art- and craftworks aren’t cringe in the same way. Unlike 10 years ago, “there’s a very specific outrage around what’s happening now with ICE, and there are direct calls for policies that would make immigration more functional,” she said. The Women’s March was far less specific and targeted.
What’s more, anti-ICE art spans demographics. When it comes to stickers and other paraphernalia, “I see older people wearing them,” Brown said. “My college students are wearing them of every ethnicity, of every race. People are just outraged.”
In trying to represent the anger of all women nationwide, the Women’s March was doomed, on a certain level, to fail. The resistance against ICE in 2026, however, is famously hyperlocal, and craftivism is no exception.
Pussyhats were about “fighting against and showing our distaste for the man that the country elected,” Mashaal said. With Melt the ICE hats, “we’re raising money to help our friends and neighbors.”
Neighborliness is emerging as a key value in the resistance to ICE. “What authoritarian regimes want to do is make people suspicious of their neighbors,” Brown said. Crafting, by contrast, brings neighbors together over a shared activity that helps them get past their fears and suspicions: “Building community in a way that gets you out of your head and working with your hands is an effective tool.”
No protest is immune to criticism, and some have argued that the Melt the ICE hats are little more than performative virtue-signaling, especially if people knit them without paying for the pattern.
“Yes, knitting a hat is performative,” Mashaal said. “But it’s also a way to show your anger, fear, frustration, rage, care.”
I started this story thinking it was about the state of feminized forms of activism in 2026. I’m ending it thinking that a lot of the questions opened up by the Women’s March — whether it’s even possible to have a truly inclusive “women’s movement” in America, for example — haven’t been answered yet. Maybe now is not the time to answer them. Maybe now is the time for something smaller-scale — the size, say, of a pair of knitting needles or a sewing machine.
In addition to her Melt the ICE hats, Paul recently completed a quilt that reads, “Fuck it we ball.” “I wanted that persistence, a reminder of the way that craft can help us persist,” she told me.
Wajda, the historian and author, is thinking about the coming spring. “Pussyhats and Melt the ICE hats have one thing in common: They are winter wear,” she told me. “Now I’m thinking about what would a craftivist create for warm weather protests!”
Mazloomi, the artist and curator, has been working for the last several years on a series of quilts about African American history, with a concentration on the civil rights era. “The stories have disappeared from the news, disappeared from museums and art centers, and I don’t want to see that happen,” she said.
Quilts remind people of “home and grandma,” Mazloomi said. “It’s a soft cushion for difficult stories.”
2026-04-03 04:00:00
特朗普宣布即将离任的司法部长帕姆·邦迪将转投私营部门。早在特朗普首次执政期间，法律记者本杰明·威特斯就曾形容其治国风格为“恶意与无能的结合”。邦迪在任期间，多次试图利用司法部对特朗普的政敌采取报复行动，但因法律处理不当而屡屡受挫。例如，她在2025年2月接受福克斯新闻采访时表示，杰弗里·爱泼斯坦的性侵者名单“正摆在我桌面上”，但司法部后来承认该名单并不存在。此外，特朗普政府试图起诉前FBI局长詹姆斯·科米和纽约州检察长丽蒂西亚·詹姆斯，但因任命的检察官琳赛·霍利甘未合法就职而被法院驳回。在明尼苏达州的大规模移民逮捕行动中，司法部因人员不足和准备不充分，被迫释放大量被拘人员。联邦法官批评司法部的无能，指出其未为可能引发的数百起法律诉讼做好准备。此外，邦迪在德州选区划分案中的干预也因法律文件错误而引发争议，尽管最高法院最终恢复了该划分，但下级法院的裁决已基于对种族动机法律的质疑。尽管邦迪的离职可能让特朗普有机会任命更称职的忠诚支持者，但目前尚不清楚其继任者人选。特朗普拥有多位能力出众的共和党律师，如前司法部长威廉·巴尔，他们可能更有效地执行政策，这对特朗普的政敌构成潜在威胁。
Early in the first Trump administration, the legal journalist Benjamin Wittes coined one of the best descriptions of how President Donald Trump governs: “malevolence tempered by incompetence.” Trump, as Wittes originally wrote, often issued executive orders that were not vetted by lawyers or policy experts — and thus were vulnerable to lawsuits and often achieved very little. And this penchant for taking seemingly bold actions that fall apart once they are exposed to the real world pervades both of Trump’s administrations.
No one embodied Trump’s brand of incompetent malice more than outgoing Attorney General Pam Bondi, who, as Trump announced Thursday, “will be transitioning” to a “new job in the private sector.” In her 15 months as the country’s top legal official, Bondi flouted norms, stretching back to the end of the Nixon administration, which sought to insulate federal prosecutors from political control by the White House. But her actual attempts to use the Department of Justice to seek revenge against Trump’s perceived enemies frequently floundered on the shores of bad lawyering.
