I’ve heard of three Thanksgiving plans that got canceled because of disagreements over the Israel-Gaza War. In one case, over the past few weeks, a guy watched as his brother’s wife posted pictures of cease-fire rallies on Facebook. Finally he texted her: “So you love Hamas now?” She was horrified. After doing Thanksgiving together for two decades, they will not be continuing the tradition this year.

I could give you more examples of unproductive fights that ended plans, friendships, relationships, but we’ve all been there. In this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic, we focus less on the substance of any of those disagreements. Instead, we talk about how to disagree, on things big (a war) or small (how to load the dishwasher). Our guest is Amanda Ripley, the author of High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, and her suggestions work equally well in the personal or political arena.

We also talk with Utah Governor Spencer Cox about his Disagree Better initiative. In 2020 Cox ran an unusual political ad in which he appeared alongside his opponent, noting that they have different political views but agreeing they would both “fully support the results of the upcoming presidential election regardless of the outcome.” Cox, a former trial lawyer who says he is inclined “towards conflict when presented with opposing views”, is a rare politician trying to work with opponents in a different way.

Listen to the conversation here:

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts

The following is a transcript of the episode:

Hanna Rosin: This is Radio Atlantic. I’m Hanna Rosin. Today is Thanksgiving, a time for families to get together and, often, to disagree, in an era when a lot of us have totally lost the art of disagreeing well.

I could explain or give you so many examples, but I think you probably know what I mean. One of our presidential candidates just called his opponents “vermin.”

So today we’re going to have a conversation about learning to disagree better. And I know that there are some people out there who hear that and think I mean we need to be quiet or to stop protesting or just to be more polite. But it’s not that. It’s about how to talk to people you disagree with—not in a polite, avoidant way, but in a way that’s more effective, that lets everyone get something done.

Now, we’re going to hear from two people. One is a prominent politician—maybe one of the few who is actively trying to change how political opponents talk to each other.

From him I want to know from him how productive disagreement actually works, in the wild, given the high level of vitriol out there.

But before we get to him, we’re going to hear from Amanda Ripley. She’s a journalist who wrote a book called High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out.

A couple of months ago, Amanda and I did a live event together where she explained the ideas in her book, ideas that once I absorbed them, they changed how I digest the news and also how I talk to almost everyone in my life.

Here’s our conversation.

Hanna Rosin: Let’s start by saying why, why are we here? Why write a book or talk about high conflict right now at this moment?

Amanda Ripley: Well, I went into this, I spent about five years following people who were stuck in really toxic, awful conflicts—political, you know, gang conflict, civil war, all different kinds of conflicts.

And I was really obsessed with, like, how do you get out? How do you get out of conflict? And then I realized that is the wrong question, because conflict is our greatest asset. Conflict is how we get stronger, how we push each other, how we get pushed.

So we need conflict, with an asterisk, which is the right kind of conflict. The kind really matters, it turns out. It is the fastest shortcut to transformation, right? For a company, for a family, for a country. So that, I think, is why we’re here: How do we use conflict for good?

Rosin: Amanda had suggested we start small and personal. She wanted us both to talk about a fight we’d had with our partners so she could dissect it. I went first.

So here we go. Example 1: The Toxic Croissant.

Rosin: So I was talking to my partner on the phone yesterday, and she says the innocuous sentence: “Yeah, I think we ate pretty healthy this weekend.”

Now, we don’t really talk about food, whatever. It’s not, it’s not a big deal. But the first words that flashed up were: “No, we didn’t.”

And then I could hear the tension on the phone. This is so dumb and meaningless. I don’t know why I said that. I don’t care how we ate, but I did say it. And then felt my brain kind of go into a mode and I actually had the thought—I can’t believe I had this thought. Amanda, I can already—I’m not even going to look at what your face is doing right now. But I had the thought, like, Prove it. Like, Do the food log. I’m right.

Ripley: So you were like, Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go to the mat.

Rosin: Let’s go to the mat. Immediately. What, do you think a croissant is healthy? Like, what is wrong with me? I don’t care what we ate. I genuinely don’t care at all about any of it. But that’s the place that I went.

Ripley: And then how did she respond?

[Laughter]

Rosin: She got angry.

Ripley: So, am I right to say that you felt, like, a sudden, overwhelming urge to argue this?

Rosin: Yes. Yes.

Ripley: Is that right?

Rosin: And to prove to her that I was right.

Ripley: To, to win?

Rosin: To win. A hundred percent.

Ripley: I’m assuming it didn’t end in a super—you didn’t feel better off for having had this conversation.

Rosin: No. No.

Ripley: Okay.

Rosin: No, it ended just everybody feeling worse.

Rosin: And yeah, so that’s the petty mystery we started with. Why did I so instinctively feel the need to be right about something I actually didn’t care about, and which another version of me knew was going to ruin a perfectly pleasant interaction? What was I getting from that?

Example 2: The Wolves.

Now it was Amanda’s turn.

Ripley: So, this is so cliché, but every night I have to reload the top rack of the dishwasher because my son and husband are just throwing stuff in, almost like a wolf or something. Like an animal.

And I can argue the facts of that forever. I could be like, The water cannot reach the stuff. The surfaces are all covered with Tupperware. And will happily engage in that with a ferocity.

Rosin: Everyone, hold in your mind that feeling, like, that thing that happens immediately when you’re like, You’re wrong. I’m right. Like, it’s just like you’re possessed.

Rosin: This is an important insight. High conflict is a very specific state of mind, different from annoyed or angry. It’s more like being possessed by some combination of fury and logic. And it’s not pleasant, exactly, but it is a kind of high.

Ripley: Has anyone ever had that feeling? Raise your hand. (Crowd laughs.) Okay, so you were not alone.

Rosin: Yes.

Ripley: Anyone here have no idea what we’re talking about? Okay. All right. So we’re not alone.

Rosin: Conflict is not just croissants and dishwashers, though. Often the stakes are way higher, like in politics, which is built on disagreement. How do you know when conflict is productive?

