Meagan Novara and Ken Soleyn

[00:00] KEN SOLEYN: What it says here is we should read each other's bios before we start. So I guess I can start.

[00:08] MEAGAN NOVARA: Okay.

[00:09] KEN SOLEYN: So you're Meagan from Evanston, Illinois.

[00:15] MEAGAN NOVARA: I'm Meagan, actually. Meagan.

[00:17] KEN SOLEYN: I'm sorry, Meagan.

[00:18] SPEAKER C: That's okay.

[00:20] KEN SOLEYN: Your interests are reading, spiritualism, cooking. Lake Michigan has been a constant in my life growing up. My family and I spent many hours hiking the sand dunes. swimming, vacationing. For me now, making a home on the other side of the Great Lake in Chicago. My wonderful husband and I raised three boys in a very active community. Living here has led me to my passion working as a restorative practices educator in schools, children, community, and peace are the pillars of my life.

[00:53] MEAGAN NOVARA: Sounds great when you say it. all right. And Ken, you are. You're coming from New Hampshire?

[01:03] KEN SOLEYN: Yes.

[01:04] MEAGAN NOVARA: Londonderry, New Hampshire. Okay. You were born in St. Vincent, a small island in the Caribbean. Oh, I forgot. Your interests are hiking, snowshoeing, live music and basketball. Your mom belonged to a farming family. I'll just read it as your voice. My mom belonged to a farming family, and my dad. We immigrated to the USA when I was two years old. I went to school from K through 12 in Brooklyn, New York. We lived in one of the poorest sections of Brooklyn, the so-called ghetto. I loved education and going to the library. Like many, I am frustrated with the government. I figure, why complain? Do something. I only want to do nonviolent, peaceful actions.

[01:49] KEN SOLEYN: So the question that comes up on the conversation guide is, why did you want to do this interview today?

[01:58] MEAGAN NOVARA: Well, for me, it's lots of reasons. I love meeting new people. Number one, I am, part of what I do for my job is listen to people and they're often when there's conflict, but I do some conflict resolution, but also just proactively so even though that's what I do for a living, I, you know, my circle is usually which, like my group of people is usually educators or children. So I kind of was looking to Branch out into a wider group of people. And I have been number one. Number two, I tend to be surrounded by a lot of people who think similar, similarly to me, and so I'm interested in hearing the stories and perspectives of people who are not quite as similar as me. And then also, I had after I went to back in 2000 and it was after the Women's March in Washington, I was thinking that I was, I would really like to do something like this myself, but in person, and I never move forward with it. so to be able to at least start to participate in this way seemed like a good first step.

[03:15] KEN SOLEYN: Yeah, for me, I wanted to do this because I spent most of my career working for GE as a global product manager, so I had the opportunity to travel to every state in the US and also overseas for business. and, you know, I've met a lot of people within the confines of business, but globally. So, you know, it, it, I'm sort of proof for everyone's proof that we can get together and be productive. And, you know, even though I came out of a situation where, like, I lived in the Brownsville section of East Brooklyn, which was the ghetto, you know, it was like, but even with that, even with all of that angst and the crime and the grime and, you know, having, you know, rats in our house and things like that. You know, I always found like sanctuary in that you made friends, we'd have like a ghetto beach day where we open up a fire hydrant, Yeah. And we, you know, on a hot day you get wet and the cops would come and close it off and, you know, we'd be roaming the streets and exploring and when I got a little older, I rode my bicycle and took the subway all around New York as, you know, exploring things. So we've always had that sort of drive and curiosity. and I, I think the way I see, like, the political climate is that the country just seems very polarized. And I figured, well, you know, I want to do a little bit more than just sit around and complain. I want to be a little bit more active. So I, I joined a Sierra Club and became active in, like, the Democratic caucus town and with the Sarah Club, I had the opportunity to go up to the state house and do some lobbying, you know, provide some testimony based on my experience with GDE and power industry and instrumentation and controls. Like, I've been inside of a nuclear power plant, several of them.