Bondi may be best known for saying, in a February 2025 interview with Fox News, that a list of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s clients was “sitting on my desk right now” — months before the DOJ later claimed that this list doesn’t exist. After she was asked about her mishandling of the Epstein files in a congressional hearing, she told lawmakers that they shouldn’t even be talking about Epstein because “the Dow is over 50,000 right now.” (As of this writing, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sits at 46,371.57.)
Consider, as well, the Trump DOJ’s attempts to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, two officials who Trump loathes because they investigated allegedly illegal activity by the president. Both prosecutions were dismissed by a federal court, however, after a judge determined that Lindsey Halligan, the former insurance lawyer that this administration tried to install as a top federal prosecutor in Virginia, was never lawfully appointed.
Similarly, when the Trump administration ordered thousands of federal law enforcement officers to occupy the city of Minneapolis and to arrest many immigrants in that city, a competent attorney general would have recognized that these mass arrests would trigger an array of legal proceedings, and would have preemptively detailed additional lawyers to Minnesota to handle the increased caseload. Instead, the US Attorney’s Office in Minnesota was almost comically understaffed, and completely unprepared for an array of court orders, requiring the administration to release many of the immigrants it had just arrested.
Federal judges criticized the Justice Department’s incompetence in their opinions — the chief judge of the local federal district court wrote that the Trump administration “decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that were sure to result.” One DOJ lawyer, who was assigned an impossible workload of 88 cases in a single month, told a judge that she sometimes wished she’d be held in contempt of court so that she could sleep in jail.
At times, the ineptitude of Bondi’s Justice Department even endangered the Republican Party’s ability to hold onto political power. Last November, a federal court in Texas struck down a Republican gerrymander that is expected to gain the GOP five more US House seats after the 2026 midterms. The court’s opinion, authored by a Trump-appointed judge, relied on a letter from one of Bondi’s top lieutenants, which effectively ordered the state of Texas to redraw its maps for racial reasons that are forbidden by the Constitution.
Though the Supreme Court eventually reinstated the gerrymander, the lower court’s decision was well-rooted in Supreme Court precedents questioning racially motivated laws. All of this drama would have been avoided if Bondi’s DOJ had never sent its letter, which the judge said was “challenging to unpack” because “it contains so many factual, legal, and typographical errors,” Texas’s Republican gerrymander would have never been in any danger.
This list is just the beginning. Not every Republican attorney general loyal to Trump would have made such basic errors in carrying out his agenda. And there’s no guarantee that Bondi’s successor will share her ineptitude. So Trump’s opponents may want to wait and see what comes next before they celebrate Bondi’s humiliation.
Bondi’s bumbling management of the Justice Department would have mattered more if Republicans didn’t have a firm grip on the federal judiciary. For the moment, at least, lawsuits challenging many illegal detentions in Minnesota are on hold thanks to a decision by two Republican appellate judges holding that these detentions are, in fact, legally mandated. The Texas court’s decision against that state’s gerrymander was blocked by a Republican Supreme Court.
Still, Bondi’s incompetence is likely to plague the DOJ for a long time, even though she no longer leads it. Federal judges have historically treated Justice Department lawyers with a degree of deference, because for decades the DOJ held a well-deserved reputation for being candid with judges and for hiring highly skilled lawyers. But now many judges are openly questioning the Justice Department in their opinions. That means that rank-and-file Justice Department lawyers will have to spend countless hours shoring up claims that federal judges would have simply believed in the past.
Meanwhile, the worst-case scenario for Trump’s political enemies, and for anyone else who the Justice Department decides to target for political reasons, is that Bondi could be replaced by a capable advocate. (The full list of possible candidates to replace Bondi is not yet known, but some early news reports indicate that EPA administrator Lee Zeldin is under consideration).
A competent attorney general would have made sure that a lawfully appointed prosecutor brought charges against Comey and James. A competent attorney general might have selectively leaked Epstein documents that mention Democrats, rather than inspiring an act of Congress requiring all of the documents to be released. And a competent attorney general would treat DOJ lawyers’ time as precious, because every minute a prosecutor spends on unnecessary work is time they can’t spend advancing Trump’s agenda.
It remains to be seen who Trump will pick to replace the maladroit Bondi. But there’s hardly a shortage of highly partisan Republican lawyers who are actually good at their jobs. Trump could find someone like his first-term Attorney General Bill Barr, who was an extraordinarily capable advocate for MAGA’s agenda. And, if that happens, anyone unfortunate to wind up on Trump’s enemies list will miss Pam Bondi.