Ripley: When I said the kind of conflict you’re in really matters, there is a kind of conflict that I like to call “good conflict,” like “good trouble,” like John Lewis called it. Good conflict is—and we can see it in the research, in the data—with good conflict, questions get asked, there’s anger, there’s frustration, there’s sadness, and there’s flashes of curiosity and humor, even, and understanding and then back to anger and frustration. It’s like a galaxy of emotions. And there is movement. [With] high conflict, you’re stuck. You feel it, right? You feel it in your chest or your stomach.

Rosin: Yes. That’s like going through sludge.

Ripley: Yeah. And there’s nowhere to go.

Rosin: Yeah.

Ripley: Like, it just feels like a trap.

I have shifted my goal in conflict, and I’ll throw this at you, and you see what you all think. I’m not interested in resolving it. I’m also not interested in avoiding it, although I would like to sometimes. My goal, as a journalist and as a human, is if I can do one of three things: Can I, myself, understand the other person, the problem, or myself a little better through this encounter?

Rosin: Understand, even if you disagree.

Ripley: Totally. Continue to disagree. That’s great.

Rosin: Okay, let’s pause. What Amanda is suggesting is that you should engage in a conflict with no intention of resolving it. In fact, if you have that intention, you will probably make the conflict worse.

That’s hard.

And what she is proposing seems straightforward, except it’s tricky because understanding might mean, in some cases, giving a lot of airtime to a person who quotes false statistics or spreads conspiracy theories, and that’s especially tricky if this person has power.

Rosin: Why does the person who you think is harmful deserve your understanding? What is the point of that exercise? Why is that putting good in the world, for you to take the trouble to understand someone who you feel is doing harm?

Ripley: Because we have kids together.

Rosin: Mm-hmm.

Ripley: It’s a lot like divorce. Like, you can get divorced, but you’ve got kids together. You still have to work together, as we keep seeing. You cannot get jack done in this country.

Rosin: The kids being genuinely a next generation of America.

Ripley: It’s always the people who suffer the most in high conflict, whether it’s in Colombia or Northern Ireland or South Africa or Chicago, it’s always kids.

Rosin: Mm-hmm.

Ripley: Or a divorce.

Rosin: Right.

Ripley: A high-conflict divorce. So high conflict, the phrase, actually comes from family law. A quarter of American divorces can be termed high conflict because they’re stuck in perpetual cycles of blame and hostility.

And it’s conflict for conflict’s sake, and that’s what high conflict is. It takes on a life of its own. And any intuitive thing you do in high conflict to get out, arguing the facts, makes it worse. So your only option, and this is really hard, is to do counterintuitive things.

Half of what people want in conflict is to be heard.

There’s a listening technique that I’m talking about called looping. That’s like, I’m going to prove to you that I heard you, because I’m going to distill it into my own language.

Rosin: Right.

Ripley: And I’m going to play it back.

Rosin: Right.

Ripley: And I’m going to then—this is the thing that people, the piece that usually we forget—I’m going to ask if I got it right.

Rosin: Ooh. Can you give me an example of when you’ve employed them? We’re coming back to the beginning in a personal space. You want to try the dishwasher one?

Ripley: Sure, sure, let’s do that. Okay, great. So, every conflict has the thing it seems to be about that we argue about endlessly, and then what it’s really about. That’s the most interesting part. That’s where I think journalists can do their best work. If we can get to that, which is, like, the understory of the conflict.

Rosin: The understory?

Ripley: The understory. Like, what is it really about? Do you ever listen to Esther Perel? Does anyone know Esther Perel’s podcast?

Rosin: Yeah. Yeah.

Ripley: She’s basically reduced the understory to six possible options, there’s just a handful of them in every conflict she’s seen: Care and concern. Respect and recognition. Power and control.

Rosin: Care and concern.

Ripley: Care and concern.

Rosin: Respect and recognition. Power and control.

Ripley: Yeah. So, if you think back—let’s use the dishwasher example. For me, it is clearly about respect and recognition. Obviously.

Rosin: You mean because you’ve told those wolves a thousand times?

Ripley: Yeah, it’s like, it feels like it’s not important because it’s somehow women’s work.

Rosin: I see.

Ripley: Like, this is just like, I’ll just throw this bowl in there, because I’m a man. Do you know what I mean? (Crowd laughs.)

I’m 100 percent sure they would disagree. Right? Like, they’re just not putting that much thought into it. But for me it feels like, Now I’m spending my time correcting all of your mistakes.

Rosin: Right.

Ripley: Because my time is worth half of your time, apparently.

Rosin: Wow. That’s the understory.

Ripley: Okay. So, now, wouldn’t it be better if I could say to them, Look, this may sound irrational to you, and maybe it is irrational, but when I see, like, 400 dishes piled up in the top rack of the dishwasher, it feels like you don’t actually respect the need to take care of our stuff, and that it’s somehow on me to do that.

Is that the story? That’s the story I’m telling myself. Is that the story? Is that right? For sure they’re going to be like, What?! (Crowd laughs.) Right? But if they could then show me they hurt me, they’re like, Wow! So when you see this dishwasher we’re looking at, you see, like, disrespect. Is that right? If they could loop me.

Rosin: And they don’t have to agree that it’s disrespectful?

Ripley: No!

Rosin: Or that they’re the patriarchy or anything like that? (Crowd laughs.) Or that they’re dirty animal wolves destroying things? They just have to hear you and do it.

Ripley: Prove it though. Prove you heard me by distilling it into your own language and playing it back to me and checking if you got it right, which my husband now does better than I do, by the way, because he’s heard enough of this.

Rosin: And it really doesn’t matter that they don’t have to adopt your view of the thing?

Ripley: No!

Rosin: That’s actually, like, a small and radical idea.

Ripley: It’s radical.

Rosin: They don’t have to see it the way you see it or adopt that same prism. They just have to know that you have that prism, and respect that prism, and everything quiets down.

Ripley: Right. Like, literally saying that takes all of the energy out of my body. It’s like, Yes, exactly.