[05:40] MEAGAN NOVARA: Oh, wow.

[05:41] KEN SOLEYN: Stuff like that.

[05:42] MEAGAN NOVARA: So.

[05:43] SPEAKER C: And.

[05:44] KEN SOLEYN: And my hobby also is kind of, you know, hiking and, and photography. I take mainly it's like amateur nature photography, you know, and I, I just love being in the outdoors like that. But then the other side of me is, you know, you want to do something proactive. So that's where I am today. And I feel like, I feel like that's what's missing. I don't know if it's just because of isolation due to technology and maybe. add in the COVID with that, that we're all a bit isolated, we don't, that sense of community. But, you know, it's coming back. In New England where I live now, community doesn't build overnight. You know, those relationships sometimes goes back generations.

[06:34] MEAGAN NOVARA: -Huh, you know.

[06:37] SPEAKER C: So.

[06:39] KEN SOLEYN: That'S been kind of my struggle is trying to, you know, integrate into society but be productive, but then also kind of pursue my happiness as well.

[06:51] MEAGAN NOVARA: Yeah, that sounds like a great struggle.

[06:53] KEN SOLEYN: You know, it becomes frustrating because like probably yourself, you know, you stress education. health care, you know, mental health. And those are the kind of programs that are being cut. And what are we getting out of it?

[07:15] SPEAKER C: You know.

[07:18] KEN SOLEYN: You know, it just seems to me like the U.S. is regressing where maybe other countries that are a bit more Progressive with social programs and their tax structure and so forth tend to progress. And, you know, when people progress, they pay more taxes.

[07:40] SPEAKER C: Right.

[07:41] MEAGAN NOVARA: When, you know, when societies do, yes.

[07:44] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[07:45] KEN SOLEYN: And they spend the money within the community.

[07:50] MEAGAN NOVARA: Can tell me more about kind of moving from the Virgin Islands to Brooklyn. Tell me more about how that all happened, then how you ended up in New Hampshire.

[08:01] KEN SOLEYN: Well, my dad's sister was married to a guy who came over as a migrant worker to pick peaches in Georgia. He then stayed, was able to stay and got a job in construction. and my dad immigrated to England because the idea was there's this, you know, these stories of there's a better life overseas because, like, people would go away, maybe get an education or get a job, even if it was just like a laborer job, and send money back. And the amount of money coming back was enough to, you know, it was good money coming back into, into the family. to their standards. So my parents dream was, you know, sort of the American dream to, you know, work hard and send your kids to school and they can become like professionals. And that's what they really stressed growing up, even though we lived in a very poor section. And there were a lot of adversity in terms of like, crime and you know you'd see it all. I like I grew up seeing you know alcoholism, people lost to drugs, women who got to be in prostitution, you know, saw that all even as a young, young woman.

[09:37] MEAGAN NOVARA: Was it, did you have a lot of brothers and sisters or are you.

[09:40] KEN SOLEYN: I have about three, three brothers.

[09:42] SPEAKER C: And.

[09:44] KEN SOLEYN: One of them, a little older than I am, he, he went into the Air Force. He, you know, when he, I think he did a year of college and said, you know, college life is not for him. He's going to go to the Air Force. So he did pretty well in the Air Force. And then my older brother went into education. He, he became a guidance counselor, but he taught industrial arts. He lives in Florida and my younger brother is an engineer and he works for the Department of Transportation for the government.

[10:20] MEAGAN NOVARA: So you did all end up with sort of professional jobs?

[10:24] KEN SOLEYN: Yeah, yeah. But I think part of that was the ability to get an education. We went up to, we came up to like the public education system.

[10:34] SPEAKER C: And.

[10:36] KEN SOLEYN: But you know, there was a real rigor to studying until I hit college and then the rigor was really, man, there's some really good partying going on here.

[10:48] MEAGAN NOVARA: But nobody ended up back in Brooklyn or New York.