2026-04-03 04:00:00
这篇文章探讨了如何通过培养思维而非单纯进行“脑力训练”来维护大脑健康。尽管许多人希望通过锻炼或训练大脑来提升认知能力，但研究表明，这种训练对长期智力提升的效果有限。相反，保持健康的生活方式（如均衡饮食、规律运动、减少压力和保证睡眠）对大脑健康至关重要。此外，通过“适度困难”的学习方式（如间隔学习和混合学习）可以更有效地掌握新技能，而好奇心的培养，尤其是与社交互动结合，对延缓认知衰退有积极作用。文章还提到“繁荣”（flourishing）这一概念，强调意识、连接、洞察和目标感对大脑健康的重要性。作者认为，随着年龄增长，参与新活动并建立社交联系，不仅能激发好奇心，还能增强心理满足感和目标感，从而促进长期的认知健康。最后，作者以自己学习下棋的经历为例，指出加入兴趣社群可能比单独学习更能带来益处。
A lot of people are looking for ways to improve, preserve, and prolong their brain’s health. Just look at the seemingly endless amount of self-help books, podcasts, phone apps, TikToks, and Instagram Reels dedicated to the subject.
And, frankly, it makes sense. Alzheimer’s disease and dementia — conditions that fundamentally involve the loss of one’s sense of identity and sense of time and place — are distinctly terrifying compared to physical ailments. They rob a person and their loved ones of what should be a special period of their lives. After all, Americans are living longer than ever. It’s only natural that we want to be as present as we can be to enjoy it.
But despite the many promises you may hear about how to “exercise” or “train” your brain to improve your cognition long-term, there’s still a lot we don’t know. In fact, when I reached out to experts about how to exercise your brain, I received a fair amount of skepticism. Multiple studies that have used tailored tasks or games to test whether they can improve a person’s longer-term general intelligence have found negligible benefits; here’s one from 2019 and another with markedly similar results in 2025.
“It seems to be the case that no one has discovered a way to do cognitive training that transfers from the training task to anything general or interesting,” said Michael Cole, an associate professor in the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University and author of Brain Flows: How Network Dynamics Compose the Human Mind.
Still, the science of brain health has come a long way in the past 20 years, and we have better, evidence-based strategies for staying sharp as you age. There are no simple answers, but by combining frameworks from leading experts on learning, flourishing, and cognitive aging, there is a playbook. Making a point to do these things can make life right now more fulfilling — and it could also pay off as you get older.
First things first: If you want to have a healthy brain, you should take good care of your overall health in the boring-but-effective ways you’ve heard a million times by now: Eat a healthy diet, exercise regularly, do your best to reduce stress, and try to get enough sleep.
High blood pressure is associated with a higher risk of dementia. Chronic inflammation, another modern fixation, could also play a role in cognitive decline. On the flip side, exercise does seem to be associated with cognitive benefits: One major meta-analysis of the relevant research concluded that “exercise, even light intensity, benefits general cognition, memory and executive function across all populations.”
Our political wellness landscape has shifted: new leaders, shady science, contradictory advice, broken trust, and overwhelming systems. How is anyone supposed to make sense of it all? Vox’s senior correspondent Dylan Scott has been on the health beat for a long time, and every week, he’ll wade into sticky debates, answer fair questions, and contextualize what’s happening in American health care policy. Sign up here.
Scientists have also repeatedly found that exercise seems to protect against the risk of Alzheimer’s or dementia. One study published last year found that the adults who are active in the middle and later periods of their lives had a more than 40 percent lower risk of all-cause dementia.
So, a heart-healthy diet and exercise are the first steps toward taking care of your mind’s hardware.
But what about exercising your brain itself?
If you do want to know how best to learn anything, you should get familiar with the concept of “desirable difficulty.” Advanced by Nate Kornell, a psychologist focused on memory and learning at Williams College in Massachusetts, the basic idea is this: If something comes too easily, it won’t stick. You need some friction when learning new skills. To do that, you should space out learning and mix it up; Kornell proposes the notions of “spacing” (taking a break from new material and returning to it) and “interleaving” (mixing new material with old material) as effective strategies for learning.
These frameworks are about not improving your cognitive health, per se, but they could make it easier for you to learn something new when that is what you want to do.
“As a larger point in terms of cognitive health, it’s really not changing how your mind processes things,” Kornell told me. “It’s just putting yourself in situations that are more advantageous.”
But even if narrowly defined brain “training” may not have any established long-term benefits, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to challenge ourselves mentally or intellectually. We should just have realistic expectations about what those exercises can do. At the same time, developing new interests is still part of a healthy aging mindset, because it helps nurture some of the good habits that are solidly linked with less cognitive decline, like social connections and curiosity.