Rosin: Right.

Ripley: Right? So if you loop someone and they say, Exactly, then you know you got it.

What percentage of the time do you think people feel heard in their day-to-day lives, on average?

[Crowd murmurs]

Five percent? That’s great. Yeah, 5 percent, okay. So a lot of the conflict that we’re seeing right now that is unhelpful comes from that. People just don’t feel heard. And the research on listening shows that when people don’t feel heard, what does it lead you to do?

Shut down or talk louder. (Crowd noise.) Yes, yes. And so we see in the research that when people don’t feel heard, they tend to say more and more extreme things. They wash away all the complexity and internal doubt. And they say more and more violent, extreme things. So think about what that means for journalism.

Rosin: Welcome to America. Exactly.

Ripley: But if they do feel heard, they admit to more internal uncertainty, they admit to being torn about certain things, they reveal vulnerability, and they will listen to you.

Rosin: Let’s show people examples of good conflict, because Amanda has seen a lot of it, and I want to leave you all with, you know, positive vibes.

Ripley: Yeah. So this is just a small example of trying to step out of the dance. Remember I was saying you gotta do something counterintuitive? So this is a little ad in the governor’s race in Utah—Spencer Cox, a Republican, and his democratic opponent—and this ad went viral, to much of their surprise.

So let’s watch this.

[Political ad]

Spencer Cox: I’m Spencer Cox, your Republican candidate for Utah governor.

Chris Peterson: And I’m Chris Peterson, your Democratic candidate for governor.

Cox: We are currently in the final days of campaigning against each other.

Peterson: But our common values transcend our political differences, and the strength of our nation rests on our ability to see that.

Cox: We are both equally dedicated to the American values of democracy, liberty, and justice for all people.

Peterson: We just have different opinions on how to achieve those ideals.

Cox: But today, we are setting aside those differences to deliver a message that is critical for the health of our nation.

Peterson: That whether you vote by mail or in person, we will fully support the results of the upcoming presidential election regardless of the outcome.

Cox: Although we sit on different sides of the aisle, we are both committed to American civility and a peaceful transition of power.

Peterson: And we hope Utah will be an example to the nation.

Cox: Because that is what our country is built on.

Peterson: Please stand with us on behalf of our great state and nation.

Cox: My name’s Spencer Cox.

Peterson: And I’m Chris Peterson.

Both: And we approve this message.

Rosin: What does it say about either me or America that I’m like, Where’s this SNL skit going?

[Laughter]

Rosin: After the break, we’ll hear from Spencer Cox himself. The now-governor of Utah heads something called the Disagree Better initiative, and, to him, this topic is nothing to laugh at.

Cox: I absolutely believe that that’s where we’re headed, to complete collapse of our democratic institutions, our republic. And if we can’t have productive conversations, we won’t be able to save this incredible gift that we’ve been given over 240 years ago.

[Music]

Rosin: As chair of the National Governors Association, Spencer Cox tours the country evangelizing what he calls “Disagree Better.” Now, the term can sound cute, or vague, so I asked him what he meant by it, because politicians appeal for civility all the time. And his answer echoed a lot of what Amanda and I talked about.

Cox: It absolutely is not just another civility initiative. It’s not just being nice to each other. It’s actually about healthy conflict. In fact, I think having zero conflict may be as bad and sometimes worse than having bad conflict. I just think it’s very unhealthy for us as a society. Our form of government, our Constitution, was founded on profound disagreement. We have to be able, in a pluralistic society, to disagree.

Rosin: Cox has field-tested Disagree Better in Utah, which is arguably a low-risk place for him to start. Utah is a solidly red state, and when he ran that political ad in 2020, he was already ahead in the polls. Of red states, Utah also generally seems more open to this kind of message. Donald Trump is of course popular there, but Utah is also the place that sent Trump critic Mitt Romney to the Senate.

Rosin: Are you trying to change people’s minds? Like, is that part of it, or not really? It’s just sort of defending your own position, because I feel like people, you know, debate about that. If you go into a conversation thinking you’re going to change someone’s mind, that’s already a bad start.

Cox: It is a bad start, but here’s the key: It’s a bad start because if you go into a conversation trying to change someone’s mind, you’ll never change their mind.

Rosin: You mean, like, you can’t start that way because it’s arrogant or righteous or something?

Cox: Yes, it immediately puts people in a defensive position, right? And again, it’s not just about changing people’s minds. To me it’s about solving problems. And if I’m interested in what you have to say, legitimately interested, like really trying to understand where you’re coming from, the odds of you being interested in where I’m coming from go up significantly.

Rosin: Before he was a politician, Cox was a trial lawyer, and that’s a profession that argues in order to win, not to understand the other person. And now as a public figure, Cox does not always control his tongue, which I asked him about.

Cox: I’m practicing this. I believe in it. I had already launched my initiative, or I was about to launch my initiative, and I’m at a press conference and I get asked about immigration. And I’ve been asked, you know, 75 times about immigration.

And so, I was frustrated with something Congress had done, and I said, “You know what?” I just kind of lost it for a second. I said, “You know what? Congress is, they’re all imbeciles, and they should all lose their jobs.”

Rosin: I saw that. I saw that. I was going to ask you. So is that, like, We’re all human?

Cox: Well, very much human, and I think it is human nature. There’s no question that we’re all craven political beasts. That moment, I knew as soon as I was done. And sure enough, it led every headline from my press conference. Every newspaper, every media organization covered it. Within 20 minutes, it was out there.

I started getting texts from people all over, people I hadn’t heard from in years, like, Yes, you’re right. So proud of you. Thanks for speaking up. Thanks for saying that. You’re right. They’re all imbeciles. And I apologized an hour later because it was against everything I believe in. But that’s the incentive structure: The one thing I got the most credit for was the thing I shouldn’t have been doing.

Rosin: Is the problem your language? Is it because you call them imbeciles? You essentially make them defensive and then the conversation shuts down.