[10:52] KEN SOLEYN: No, no, my, well, actually my youngest brother still lives in he lives in Queens now. Yeah, he lives in Queens. And I, one, the two other brothers live in Florida.

[11:07] MEAGAN NOVARA: So my grandfather immigrated from Sicily to, or from, from Italy originally to Brooklyn and grew up there. He immigrated when he was with his family when he was about 11 or 12 or something. No English and. I was from Sicily and was born here, but no, you know, like to a Sicilian enclave in Detroit, nobody spoke English, that kind of thing. And so there's most of the family that stayed in Brooklyn dispersed. Some went back to Italy. Only one brother stayed in Brooklyn. So I've only, I've never really seen where that was, where they grew up. We're more connected to Detroit. That's where there's more connection. So. My sister was just there yesterday showing pictures of the old Detroit neighborhood, the Italian neighborhood, and where everybody grew up.

[12:01] KEN SOLEYN: You have arguments about which is better, Brooklyn pizza or Detroit pizza.

[12:06] MEAGAN NOVARA: I don't think Detroit pizza is okay, I think. But yeah, the thin style is better, I think.

[12:12] KEN SOLEYN: In Brooklyn, they used to, you'd always see the sign, the best pizza in Brooklyn. Every pizzeria had a little sign that said the best pizza in Brooklyn.

[12:22] MEAGAN NOVARA: World's best, world's best. So do you go back there very much?

[12:30] KEN SOLEYN: I haven't been in a while. I still have, you know, cousins and family that live there.

[12:38] SPEAKER C: And.

[12:40] KEN SOLEYN: I was always one, like, I always love to read like National Geographic. and I always thought traveling would be like the thing that, you know, I'd love to travel, you know, like when that Indiana Jones movie came out, I thought that was like the greatest thing. Not because he had all the adventures, it's just because he had, he was able to travel and speak, you know, kind of get it, make his way around, speak the language.

[13:08] MEAGAN NOVARA: Well, you said you traveled all over the US. Did you travel internationally, too?

[13:12] KEN SOLEYN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. pretty much all of the countries in Europe.

[13:16] MEAGAN NOVARA: Oh, wow.

[13:17] KEN SOLEYN: Asia, Australia.

[13:20] MEAGAN NOVARA: Wow. All from work or on your own or both?

[13:24] KEN SOLEYN: For work, but I have gone back just on my own as a vacation. I went to England and Portugal and did some trips to India. My foreparents, great-great-grandfather was from India. So we always had that sort of lineage to India. And, you know, I always loved to just seek and learn. And I love, like, multiculturalism, like, to see, like, song and dance and artwork, you know, like, like Native American, all, you know, I love going to, like, the, I went to the Native American Museum in in Washington, DC, and also ones in, in Canada. And, oh, I just, I just love, like, that cultural aspect. If, if I could be Indiana Jones, but without all of the, you know, violence, just a guy who, you know, travels, I guess, archeology or something like that. I guess that would be the ideal thing. But just, I just love different cultures learning about it.

[14:52] SPEAKER C: . .

[15:49] MEAGAN NOVARA: Okay, you're back.

[15:50] KEN SOLEYN: Okay. I lost you there for.

[15:54] MEAGAN NOVARA: Yeah.

[15:55] KEN SOLEYN: I was thinking maybe it was something I said.

[15:58] MEAGAN NOVARA: No, no. All of a sudden, I couldn't see you, and then suddenly I couldn't hear you. You went away.

[16:03] SPEAKER C: So.

[16:05] MEAGAN NOVARA: So I I didn't hear the answer to the question of what is it that. That you were. Where did you feel. Where in the world did you feel most drawn to in your travels? Or places, I guess.