Learning a new skill demonstrates curiosity — and research continues to show that curiosity has benefits for the aging mind. Take one paper from last year, co-authored by Alan Castel, a professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA and author of Better With Age: The Psychology of Successful Aging.
The researchers uncovered a nuanced relationship between aging and curiosity. They did find that what scientists call “trait” curiosity — your innate interest in seeking out new things to discover — does tend to drop with age. But at the same time, your “state” curiosity — your interest when presented with new or unexpected information — tends to start increasing in your fifth and sixth decades compared to middle age.
“We think that has some implications for cognitive health and brain health,” Castel told me, “that those individuals who are stimulating their brain, who are focusing on hobbies, or interested in lifelong learning, continued engagement with life and learning new things, are less likely to get dementia.”
These findings could lead to more productive forms of “brain training” than a random computer game supposedly designed to improve your intelligence. Instead, based on their findings, an older person may find their curiosity more piqued by something that is relevant to their own self-interest or something they already know about. For example, a person who’s gardened in the past might be stimulated by reading a book or magazine about gardening, joining a gardening club, and learning some new gardening skill — and the research suggests they’ll reap cognitive benefits from that curiosity.
“If you’re interested in gardening and you’re out and doing it and you’re trying to cultivate a new plant or determine how much rainfall there’ll be in the next week, this is all very stimulating, and you’re interpreting it at almost a different level than the novice person,” Castel said. “We think that this sort of engagement is really important as we get older to stimulate knowledge structures that are in place.”
So don’t get stuck in your ways as you age. Castel writes in his book that even changing up your old habits — hiking a familiar trail in the opposite direction, taking your dog for a morning walk, or even shopping at a different market — can benefit your brain.
Despite experts’ initial skepticism, I would still encourage you to learn a new game or pick up a hobby — but think of it less as “training” your brain in a way that will lead to a perceptible increase in your intelligence. It’s more about trying to form connections with other people and feel a sense of purpose as you age.
Experts at the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Healthy Minds have characterized this mindset as “flourishing” — and it could also have the long-term benefits to our cognition that so many of us are seeking.
“Cultivating these positive qualities of the mind changes the brain in ways that are very clearly conducive to increased brain health,” Richard Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds, told me. “We know, for example, that objective metrics of brain aging are changed by these practices.”
Davidson and his colleague Cortland Dahl recently wrote a book called Born to Flourish: New Science Reveals the Four Practices of Thriving. In it, they say flourishing has four main components:
Each of these qualities can have benefits for your long-term cognitive health, Davidson said, but purpose is a particular area of interest. As Davidson and Dahl write in their book, based on research from their group, “a strong sense of purpose supports healthy aging, particularly in brain regions tied to learning and memory that are susceptible to stress.” People who feel they have a purpose generally experience less severe cognitive decline and better longevity overall. “Having a strong sense of purpose is probably the most important psychological predictor of longevity,” Davidson said.
And as I think about these different strategies for nurturing your mind, both right now and for the long term, I see the ways that learning new skills and taking on new hobbies is good for a healthy mind as you age because it will stoke your curiosity and relieve stress. And if it’s something you can do in conjunction with other people, it may help you feel that sense of connection and purpose that is associated with better cognitive well-being over the course of your life. The synthesis across these neuroscientists was striking at times: Davidson spoke of the value of purpose, while Cole has outlined how pursuing goals that align with your values can lead to more effective learning. Castel, in our conversation, emphasized that stimulating your curiosity is even better when done with a dose of human connection, another pillar of the program Davidson and Dahl laid out. So don’t just dive deeper into birdwatching on your own, but consider joining a nature walking club.
Think of this work less as taking your brain to a mental gym and more as cultivating the strange and wondrous garden that is your mind. You’re training your brain not to be “smarter,” but to be more present, more connected to other people, and more attuned to what gives you an all-important sense of purpose.
I’ve been playing chess lately, for the first time in my life. I do find it prods my brain to think differently. But after reporting for this story, I’m thinking of finding a local chess club. The game itself may not be a prophylactic for my brain, but finding the community of like-minded people, a sense of connection, and a sense of purpose that stokes my curiosity, just might.