Cox: Yes. So this is my point. Did any member of Congress read that and think, You know what? He’s right. I’m an imbecile. I should resign. And, and, you know, did any of them think, You know, let’s go solve immigration because that governor thinks we’re imbeciles? Like, no, it doesn’t, it didn’t help anything.

Rosin: It’s not going to work.

Cox: It didn’t, it didn’t work. And again, not only that, but I’m dehumanizing people. I’m othering them, right?

I’m very frustrated. I could have said that, right? I think this is a mistake. I think what they’re doing is wrong, and here’s why. Yes, we should point out the things we disagree with, the things that are wrong—things they’re doing wrong. But I don’t need to call them imbeciles to do it.

My nature, and I think the natural human being in most of us, is towards conflict when presented with opposing views.

Rosin: Totally.

Cox: We fight back. That’s what we do. We’re fighters.

So that’s, that’s been my journey. It’s something I still have to work on every day. My staff reminds me when I head into what’s going to be a tense situation to go 65 miles an hour, because I can go from zero to a hundred very quickly. So I have to constantly keep it at 60, keep it at 65, you know—keep it, keep it toned down.

Rosin: Do you think that Donald Trump embodies the principles of Disagree Better?

Cox: Of course not. And I think Donald Trump would be the first to tell you that he doesn’t embody the principles of Disagree Better.

Rosin: You’re a Republican governor. Donald Trump is the nominee. How do you handle that scenario? It’s a genuinely difficult scenario.

Cox: It’s impossible. It’s an impossible scenario. And every governor, every Republican governor, every Republican member of Congress, we’re all trying to navigate this, and people are choosing different ways to do that. Some just pretend it doesn’t exist. Some people try to nuance it. Some people, you know, push against it.

Has it gone great for most of those people?

Rosin: No. So what’s your choice? Like, you’re the face of Disagree Better, and this is your nominee. So what do you personally do? Like, somebody’s going to ask you the question, Are you endorsing? You know, Are you endorsing Donald Trump?

Cox: Yeah, I get asked that. Sure. Sure. You get asked it all the time.

Rosin: You get asked it all the time. So what’s the answer?

Cox: Yeah, and right now I’m focused on hoping someone else gets out there. It’s this crazy time where—

Rosin: So you don’t say yes. You just say, like, maybe the wishful thinking, like, magical thinking.

Cox: Yeah. Yeah. We’re all doing the magical thinking thing right now. And I’m admitting that. What I can do is try to offer a different approach, a different vision and hope. I’m not just trying to convince other governors and other candidates that this is the right thing to do for our country, although it is the right thing to do for our country.

And I think we are further down that road of complete failure than most people understand.

Rosin: Complete failure of what?

Cox: Of our democratic republic. If you look at other failed democracies, other failed states, we’re checking all of the boxes.

I mean, we really are in a very, very dark place.

And our tolerance for that type of rhetoric and for actual political violence has gone up significantly, which is scary. We can’t keep doing what we’re doing.

Rosin: I just had one last question for Cox. It’s a question Amanda always advises to ask, which is: Does the person you’re talking to have any regrets or doubts about their position or about something they’ve done? Because doubts are a place where opponents can find common ground.

And Cox did share one big doubt. It was about when he signed a controversial congressional map back in 2021. This new map split the biggest Democratic-leaning county in the state and divided it among the state’s four districts, which faced immediate accusations of gerrymandering.

Rosin: If you look back on your last few months, all these divisive issues, is there one that you wish you’d handled differently or that you are like, Did I do the right thing on that one?

Cox: Yeah. I think if I look back, the one that I worry about is the gerrymandering piece, for sure. As I look back, because I think that’s one issue that probably did drain some trust out of the system, because that’s changing boundaries, right, in a way that feels like now your voice is being neutered even more.

And I also push back and say to most of my Democrat friends, What you really want us is to gerrymander for you. You want a Democratic district in a state that is overwhelmingly Republican. It’s just not going to happen. The numbers are just not in your favor. So go out and change the numbers and then you have something to argue about.

But I want to give them credit in saying, like, I understand. That to me is a valid argument, that gerrymandering does impact trust in the system, that it does make it harder for someone’s voice to be heard, for someone to get someone that they believe in elected.

And so I think there is—

Rosin: And you feel like you didn’t get that across?

Cox: I feel like I didn’t get that across, and I understand why people are angry about that. And that’s one where I have had some second thoughts over the course of the past couple of years.

Rosin: Okay. I see your people waiting for you.

Rosin: The governor’s people were waiting outside the studio to take him to his next thing.

And before I say my goodbye to you—and Happy Thanksgiving, while I’m at it—I wanted to return for a moment to my conversation with Amanda Ripley.

We wrapped up by circling back to my argument about the croissant and figuring out the real reason why I reacted the way I did.

Ripley: Now, going back with this food argument about whether you ate healthy, which of the understories is it? Care and concern. Power and control. Respect and recognition.

Rosin: I think it’s respect and recognition.

Ripley: Okay, same one.

Rosin: Because—actually, I think it’s just my mother.

[Laughter]

Rosin:

We’re not gonna go there. I think it’s a sense, like, I get really freaked out when people—like, in truthiness. Like, when people just adopt strong stories that I feel are not related to what happened on this earth, I get real panicky.

Ripley: So there’s something dangerous about it?

Rosin: There’s something dangerous about people. Like, it doesn’t matter what the subject is. If somebody had said we watched this thing on TV, and we didn’t and I couldn’t get through to them, I would get really panicky and angry. It’s not about the food.

Ripley: So it’s maybe control as well. Like, if you could, yeah, if you can kind of keep tabs on what actually happened—

Rosin: Mm-hmm.

Ripley: Then things are less chaotic? Is that right?

Rosin: Yes. Like, and I’m not forever trapped under, like, this false idea, and I have to agree with it when I know it’s not true. That makes me feel crazy, you know?

Ripley: Yeah, okay.

Rosin: Yeah.

Ripley: So do you think you could tell your partner that tonight on the phone?