[16:21] KEN SOLEYN: Well, I got maybe a different answer. One of the places I felt the most frustrated was France, because I thought I knew a little French, but it seemed like I had to like I flew into France and had to take a train. so sort of waiting online to confirm my. Because I had booked, you know, in advance, and you get to the sort of the end of the line. I'm sorry. He's saying this in English. I'm sorry. I don't speak English. You have to go to this other teller, you know, like the whole trip that started that trip. And the whole trip was like that. Just a very kind of frustrating. But I did have a. I did have a nice meal. a nice couple of meals there, I have to say that, at least. But yeah, so that always struck me as like, I thought France would be a Paris, everything would be like, you know, that image of, you know, what you see in the movies. But for me, it was just a kind of a very frustrating experience.

[17:29] MEAGAN NOVARA: Yeah, I think it's so the great part about traveling is discovering what it actually feels like to be there, I think. And that's sort of indescribable because it's your own personal experience.

[17:41] SPEAKER C: But.

[17:42] MEAGAN NOVARA: It'S often not kind of what you would think it would be, I think.

[17:47] KEN SOLEYN: And then I also kind of like, if you get off the beaten path, you know, not where all the tourists go, but sometimes we were going into industry and the colleagues that we had there, you know, they always wanted to host us. It was a sense of, you traveled all this distance to work with us, so we want to at least take you out for like a nice meal and a drink, you know, have discussions. So there was a lot of camaraderie and teamwork along those lines. You don't do these projects by yourself. You have a team. And sometimes that's, I think what's missing too, it's just this idea of putting the right team together.

[18:35] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Well.

[18:38] MEAGAN NOVARA: Is there anywhere, like, do you remember specific times where, you know, sometimes you don't realize all your own Norms and values or cultural imprints until you leave where you grew up or, you know, for you, I know you, you're a couple different places here, but when you go into a very different culture, do you suddenly clearly see what's what part of you is very American?

[19:02] KEN SOLEYN: Whatever you do, especially on the tourism kind of, you know, unless you're, like, on a guided tour type of thing. But, you know, they can tell you're a foreigner and immediately there's this sort of, you know, it's. We can Make some money from this guy, you know, so that. That's always that sort of operating.

[19:24] SPEAKER C: Right, right, right.

[19:27] KEN SOLEYN: On the other hand, you know, we're GE. We were sort of traveling on the GE Corporate American Express card. So, you know, we're taking, like, taxis and we're having a car arranged for us to go anywhere. So to just go door to door and, you know, throughout your, your various meetings and the other guys on the other side are treating you like a dignitary. So it's a little bit, maybe a little bit different than just the regular travel.

[20:03] MEAGAN NOVARA: Yes, that is different. So who has, I see a good question on here. Who's been one of the more influential people in your life? And what did they teach you?

[20:19] KEN SOLEYN: Well, I think growing up, I would have to say my teachers, I don't know that there's any one particular, I think they were all pretty great. But, you know, one that stands out to me is they had this teacher, I went to a technical high school, Brooklyn Tech. It was sort of a magnet school where you had to take an exam and it was like a pre-engineering curriculum. And he was the technical drawing teacher drafting. So it was the kind of thing where, you know, he was ex-military and I handed in my first assignment to him and he looked at it and crumbled it up, threw it in the trash and said, do it all over again, try it again. He just had that sort of very disciplined, very precise. And I found, you know, when you're preparing things, you have to try to go for precision if you want to do a good job of it, you know, especially when it comes to numbers and data. And don't let anyone fool you, but all of these corporations are data driven. You know, they can tell you the sales per square foot of a facility.

[21:35] MEAGAN NOVARA: Mm-.

[21:37] KEN SOLEYN: And I mean, who knows? I've been out of it for a few years since I'm retired, but there's probably AI bots now that can crunch those numbers even quicker into graphs and things like that and data. It's kind of scary.

[21:54] MEAGAN NOVARA: Well, I was just talking about that with my son. I said this morning, I think what AI unto itself doesn't freak me out. I think it's the way that we as a culture, and I mean everybody on the planet, runs headlong toward the next thing as fast as possible without taking some time to think about unintended consequences, to think about what that's going to cost us, to think about how we could maybe approach it in a more thoughtful fashion. That's more what worries me about it than anything, 'cause it's just like anything else. It's just the next thing.