2026-04-03 02:55:00
2026年1月9日， Tucker Carlson 在白宫东厅参加了一次会议。经过五周的模糊表态，特朗普总统终于在周三晚向全国发表讲话，为对伊朗的战争辩护，但其言论依然缺乏清晰度。他没有明确说明如何退出战争，将霍尔木兹海峡问题推给其他国家，并否认战争旨在推翻伊朗政权。作为特朗普的长期盟友和前福克斯新闻主持人，Carlson 现在主持广受欢迎的播客《Tucker Carlson Show》。在与 Vox 的 Noel King 的访谈中，Carlson 表示，美国与伊朗开战并不符合国家利益，并指出自己曾多次亲自向特朗普阐明这一观点，但未获回应。他质疑特朗普为何发动这场战争，认为以色列总理内塔尼亚胡在幕后起到了关键作用。尽管特朗普是美国总统，但 Carlson 认为战争决策并非出于他的个人意愿，而是被内塔尼亚胡所推动。他强调，特朗普对伊朗的敌意一直很明确，但问题在于这场战争是否可实现、是否符合美国和全球的利益。Carlson 还提到，特朗普曾公开反对2003年伊拉克战争，并在2016年竞选中以此为卖点，但如今却重蹈覆辙，令人震惊。他质疑白宫是否拥有真正严肃、明智的决策者，并指出当前局势可能导致严重后果。
After five weeks of muddled messaging, President Donald Trump finally addressed the nation on Wednesday night to make the case for his war on Iran. That message was…still muddled. He did not articulate a clear exit plan from the conflict, fobbed the Strait of Hormuz problem off on other countries, and denied that regime change was the point.
Among those making a clear case against the war is longtime Trump ally and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who now hosts a mega-popular podcast, The Tucker Carlson Show.
In an interview with Today, Explained, Carlson told Vox’s Noel King that the war “doesn’t serve American interests in any conceivable way. And let me just say that if it does in some way serve the interests of the United States, I’d love to hear it.”
Carlson told Noel that he brought his argument directly to Trump, to no avail. “I went to see the president three times in the month before this in person, and made the case,” he said. “And in the end it had no effect. So I tried. But I haven’t been in touch with the president since then.”
In addition to the war, Carlson and Noel discussed the conservative moment’s Nazi problem — and how much blame he bears for it. Plus, whether he’s considering a presidential run, and why MAGA voters support the war.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
You don’t think that the US should be at war with Iran. Why not?
I haven’t heard a consistent case from anyone, and I would say it’s not just the Trump administration. My strong sense, having watched it closely, is that there was not a groundswell of support for this war from within the Trump administration. The president made the decision to do it, but he wasn’t surrounded by advisers who were urging him to do it. Just the opposite. I don’t think there was any enthusiasm for it.
So why are we in this war?
He did it, as the secretary of state explained, because we were pushed into it by the Netanyahu government, by Benjamin Netanyahu. Now, to be totally clear, that’s not a way of exculpating the president. He’s the commander in chief of the US military. Trump made the decision; it was the wrong decision.
But if you’re asking why did he make that decision, it’s because he was pushed into it by Benjamin Netanyahu, which raises the second obvious question: Where did Netanyahu get the power as the prime minister of a country of 9 million to force the president of a country of 350 million to do his bidding?
I can’t answer that question, but I can tell you what happened because the secretary of state said it and the speaker of the House said it, and I watched it. And what happened was the Israelis went to the White House and said, We are going to do this. We’re going to move against Iran.
At that point, the US had really only two choices. One is to follow and the other is to tell Israel no and force them not to do it, because as Marco Rubio explained on camera, if you allowed Israel to go alone, you were certain that American forces and citizens and interests in the Gulf would be destroyed.
But either way, Benjamin Netanyahu made the decision on the timing of this. That’s another way of saying he was in charge. And I’m just here to say I think it’s wrong, and I think the majority of Americans think it’s wrong.
President Trump has been talking about Iran since the late 1980s. A Guardian interview recently resurfaced from 1988, and he’s asked, “If you were a politician, what would your platform be?” He says, “I’d be harsh on Iran. They’ve been beating us psychologically, making us look a bunch of fools. One bullet shot at one of our men or ships and I’d do a number on Kharg Island.”
This sounds a lot like the way he’s talking [now] about doing a number on Kharg Island. You’re aware of that. Donald Trump is the president of the United States. Can’t this war just be what he wants?
I’m not denying him agency. I stated his agency, which is a matter of fact, not opinion. He’s the commander in chief. He gives the orders. Donald Trump made the decision.
It is also true that Israel forced that decision. That’s what happened. It’s not a question of did Donald Trump hate Iran or love Iran and now hates Iran? He’s been consistent on that.
The question is whether a regime change war against a country of almost 100 million people on the Persian Gulf was a) achievable, h) a good idea for the United States, and c) a good idea for the world. And Trump has said consistently, No, it’s a terrible idea. He’s been really specific about it: Regime change war in Iran is a bad idea. So this is the change. It’s not that he woke up one morning and was mad at Iran. What do you do about it is the question.