Rosin: Just that?

Ripley: Yeah.

Rosin: Yes, I can. Yeah, I will.

I will. Yes.

Yes. Absolutely.

[Applause]

Rosin: This episode was produced by Kevin Townsend, with editing from Claudine Ebeid. It was fact-checked by Isabel Cristo and engineered by Rob Smierciak. Claudine Ebeid is our executive producer, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.

Thank you to the See Change Sessions for giving us the audio of my talk with Amanda.

Thank you all for listening, and happy Thanksgiving. If you’re at the table and you’re overcome with that feeling that you’re about to fight, do it right. Good luck to you. And see you next Thursday.

If the recent Hollywood strike were a movie, it would have a satisfying ending. The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) got the important things they were asking for, namely better residuals for streaming shows and some protections from AI. Fran Drescher, an actor and the president of SAG-AFTRA, made a convincing case that this was a historic victory for labor and women’s empowerment, and recently said Meryl Streep was urging her to run for president of the United States.

The sequel to this saga, however, looks a lot darker. Like previous strikes, this one was instigated by a genuine reckoning for the industry. Every time there is a new technological innovation—TV sets, video cassettes, pay TV, digital downloads—Hollywood has an identity crisis. The latest tech foil was streaming. It was an exciting, generative, endlessly replicated innovation—or seemed that way until everyone started to slow down and look at the numbers. Disney, for example, has lost $10 billion on its streaming service since 2019. And many writers, actors, and studio heads felt it wasn’t working for them either. (Maybe it worked for viewers, on the nights they didn’t feel paralyzed by infinite choice.)

What were the hard truths revealed by the strike? And what will the next year of entertainment look like? In this episode of Radio Atlantic, I talk to Atlantic staff writers David Sims and Shirley Li, who cover the entertainment industry, about the coming realignment of Hollywood and what we should all expect. The term “river of junk” comes up, but so does the term “focus more on curation,” which should tell you that your evenings at home on the couch are at a critical juncture.

Listen to the conversation here:

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts

The following is a transcript of the episode:

Reporter 1: Hollywood studios and striking actors reached a deal late on Wednesday, all but ending one of the longest labor crises in the history of the entertainment industry.

Reporter 2: The union says the contract includes bonuses for streaming as well as AI protections.

Reporter 3: Everybody is ecstatic and excited. This is what the union leaders are describing as historic, as extraordinary.

Hanna Rosin: I’m Hanna Rosin. This is Radio Atlantic. Last week, the union representing Hollywood actors ended a months-long strike. By all accounts, it was a complete victory for the actors, just as it was for striking Hollywood writers weeks earlier.

Both SAG (that’s the Screen Actors Guild) and the WGA (Writers Guild of America) got a lot of what they were asking for, especially more pay from streaming and protections from AI.

[Music]

This was the first dual strike in Hollywood in over 60 years. And historically, these big strikes tend to come at moments of major change in the entertainment industry.

In the ’50s and ’60s, it was TV sets. In the ’80s, video cassettes and pay TV. And then in the 2000s, downloads of shows and movies. In each of these cases, actors or writers went on strike to earn their fair share.

Now the big transition is streaming. Netflix created this new model, movie studios and TV networks scrambled to replicate it, and the streaming wars created an absurd amount of new shows. But the writers and actors making them often earned far less than they did in traditional distribution models.

Now what does this mean for us, the viewers? It means that the way we’ve gotten used to being entertained—these infinite possibilities on an ever-increasing number of streaming services—that has got to change. Because it doesn’t work for the writers. It doesn’t work for the actors. It doesn’t work for the studios. And for viewers, the seemingly endless parade of pluses—it can’t last forever.

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Rosin: So today I am talking to David Sims and Shirley Li, two Atlantic staff writers who cover Hollywood, about life after the strikes.

David, Shirley, to understand what we’re going to talk about, let’s quickly set the stage. What happened in the strike? Like, what surprised you over the months that it was happening?

David Sims: The thing that surprised me the most was the actors going on strike. That was everything to this entire story. That the actors went on strike concurrently with the writers, you know—a little after, you know, because the writers went on strike first, obviously—turned this from, to me, a fairly typical narrative of labor relations in Hollywood where the writers are often on their own, to a kind of, This is an existential moment the studios have maybe failed to confront and now must confront. And that shifted the entire narrative to me.

Shirley Li: What was most surprising, I think, was just how unprepared the studios seemed. And their reactions to the writers and the actors going on strike was just so not in their favor. Both of these strikes lasted more than 100 days, and it was the first time that the writers and actors have struck together since the ’60s. So it was a huge movement.

Rosin: David, when you said it was an existential moment, did you mean that the actors and the writers were putting out a message that something fundamentally wasn’t working?

Sims: A confrontation was maybe not going to happen over how Hollywood makes things if it was just the writers on strike. Joining the actors into it—and obviously, you know, dragging it out through many months—was a siren to the entire industry of, like, This streaming model, the way things have progressed in terms of making movies and TV, and the lack of public data about who watches anything, and the, you know, the blind leading the blind in terms of what’s even popular, that’s just not going to work going forward. We can’t all just pretend that there’s no money to go around or that we can, you know, sink hundreds of millions of dollars into unprofitable things.

So in my opinion, and I don’t know what the future holds, obviously, but I think this is probably a good thing for Hollywood to have realized about itself.

Rosin: Right. So they could no longer ignore the fact that there were giant, fundamental, existential questions that they were failing to look at.

Shirley, why don’t we first look at it from the writers’ perspective. It seemed like they weren’t just talking about straightforward pay increases, but a model—the streaming model—that made getting paid fairly kind of impossible.

Li: When you look at the ’07–’08 strike, the last one, it was more about pay than it was about the ability to make a living as a writer in Hollywood. So this time around, that was the overdue question, I’d say: Just how, how has the streaming model and the ramp up in quote-unquote “content,” especially in this post-pandemic period, how has that affected the ability for writers to write and have a career in Hollywood? You know, the streaming model has meant shorter episode orders, fewer freelance script assignments, the death of a ladder to a career. That was maybe the big question. It’s just kind of like, How do writers make a living?