[22:32] KEN SOLEYN: I think you have to disconnect from.

[22:34] SPEAKER C: It.

[22:36] KEN SOLEYN: In the sense that, and again, I enjoy the outdoors, but that's, to me, like that's the real world. And, you know, the computer and social media and even like the news, There's an element of it just being so artificial.

[22:57] MEAGAN NOVARA: Yeah, I agree.

[22:59] KEN SOLEYN: Motivated by, well, they're trying to sell you stuff for one thing. And if I go out hiking, you know, sometimes I'm on like public lands. I don't trespass, but I'm on public lands.

[23:12] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[23:12] KEN SOLEYN: Or a state park or national park and it's public lands and I feel safe. I pass other hikers on the trail and we wave, we smile. I'm sure if I was in distress, you know, like we carry a little first aid kit, we'd help each other out. You know, that's the kind of America that I think we actually live in. And I think a lot of this other stuff is just created to get an agenda going. I agree. I want to put scare tactics in you so that, you know, I can get your vote and I can get this legislation through that's gonna, you know, benefit my friends or, you know, benefit my, my cadre of financiers.

[24:01] MEAGAN NOVARA: Agree.

[24:02] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[24:03] MEAGAN NOVARA: And I don't think, you know, that's nothing new. That fear is a tactic has been used since the dawn of humanity.

[24:10] SPEAKER C: Right.

[24:11] MEAGAN NOVARA: And I think it doesn't just live in the political sphere, I think, and it's not just exclusive to the person in office right now. I think it's. It's how the news functions. It's based off of fear and.

[24:25] KEN SOLEYN: Just.

[24:25] MEAGAN NOVARA: Doing all this listening and reading right now, part of the work that I do is community building circles for students, but also for adults. And so I'm doing, looking right now, doing a little bit of reading and thinking about the evolutionary wiring for why we're wired to look for fear and to look for danger and to look.

[24:44] SPEAKER C: For.

[24:46] MEAGAN NOVARA: Differences and negative differences and that once something is framed as negative, it's hard for us to see it as positive. Like there's all these psychological tests behind it. And that's where implicit bias comes from and all this stuff, right? Is we're trying to our brain is trying to constantly categorize into safe, not safe. And so you have to fight against the current of safe, not safe to see shades of gray. and the news cycle is not set up for that.

[25:13] KEN SOLEYN: But is that, that's just primal, right? Because to survive, you have to have your wits about you.

[25:23] MEAGAN NOVARA: It is, but I think in today's society, kind of, I'm not, this is not my original thought. I'm quoting different things I've read, that our current modern brain interprets threat to our ego or our identity as a mortal threat.

[25:37] KEN SOLEYN: I see.

[25:38] MEAGAN NOVARA: And so, and so then we sit in fear a little bit more. And so if someone comes along and says, yeah, you should be scared. Yeah. Look at all these statistics to show why you should be scared. And if you weren't scared, you better be because it might get you. And all of a sudden, it just takes a lot of effort to fight back against it. And we're not even aware of it because it's just what's normal, right? Is to see the news, read the headlines, and at some level, consider it. I mean, I think at this point, nobody sees the news as strictly neutral, but it used to be. I mean, people, my, my parents age, my grandparents age saw the news as neutral.

[26:19] KEN SOLEYN: Yeah, well, I can remember, you know, growing up and reading the paper and, you know, obviously it was, we watched the local news and it was the national news with, like, Huntley and Brinkley and Walter Cronkite. And yeah, we kind of thought of it as neutral. We didn't think of it as biased. Even if you go back and you look at like the presidential debate and you know, like the Humphrey versus Nixon, it's very civil, very organized, very, you know, shook hands and I think, well, Humphrey lost, he went on to continue his work as senator and so forth.

[27:03] MEAGAN NOVARA: Right, but it could be more civil and more organized, I think, than or more formalized than what we are now, but.