Not long after the US took Nicolás Maduro into custody in Venezuela, you did a monologue and you said that the US, an empire, needs serious men to run it, people who are wise and understand stakes, not flighty, silly, emotionally incontinent people.
In light of the way that this war was launched, given the lack of coherent messaging as you’ve described it, the apparent lack of a plan to get out of Iran, do you think we have serious men making wise decisions in the White House?
We’re not seeing wise decisions, obviously.
I think Venezuela, I think the war in Ukraine, I think all of these build on each other, but I think that the Venezuela operation set us up for what happened in Iran. It sent the message that you can achieve regime change at almost no cost. And as we’re learning five weeks in, that’s not possible in Iran, and the consequences are potentially catastrophic.
I don’t think anyone who’s paying close attention has slept well for the last month. I would love to be able to say, Okay, we made our point and we killed their religious leader. And somehow that’s virtuous, I guess. And this is victory and we’re leaving.
As an American, I would like to see that because I want to get out of this with as little damage as possible, but I don’t see how you can do that without leaving Iran stronger than it was in real terms. They have no navy, they have no air force — okay, but they control 20 percent of the world’s energy. How does that not make them stronger than they were in February?
Who are the serious men?
You find out in moments like this. Who can think clearly, who can accept unhappy truths, digest them and make wise decisions on the basis of them or who retreats into fantasy?
Who are you seeing do that? The former. In the White House. In the administration.
I don’t know. I went to see the president three times in the month before this in person and made the case — not too different from the case I’ve just made to you. And in the end it had no effect.
I haven’t been in touch with the president since then, and so I don’t know. But I do think that there are people, I know that there are people in the White House who may disagree with me on all kinds of issues, but they want to do the best for the country. They’re not crazy. And I’m sure that they’re giving, I hope they’re giving good advice. But the question at this point is how do you get out of this?
It’s not easy. This just happened in 2003. I was there, both in Washington and in Iraq in the aftermath. And it shocks me that we are doing this thing again, particularly under a president who understood exactly what happened in 2003, campaigned all three elections against doing an Iraq War again, because it was stupid. He was the only Republican to campaign against the Iraq War. It’s why he won the nomination, in my opinion, in 2016.
It’s amazing to me that the president who knew, and said he knew again and again and again that this was wrong, that he just did the same thing.
2026-04-02 20:00:00
作为一名主要生活在自由派城市的人，我身边大多是与我政治观点一致的人。我反对持枪，支持LGBTQ+权利，支持堕胎权，欢迎移民。但我也有一些生活在红州的亲戚，虽然我非常爱他们，但这些关系让我经常接触到不同政治立场的人。我的家族中包括自由派、中间派、保守派，甚至一些MAGA支持者。尽管我自认为是一个冷静、理性且能与所有人相处的人，但有时也会因为他们的言论而情绪失控，比如当有人发送关于ICE的冒犯性表情包，或嘲笑特朗普粗鲁地称记者为“猪”时。这些时刻我的血压会飙升，然后会不自觉地用一堆事实来反驳他们，最终在意见不合时愤怒地离开房间。我清楚这种行为并不有效，但也找不到更好的应对方式。为了寻求建议，我联系了两位在冲突解决和人际关系方面的专家，询问如何更好地处理这些情况。他们的建议非常现实且实用，让我第一次在2025年1月20日之后真正感到希望，认为自己可以避免在这些时刻受伤或愤怒。如果你也面临类似困扰，可以参考以下建议，或许你会有同样的感受。