Once the actors joined in, I think the question became: What do people value about Hollywood and the art that they’re making? Do viewers have an understanding of how much work goes into making what you watch?

Sims: The last strike was fought over, you know, prior issues. The internet was sort of a part of it, but stuff like streaming, making shows, had largely just kind of been consigned to, like, Well, that’s so experimental. Let’s let them make this stuff cheaply and we can sort of figure it out later. Like, Let’s let them not pay us too much.

By the time this was roaring around post-pandemic, post- the sort of streaming revolutions that have happened in the last few years, that was no longer something you could kind of just put to the side. You couldn’t just say, like, Yeah, well, Netflix, they’re trying something out.

Now it was sort of like, This is such a huge quadrant, we must make it make more sense.

Rosin: Right. So this strike was long overdue in resolving some old issues that Netflix and other studios had kind of put aside for a while. And then came this new issue, which was AI. What happened there?

Sims: To me, if Netflix in 2010 making shows is considered experimental, AI is considered basically like 99 percent unknown, right? We don’t really totally understand the ways that we can imagine scenarios that are sort of frightening to consider: oh, AI writing whole TV shows all by itself, or actors being turned into digital robots that studios control forever.

Obviously a lot of that is fanciful, but the way that AI had accelerated from something completely marginal to something that was sort of like at the forefront of technological discussion this year, I think both unions and the Directors Guild (who didn’t go on strike) felt like they had to establish a bulwark in this contract that could be built upon. Basically, You aren’t allowed to do much with this without our say so. We don’t even know what it is entirely.

Rosin: So it’s not so much about anything so specific as it is, Whatever decisions you’re going to start making about this, we participate in that decision-making process.

Li: I think it really is just a conceptual thing at this point. Both unions kind of just wanted to set up guardrails. I think this is more specific to the WGA, but it’s kind of like in the ’07–’08 strike, when they were just talking about, you know, the internet producing content and entertainment. It’s like David said, it was so experimental. And so they paid a little bit of attention to it, but then in the years since, it’s like, Oh, goodness. This is so huge, and we’re definitely not earning what we think we should be earning. We don’t even know how many people are watching the stuff that’s exclusively online, that’s exclusively streaming.

So I think that really caught them off guard. And so this time, AI similarly is, like, this conceptual thing where you don’t really know the specifics of how it’ll be deployed. But because of that, it seems even scarier, and so more necessary to just have this language that’s just setting up guardrails.

Rosin: Maybe the fear is that they could all just be one day disposable. David, was that already starting to happen? Were there other ways that streaming has been fundamentally changing their lives as creative people?

Sims: There are all these issues that are—if you just think about TV: The way TV used to be made was uniform. These seasons would run, usually for an entire year, 22 episodes or so. They would have big, robust writing rooms that were an opportunity for young writers to grow and more experienced writers to earn better, and all that.

And then streaming comes along, and more limited stuff comes along, and everything starts to get messed with. Suddenly you’ve got one guy writing an entire show, or you’ve got just a couple people. And this is a lot of the stuff that the WGA was fighting about, which is sort of, like, You’re taking away our career ladders, and you’re taking away our chances to earn and to learn.

Add AI into that mix in the future, right, and then you can just sort of imagine everything getting more extreme. You have prestige stuff from all-star people that is made at a high level, and then you have this river of junk that is created by AI and shepherded along by a couple writers, maybe, who just sort of tweak it to make sense. Where is the middle? It seems to be shrinking in terms of the stuff that gets made and in terms of the people who get hired.

Rosin: Oh my God, that is the most relatable that Hollywood’s ever felt to me. It feels like the way you played out the metaphor, it’s like: Hollywood is America.

Sims: Well, but that’s the thing. And we saw this, as Shirley said, with the studio playbook—which has always been the same—which is basically like, These writers are going on strike. They got the best job in the world. They make so much money. Like, how dare they? Right? You know, We’ll just sweat them out.

That’s always been the playbook in any of these fights. And this time, you got, of course, the message from the writers and the actors of like, You can’t kill us, because we’re already dead. You can sweat us out as much as you want, but we hate our lives, currently. So, [they] are not exactly about to be like, Oh no, we have to get back to our current crappy status.

They felt like, No, we will hold out as long as we possibly can to get a real deal. And then the public reaction is like, Yeah, I kind of get where they’re coming from. Like, I actually sympathize with these writer guys. No, their plight makes sense to me.

I think that took studios by surprise over and over again.

Rosin: And what do the studio heads think about all this? That’s after the break.

[Music]

Reporter 1: The cost of watching streaming services is up by 25 percent. Hulu, Peacock, Apple TV, Netflix, Disney—all raising prices.

Reporter 2: And then there’s Disney. It lost $512 million on its streaming business in just one quarter. It lost 11 million subscribers. But the stock is up this morning because it’s raising prices.

Reporter 3: Streaming services are losing big money on streaming. NBC, our parent company, which owns Peacock, acknowledges it loses money but says it’s worth it to be part of the future of television.

Rosin: So, we’ve talked about the writers. Let’s look at this from the studio-executive perspective. What brutal reality was no longer ignorable about this whole business model?

Sims: There’s long been economic models in Hollywood that make sense, that have existed for decades, both filmmaking and TV and stuff, of how to make money. You know, TV: You write your show, you sell ads against it, and people watch it. You put a movie in theaters, and people buy tickets to see it.

Streaming, obviously, ignores all of that. And Netflix built such an empire by deficit spending its way into creating a giant library that people feel is essential to subscribe to, and that’s worked for them. I’m not here to say, like, Netflix is going bankrupt tomorrow. The problem is that these old, lumbering studios in Hollywood decided, like, Oh God, Netflix is, you know, 10 miles ahead of us. We all have to do the same thing.