[27:09] KEN SOLEYN: Well, at least got a, like a bipartisan. It has, you know, obviously, I'm, I'm probably on the left and pretty far left by everyone's standards, but. you know, I see where there's got to be a middle ground, but it's got to be a level kind of playing field, you know, for that. And when you control the courts, you control the courts and the legislature and the executive branch, you know, where's the checks, where's the checks and balances?

[27:44] MEAGAN NOVARA: Mm-. Well, and I think I think to go back to what you said, I think that the way that a lot of people are in this country is aren't so angry and hate filled and polarized as the systems try to make us be. But it's, it's, you have to be able to either actively fight against it or have some wisdom or have some personal experience or you know, my in-laws grew up pretty, they live on, basically, it's not a working farm, but it's a farm right now. We just called them this morning in Michigan. And their lives involved, they're older, they're in their 70s and 80s. So their lives just involve each other pretty much. They don't see the much of the world. And my grandfather, my father-in-law fought in Vietnam, but that's the first and only time he's been on an airplane or out of the country. and they are the most open-hearted, open-minded people. Like they don't need to see it all to understand how that, you know, that you can just love people and that maybe you don't need to be afraid of they can see through it, you know? So I admire them greatly for that because I feel like I'm someone who has to see it and know it and wrestle with it somewhat to understand it or I was. I think now that I'm getting older, I feel like I can understand things more, but I think it takes an awareness and sometimes it's maturity, sometimes it's seeing propaganda for propaganda, seeing fear mongering for fear mongering, say, but also to understand that most of the time when we're getting information, there's some reason behind it. We need to be wary of what the reasoning is and use our own compassion, logic, and thoughtfulness to decide.

[29:47] KEN SOLEYN: Yeah, like here in New Hampshire, it was recently, there was a group of neo-Nazis that came, it was a rally at the state house and this group of Nazis. information now about this group, you know, they sort of wear red shirts and it's coming out and it, as you start to peel back the onion, these, they're young men and they're all isolated from their families. They live in like a barrack style, you know, militia kind of thing and they're being physically abused and even like sexually abused.

[30:32] SPEAKER C: Oh.

[30:33] KEN SOLEYN: It's just, you know, now as much as I would abhor Nazis, when you start to peel back the onion and say, well, you know, here are people that just don't have a family, you know, a healthy family life for one thing, the abuse and all of that. So there are factors in all of that. And when it comes to that level, in this country, that's where I think it's really going wrong. It's like Nazi Germany.

[31:07] MEAGAN NOVARA: And.

[31:09] KEN SOLEYN: We don't seem to learn from history, I guess. I don't know. On the other hand, I live in New Hampshire, and most of the people I encounter are very Reasonable people, great to talk to, you know, don't seem to have these kinds of problems. It's just, there seems to be this undercurrent now of leading that way to this sort of, you know, totalitarianism or oligarchism. and it's pretty scary when you see troops going into, like, Washington, DC. Yeah, yeah, of course, the redistricting and all of these things that are going on. So you can really see signs of it. And, and I also wonder about the economy side of it because that drives a lot. And I think this country is capable of doing so much. you know, we could have like some really advanced trains or something that where you could alleviate the amount of traffic going into a city by just having a network of public transportation. I've been in Australia where like in some of the cities, you know, the buses are free. You just hop on and go up the road on the bus and you hop off at the predetermined stops. There's no charge. It's paid for by the city. It alleviates a ton of traffic.

[32:45] MEAGAN NOVARA: Yeah, no, there's all sorts of very reasonable things in every sector that I can think of that we aren't doing. So I believe that we need to acknowledge kind of where the country started from and acknowledge how it was built and how we have been Some of the ways that we've done things in the past have been better and we can return to that, but there's a lot of ways things that we have been doing that were wrong and some of them we haven't continued and some of them we have and we just call it different things based on where the political climate is in the moment. And I think like an honest retelling of who we are and what our country was built on is the only way we can kind of move forward. because we keep telling these, you know, narratives and myths about who we are as Americans in this country. And I don't think it's ever fully acknowledged what the country was built on. Yeah, obviously, we can't even talk about it, right? Like, I mean, that's what all this legislation is about. That's what the DEI stuff is about.