当听到有人对美国的生殖健康政策发表带有讽刺意味的评论时，我不仅仅是不同意，而是感觉自己的女性权利受到了攻击，或者朋友和邻居的权利被侵犯。洛杉矶的婚姻与家庭治疗师Saba Harouni Lurie表示，这种反应非常常见，因为当前的政治环境让许多人的个人关系变得紧张。她说：“双方都有一种强烈的‘你站在我们这边，还是站在对立面’的感觉。”因此，当有人做出不恰当的评论时，你可能会感到被逼到角落或不安全，从而产生反应。你的神经系统会变得紧张，心率加快，压力荷尔蒙如皮质醇和肾上腺素也会飙升。Lurie建议，在回应之前先暂停一下，深呼吸几次，或者如果不喜欢深呼吸，可以喝点水、去洗手间，或者假装做个小任务。这样能帮助你保持冷静，从而有条理地回应。通过放慢节奏，你可以在回应时更有目的性，而不是情绪化地反应。
德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的冲突解决与调解教授Larry Schooler指出，我们常常因为一句简短的评论就对他人做出判断，并可能得出不准确的政治立场结论。我们倾向于关注他们的具体立场，比如对堕胎和枪支管制的看法，而忽略了他们更深层的兴趣。这会导致一种非此即彼的对立局面，使环境迅速变得敌对。Schooler说，人们通常不喜欢被评判或批评，当他们感到被攻击时，往往会变得防御性、愤怒或退缩。他们希望被理解、被倾听和被尊重。他建议使用这样的问句：“对你来说，为什么这件事这么重要？”因此，与其直接否定对方的观点，不如尝试了解他们为何会有这样的看法。当他们表达观点时，可以说：“你为什么会这么想？”或“你为什么会这么说？”如果他们讲了一个你无法接受的笑话，Lurie建议你回应：“我知道你是在开玩笑，但我真的无法笑出来，不过我想了解你为什么觉得这个笑话好笑？”虽然这种方法在你情绪激动且根本不同意对方观点时可能很难执行，但如果你能坚持，也许能促使对方进一步解释他们的观点，从而更深入地了解他们的立场。根据他们的回应，你可能会发现他们形成某种观点是因为在Facebook上看到了错误信息，或者愿意了解更多信息。在堕胎问题上，你或许会发现他们实际上支持生殖健康服务，只是在宗教或精神上感到矛盾。Lurie说：“你不一定非要同意，但至少能理解他们想表达什么。”Schooler补充道，你甚至可能发现彼此之间存在一些共识，而不是只关注分歧。
在政治讨论中使用“我”陈述，即表达自己的感受而非指责对方的不足，是情侣治疗中常用的方法，但同样适用于政治对话。Schooler指出，当与人激烈争论时，指责对方“你这样做”会显得像攻击，即使你认为自己是正确的，对方也可能因此感到被防御。更好的方法是表达他们的言论对你造成的影响，而不要批评或指责他们。这传达了同理心和合作态度，表明你愿意协商（即使你并不真的愿意），研究显示这有助于缓和气氛。例如，可以说：“当你讲那个笑话时，我感到非常不舒服。”Schooler解释说，你的目的是表达：“你看，我的感受是重要的。”你不需要进一步解释或证明自己的情绪。理想情况下，对方会意识到自己的言论让你不快，从而停止。如果他们不这么做，你可以补充说：“如果我们讨论这个话题，我希望以一种有意且温和的方式进行，因为我们对此有不同看法。”
在这些情况下，我常常希望改变对方的想法，但显然从未成功，可能是因为我总是直接抛出未经请求的事实（这显然没人喜欢）。Schooler建议更好的方法是请求许可继续讨论该话题。他推荐说：“我真的很理解这件事对你来说很重要，它对我也很重要，我想知道是否可以分享一些对我有意义的观点？”你可能会认为，对方提出话题意味着他们愿意成熟地讨论，但实际情况并非总是如此。请求许可既给了对方倾听的机会，也避免了你可能遭遇的失望。Schooler说：“等待对方准备好倾听，即使需要几天、几周或几个月，也比强迫他们更好。”这同时也为你未来希望被尊重地对待设定了榜样。也许他们也会开始以更敏感的方式讨论政治话题。如果他们不这样做，或者这些建议无效，你可能需要寻求认证治疗师的帮助。他们可以评估你的情况并提供个性化的建议，帮助你应对困难的人和话题。当前是一个紧张而不确定的时代，每个人都很焦虑，一切似乎都令人担忧，但最终我们都在尽自己最大的努力。
As someone who has predominantly lived in liberal cities, I am largely surrounded by people who share my political views. Guns, no way. LGBTQ+ rights, yes, of course. Abortion, absolutely. Immigration, come on in.
But I also have relatives, most of whom I love and am deeply attached to, in red states, which means I’m regularly exposed to people across the political spectrum. There are liberals, moderates, conservatives, and a few MAGA individuals in my bloodline. And while I’d like to believe I’m a level-headed, logical human being who gets along with everyone, there’ve been times where I’ve completely lost my cool and snapped at them. Like when one sent an offensive meme about ICE. Or when another laughed at President Donald Trump rudely calling a journalist “piggy.”
When such events occur, my blood pressure spikes. I spit out a string of facts in some sort of ballistic effort to prove they’re wrong, and when we inevitably don’t see eye to eye, I storm out of the room. I’m well aware this isn’t productive, but I also don’t know how to effectively deal with people who needle me about Trump.
To get some tips, I called up two pros on conflict and relationship dynamics and asked them how someone in my position can best cope in these situations. My mind was blown by how realistic and practical their advice was, and for the first time since January 20, 2025, I felt legitimately hopeful I could navigate these moments without winding up hurt and angry. If this is something you also struggle with, take a look at their recommendations below; maybe you’ll feel the same.