So they all spent billions of dollars worth to create their streaming services, which are of less and less interest to subscribers, who are kind of like, I have Netflix. Maybe I have another one or two of these. Like, do I need Paramount+? You know, Do I need, like, you know, AMC+? Do I need all this stuff?

And so a lot of these networks are now floundering. And we see these baffling decisions—of HBO Max being like, Let’s cut a lot of this Sesame Street stuff off our service. And I’m like, Does that make any business sense? You know, Let’s pull these movies off that we made. Let’s just remove them so no one can see them.

Rosin: Mm-hmm.

Sims: And, like, when you, you know, you make a call or you send an email, they’re like, Well, you know, actually taxwise it makes more money to not have that thing exist. And I’m like, Well, then that’s not a sign of a healthy economical picture.

Li: Yeah, like, if these strikes have revealed anything, it’s that Hollywood is a very poorly oiled machine. I mean, I think these studios, these networks overestimated our collective attention spans for platforms that we would subscribe to.

I mean, it is rather simple. They realized if we’re gonna do streaming, which is how most people were watching things, then you need subscribers, because that’s really the only way you’re gonna turn a profit. So to grow subscribers, then you need things in your library that are gonna attract them.

So to build things that in your library are going to definitely attract people, you launch stuff that’s based on existing IP. So then you sink a gajillion dollars into making film and television, and then you don’t maybe get as many subscribers as you want. And so now you’re very worried about turning a profit.

Rosin: So I think what I want to think about this is: It’s their fault. They’re bad business people. And also they just assumed that we didn’t value originality and creativity.

Sims: Sure. I mean, yes, I don’t think anyone’s been doing a particularly amazing job. So, Disney is sort of the lead example of a major Hollywood studio right now in any sense. And for years, obviously, the backbone of Disney was its animated films and its, you know, sort of place in the culture through that.

But you would see them for years try to figure out, like, How do we appeal to teen boys? You know, they would struggle and struggle and struggle. And then comes the 2010s.

They’re like, Forget it. We’ll just buy the stuff that appeals to the world. Let’s buy Star Wars. Let’s buy Marvel Comics. Let’s just bring these pillars of intellectual property into our big tent. And, obviously, for quite a while, that really worked for them. There was a lot of public excitement about what they did with those properties.

And once again, Hollywood—which is, as Shirley was saying, not a well-oiled machine. Everyone else is like, Well, we should just do that too. But they’re doing it with lesser and lesser pieces of intellectual property. They’re trying to spin franchises out of not much, or they’re trying to, like, get this stuff on its feet really quickly.

And, as it always goes, audiences get kind of sick of it. They recognize something after a while that is derivative, and they start to get bored of it. That is obviously something that’s happening very profoundly right now. Like, you know, with The Marvels, which just came out this weekend (it didn’t do very well), there’s a general sense in the air of like, Okay, the sort of playbook of the last 10, 15 years is over.

That’s how it always goes in Hollywood, though. Like, that is the oldest story in Hollywood. Like, as much as someone might want to bemoan the Marvel Cinematic Universe, take a look at the blockbusters that were coming out in the mid-2000s before it emerged, and you see Hollywood struggling to figure out what people want. There’s always that sort of moment of reinvention that comes.

Next year is going to be kind of weird. It’s going to be light on a lot of this stuff. And, you know, one hopes other stuff will fill its place, and people will go to the movies and watch TV, and there’ll be, you know, more interesting things. And Hollywood will copy that for a while, and eventually everyone will get sick of it, and over and over and over. And that’s how it goes.

Like, that’s sort of the most optimistic view I can have of this.

Rosin: So is Disney, to drill in, actually in trouble? Like, from the way you guys are talking, there’s a panic, and the model that they’ve been following—or thought they were following—over the last couple of years is not making anybody any money. So, do you just have faith in the fact that they’ll pivot and find another model that will keep them afloat for a while? Or is this an actual crisis moment?

Li: I mean, look, Disney+ is definitely in the red this year, right? Like, they’re not making any money. But this is true of so many studios, you know. They replicate the lowest common denominator for any other success. And Disney is maybe the most visible example of a lot of franchise projects that they announce like crazy that are all getting kind of just shuttered or delayed.

I think you’re going to see that outside of Disney, too, though. There’s a lot of structural adjustment. I mean, after these strikes, if they’re going to have to pay people more, these studios aren’t going to increase their budgets. They’re going to cut back on production.

So right now, I get the sense that they’re focusing a little bit more on curation. You see Kevin Feige stepping away from doing Star Wars. There’s only one Marvel project coming out next year. There’s this idea of like, Okay, yeah, let’s slow down. Let’s figure out what people actually want.

But like David said, it’s a cycle. They’re going to see what people want, possibly take away the wrong lessons, and then we’re going to see a wave of very similar things, and then the audience is going to get tired, and then you just have to start all over again.

Rosin: But in that sense, it seems good what happened, sort of like the strikes forced a kind of curation, less of a reliance on churning things out, and more of an emphasis on good—I was going to say the word content, but I’m not going to say it.

Sims: Someone has to say content at least once. It’s unavoidable in any Hollywood discussion.

Li: Content, content, content.

Rosin: Content! No, because in a way you’re saying the human tastes win out. Our boredom with terrible things sort of ends up influencing the movie-making culture in the end.

Sims: It does in the end, yes. It usually takes maybe a little too long, because these are big battleships they have to turn around. As much as it’s like, Oh, are superhero movies done? No, there’s a lot of superhero movies on the release calendars still, and we may be in a situation where none of them connect and it’s a huge problem. It’s more likely it’ll be kind of a mixed bag.

But there will be a shift from the dominance of one thing to the dominance of whatever’s next. Obviously, the big story this year was Barbie and Oppenheimer, which demonstrated huge public appetite for (1) the movies, the collective experience of going to see a movie, and (2) you know, just like, something different.

You know, people do like to see good things. Like, that compulsion exists.

I think during COVID, there was the fear of like, Oh God, is it over? Does nobody want to, you know, pay to see anything anymore? And it’s like, No, no, no. They’ll go if you give them something to see.