[33:52] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[33:53] KEN SOLEYN: So as an educator, then you've got to feel like your integrity is like you were, you know, like to me, the best educators, the best sales people that I've met are the ones that are truthful to you and, you know, you can get a great shot. And then, you know, they can help you to formulate a decision based on having that. I'd rather have that. I'd rather have transparency and know what I'm getting into.

[34:25] MEAGAN NOVARA: Absolutely.

[34:26] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[34:27] MEAGAN NOVARA: So I found ways to do that. But I live and work in a very liberal area. And still there's some hesitancy about saying certain things in public spaces about what the country was built on, where the n-word comes from, the history of slavery in this country. But I do and it's It's incredibly refreshing to reset everything about how we talk about things and to set a baseline for the way we've come to it is sort of in the district where I work is our baseline is you don't get to use part of someone's identity as an insult. Who they are is their strength. You don't get to turn that around and insult someone because of it.

[35:12] KEN SOLEYN: I think that's where Okay, let's have a formal debate on it then. In other words, we used to be able to say on an academic level, let's discuss this and it would be like a, it wouldn't just be like a show or like a shouting match. It would be like, well, tell me your position on this. I could come up with my formulation on a counter. I think everybody benefits from that dialogue.

[35:44] MEAGAN NOVARA: Oh, absolutely.

[35:45] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[35:46] KEN SOLEYN: I have some, I have some, I call friends, you know, business associates, and they're, they're sort of right wingers. And one of my tactics is I just let them talk for a while, and then eventually they'll say something that I can pick up on and say, oh, so with that, you think you're better off now with that or. So in other words, the old cowboy saying was you give them enough rope to hang themselves.

[36:13] MEAGAN NOVARA: Yeah, yeah. And how does it usually go for you when you have those conversations?

[36:18] KEN SOLEYN: Well, I think, you know, we'll have a cup of coffee and agree to disagree. One of my ongoing jokes is, hey, you can be a card-carrying Republican But if you go into the ballot box and vote Democrat, no one has to know because in America, you're guaranteed the right of secret ballot and that protects you from any other party saying, well, you didn't vote my way, so we're gonna bash you over the head. So I tell them that as kind of like a closing, you know, in secret, you can really vote Democrat if you're frustrated up with your buddy Trump there. But yeah, and I think part of it is too, I think we've got to get a younger group engaged. You know, the people that are now, they're gonna be gone in the next 10, 20 years.

[37:14] MEAGAN NOVARA: But how does it go? Because I don't have people like that in my life. I've got one uncle who's a Trump supporter, maybe two, and that's it. That's all the people I know. that supported Trump or even are Republicans. So how do you ever feel like you're able to hear them or they're able to hear you or that, because it sounds like you are engaging in civil debate and dialogue somewhat when you meet with these guys.

[37:41] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[37:42] MEAGAN NOVARA: Where has there been connection?

[37:45] KEN SOLEYN: You gotta let them talk, but it's gotta be in a setting where like nobody's shouting, that's never gonna. Right.

[37:53] MEAGAN NOVARA: But what happens when, when you, you.

[37:55] KEN SOLEYN: Know, it's not like it'd be like, hey, if you're interesting, you know, let's, let's go to a Dunkin Donuts, get a coffee, and, you know, we, we can talk about it, but, or, you know, in, in the park or, you know, wherever. But it's got to be where everyone's civil and calm, you know? you might even say, like, you know, well, tell me your point. Why do you believe that this is the way? Like, have you ever seen it where, you know, you transfer this sort of tax cuts to the rich? Tell me how that benefits. So, you know, I might start off with a question like that. Tell me how that benefits. And then they'll actually come up with a formulation of how that benefits the country, and I'll let them talk for a while. It looks like your screen is frozen.

[39:26] SPEAKER C: All. . please weation. . . . . .. . . .