When I hear a sly comment about, say, the state of reproductive health care in the United States, I don’t merely disagree. Rather, I feel like my personal rights as a woman are being attacked — or, in the case of gender-affirming care or immigration, the rights of my friends and neighbors. Saba Harouni Lurie, a licensed marriage and family therapist and owner of Take Root Therapy in Los Angeles, says this is a very common reaction, as the political climate has created tension and ruptures in many people’s personal relationships. “There’s a very strong feeling of, ‘You’re either with us or against us’ on both sides,’” Lurie tells Vox.
As such, when someone makes a crass remark, you may feel cornered or unsafe and become reactive, Lurie says. Your nervous system goes haywire — your heart rate spikes and stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline surge.
Before you say or do anything, Lurie recommends pausing and taking a few deep breaths — or, if deep breathing isn’t your thing, take a few sips of water, go to the bathroom, or pretend to do a quick chore. Doing so will help you ground yourself so you can reply thoughtfully. By slowing down, “you can be purposeful and responsive instead of reactive” when you do reply, Lurie says.
We’re often quick to judge people based on a quick comment and jump to conclusions about their politics that may not be completely accurate, says Larry Schooler, a professor of conflict resolution and facilitation at the University of Texas at Austin. We also tend to zero in on people’s positions — like how they feel about abortion and gun control — rather than their deeper interests. This sets up a dichotomy where you’re either on the same team or enemies, which can cause the environment to quickly turn hostile, according to Schooler.
People, in general, don’t like to feel judged or criticized and tend to become defensive, angry, or disengaged when they do. They want to feel seen, heard, and respected, Schooler says.
Try his go-to line: “Why is that important to you?”
So, instead of shutting them down, try to get curious about where your family member is coming from. When they share their take, Schooler suggests saying something along the lines of, “What made you say that?” or “What makes you think that?” Or try his go-to line: “Why is that important to you?” If they made a joke that didn’t land for you, Lurie says to go with something like, “I know you’re trying to be funny, but I can’t really laugh at that, but I want to understand what was so funny about it for you?”
Taking this approach can be challenging, especially if you’re fired up and fundamentally disagree with their opinions. But if you can stomach it, you may be able to get someone to expand on their surface level comment or position, giving you a better sense of who they are. Depending on their response, you may see that they formed an opinion based on misinformation they saw on Facebook and are open to learning more about an issue. Or, in the case of abortion, you may discover that they genuinely support access to reproductive healthcare, but feel conflicted religiously or spiritually. You “may not necessarily agree,” Lurie says, “but at least understand what they’re trying to communicate.” And you may even find some common ground instead of solely fixating on your differences, adds Schooler.
Using “I statements” — the concept of sharing your feelings and emotions rather than blaming others for their shortcomings — is a tool commonly used in couples therapy, but it can be an effective strategy in political conversations, too. When you’re having a heated discussion with someone, pointing fingers and saying “you did this” can come off as an attack and put them on the defensive, even if you feel justified and like the other person is in the wrong, Schooler says.
A better approach: Express how their comments affect you without criticizing or blaming them. This conveys compassion and cooperation and shows that you’re open to negotiation (even if you really aren’t), research shows. Maybe say, “When you made that joke, I felt really uncomfortable.” “What you’re trying to do is say, ‘Look, I have feelings and those feelings matter,’” Schooler says. You don’t need to justify your emotions or explain yourself beyond that. Ideally, the person will see they’ve agitated you and lay off. If they don’t? Tack on this line: “If we’re going to broach that subject, I’d love to do so intentionally and delicately since we see it very differently.”
In these scenarios, I often feel an intense desire to change the other person’s mind — but, of course, I never have, probably because I lob out unsolicited facts (something literally nobody enjoys). A better tactic is to ask for permission to engage in a conversation about said topic, Schooler says. He recommends saying something to the effect of: “I really can see how big of a deal this is to you. It’s actually also a big deal to me, and I’m wondering if I can share some things about it that resonate with me?”
You may think that because someone introduced a topic they are down to maturely converse about it further, but that’s not always the case. Asking for permission provides the person with an opportunity to listen while also sparing yourself from potential disappointment if they don’t want to engage, according to Schooler. As he says, “It’s better to wait until someone is in a position to listen, even if that’s days or weeks or months, than it would be to try to force it.” This also sets an example for how you’d like to be treated in the future. Instead of assuming you’re open to political jokes and insensitive comments, maybe they, too, will start broaching politics in a more sensitive manner.
And if they don’t? Or if these tips are a bust and you still blow a fuse? Then it may be time to team up with a certified therapist. They can evaluate your unique circumstances and provide personalized tips to help you deal with difficult people and topics. These are intense, uncertain times — everyone’s on edge, everything feels scary, and, at the end of the day, we all (okay…most of us) are just doing the best we can.