Rosin: Yeah. I would think you, David, of all people, being the staunch defender of quality theatrical-released movies that you are, might feel hopeful after the strike. Like, maybe better-quality things will come now.

Sims: I mean, that’s—I don’t want to sound that optimistic. I mean, I think that the peak-TV era—like thinking back to TV, you know, this sort of concept has been much discussed over the last 10 years: There’s so many more shows. There’s so many different networks trying to make original TV and all that. And it’s, you know—this is getting untenable. There’s hundreds and hundreds of scripted shows a year.

That was ending no matter what. It was ending with or without a strike, and with or without a reckoning in Hollywood over what things should cost to make.

Rosin: Mm-hmm.

Sims: But I do think now that there is maybe a little more of a sensible and realistic price tag to stuff, there’s going to be this kind of awkward and difficult shift of, Yeah, maybe there’s less stuff going around, and maybe, you know, maybe the projects are a little harder to come by, but probably for the best.

Like, so much stuff gets lost in the shuffle right now. So much work gets kind of ignored or not even shown, it might be good to narrow the field a little bit. And that might lead to an emphasis on quality.

I sound hopelessly optimistic saying that.

Rosin: No, you really didn’t, actually. Your voice sounded—the dubiousness was held in your last syllable.

Sims: I have a little dubiousness.

Rosin: So, what should we, the audiences, expect? Like, first in the immediate aftermath of the strike, for you guys who watch the industry very closely, what’s gonna make us happy on our sets and in the movie theater? And then in the long run, what happens in theaters and on TV?

Li: Well, productions are going to come back. Right after Thanksgiving is when a bunch of studio shows are going to start shooting again. So by early 2024, some of your favorite shows will probably be airing their new, shortened seasons. I mean, writers’ rooms have been open for more than a month now because the writers’ strike ended at the end of September.

So, you know, scripts have been written. Once productions resume later this month, I think you’ll get some TV that maybe you’ve been waiting to see. Maybe some. You know, if you’re, if you’re a big fan of the Chicago dramas, I know those are coming back soon.

Rosin: You mean like lower, easy-production stuff that doesn’t require a lot of visual effects and editing?

Li: Yes, exactly.

Rosin: And David, what happens to movies? Theaters?

Sims: 2024 is gonna be a little weird. I cannot deny that. It’s not like there won’t be movies. You know, there’s plenty of stuff on the schedule. Much of it is franchise material and sequels and reboots. You’ve always wanted a new Gladiator movie, right? Here you go. Or, you know, Beetlejuice is back. Everyone’s been waiting.

Like, not to dismiss those projects. They may well be good or resonate with people. But it’s a calendar that’s definitely light on what’s been an economic driver of Hollywood in the last few years, superhero movies especially, and kind of family movies in general, which have taken a little longer to return to the big screens. A lot of that got shunted to streaming out of this idea of like, Oh, well, families are just locked in their homes all the time, right? A misguided idea, in my opinion.

And probably it’s going to mean a year of hand-wringing, a year of like, What are we gonna do? Disney barely has anything. Like, How do we keep people interested?

And it will be kind of ultimately a little meaningless because it will be a year that is filled with Hollywood making stuff, trying to prepare for the next pivot. That’s the way Hollywood works. Everything takes a couple years to kind of reach our shores.

Rosin: Right, right.

Sims: So it’ll be an odd in-between time.

Rosin: Right. So we should read a novel for the next six months. Just read a lot.

Sims: Everyone should just log off and read a novel. And, obviously, there’s going to be some big election next year. I haven’t really looked into it, but I think that may, that may drive a lot of conversation.

Li: It’d be nice if people went and touched grass and voted.

Rosin: All those other things. So just, just to leave people with a little bit of entertainment excitement, you guys as critics, are there any projects that you are looking forward to?

Li: Oh, hell yeah! Right, David?

Sims: So much stuff. Yeah, I think 2024 in film kind of looks awesome.

Rosin: Okay, bring it.

Li: I think, at the top of my list: Dune 2.

Sims: Right, stuff that got pushed from this year.

Li: Yeah, stuff that got pushed. There’s, like, films like The Fall Guy that I’m like, Well, we’ll see what the Gosling has as the stuntman in a film that I’m not sure will be good. But look, I’m excited that there’s stuff that I don’t know much about, and then there’s sequels that I am excited to see.

Sims: I mean, Bong Joon Ho’s follow-up to Parasite will come out in March. It’s a big sci-fi movie called Mickey 17. George Miller’s follow-up to Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa, will come out in May. There are things like that, that are, you know, quote-unquote “IP” but are a little more auteur-driven movies that are probably a little weirder.

Kevin Costner is releasing two parts of some kind of gigantic Western saga that he’s, like, sinking his fortune into. And, you know, Jordan Peele is making a new movie. And, there’s another Joker movie, and, you know, that one, that went so well for the culture last time.

Li: Just can’t wait for the discourse. (Laughs.)

Sims: So there’s plenty of sort of big-scale stuff that I’m excited for. But, of course, the story of movies, especially every year, is like, there’s 20 projects you don’t know about yet, you know, that are on a smaller scale that are waiting to be discovered. Every year it’s the end of cinema. Every year, I don’t know, it kind of muddles through.

Rosin: Yeah. I feel like the category that you guys have resigned yourself to—like you’ve resigned yourself to IP, but weird IP.

Sims: Right, can we at least have fresh or interesting reboots and remakes and sequels? Yes.

Li: Yeah. I mean, reboots, remakes, sequels—they’ll exist for forever, right? But just, like, if they say something fresh, I’m on board. If they’re fun, I’m on board.

Rosin: Well, thank you guys for joining me today.

Li: Thank you.

Sims: Thank you so much for having us. Yeah.

[Music]

Rosin: This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Kevin Townsend. It was edited by Claudine Ebeid, fact-checked by Will Gordon, and engineered by Rob Smierciak. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer for Atlantic Audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. I’m Hanna Rosin. Thank you for listening.