Episode 84: Good Conflict with Amanda Ripley and Hélène Biandudi Hofer

Available March 24, 2026

Is conflict always something to be avoided? Amanda Ripley and Hélène Biandudi Hofer, journalists and trained conflict mediators, are on a mission to answer that question, and to help shift both narratives and practices around how we recognize and engage with conflict in our everyday lives. They sit down with Morva McDonald to reflect on the stories we tell, how conflict shapes everything from our news cycle to our relationships, and why we all need to develop new skills to help us move towards healthier forms of resolution.

Guests: Amanda Ripley and Hélène Biandudi Hofer

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “So with good conflict, we might have these conversations where our emotions are all over the map, but at least we're experiencing them, than just stuck in this loop of, you know, feeling revenge and wanting revenge and deep anger. But there are these flashes of surprise and good conflict when we're having these good conflict conversations. There are these moments of clarity, opportunities for humor. Who would have thought that potentially that could happen, but there are sparks of that. There's this openness to, that I mentioned, to hearing the other side. So our emotions kind of go on this roller coaster ride, but we get to a place of understanding and it's understanding something on a deeper level about ourselves, about the other person, or about the situation that we're facing.” (12:29)
• “One of the things that we work with people to identify in that map are these four fire starters, which are things that tend to really distort conflict and make things go sideways very quickly. And so one is humiliation. And another is conflict entrepreneurs. These are people who exploit and inflame conflict for their own ends. And then corruption. So when institutions aren't trusted, whether they should be or not, that's another kind of trip wire into high conflict. And then false binaries or splitting, kind of when you separate people into two camps, good and evil. So you see that in how we talk about people, right?” (17:46)
• “Oftentimes with conflict entrepreneurs, there is some kind of internal pain that just has not been dealt with, right? And they are spreading that internal pain around and around and around. And I think, to this idea of, well, my gosh, they're so destructive. How in the world do we even think about managing them? I think just recognizing first that there is some deep pain there that they are not aware of, that's a helpful first step in thinking about developing a plan to manage them.” (23:32)

Related Episodes: 80; 78; 77; 66; 64; 62

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 83: Mattering LIVE Episode With Jennifer Wallace

Available January 22, 2026

What if we could unlock the secret to a life of deep connection and purpose? That’s the premise of Jennifer Wallace’s new book, Mattering. In this special live edition of New View EDU, recorded on January 15, 2026, Jennifer shares everything she has learned about the importance of mattering with NAIS President Debra Wilson.

Guest: Jennifer Wallace

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “Researchers who study it say that after the drive for food and shelter, it is the drive, the motivation to matter, that shapes human behavior for better or for worse. So when we feel like we matter, we show up fully, we engage, we connect, we contribute. When we are made to feel like we don't matter, we can either turn against ourselves, become anxious, depressed, turn to substances to try to alleviate the pain, or lash out in anger, right? Road rage, online attacks, political extremes, these are desperate attempts to say, oh, I don't matter? I'll show you I matter.” (10:03)
• “Something like 70% of the workforce, employees are reporting feeling disengaged. The way I view disengagement through the lens of mattering is that when we feel, as individual workers, like we don't matter, for whatever reason that is, it's a painful feeling. It releases these painful neurochemicals in our brains, and to stop that, if we don't feel like we have a voice or agency, to stop it, is to disengage. That's the coping strategy that we employ.” (16:40)
• “And so what I argue in the book to leaders, again, not just school leaders, to anybody, is that mattering at work is critical. If we want to support, if we know that children's resilience rests on the resilience of the adults in their lives, and we know that adults spend the majority of their waking hours in the workplace. If we can go and make adults feel like they matter at work, that is how we can bring caregivers and parents home to their kids as their best selves, sturdy adults, so that they could act as the first responders to those kids' struggles. You cannot do it if you are constantly beaten down at your job. You cannot show up as your best self.” (52:19)

Related Episodes: 79; 78; 77; 72; 60; 54; 51

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 82: The New Dream Schools

With Jeff Selingo

Available November 18, 2025

What is a “Dream School?” Almost since the college admissions process began, students have had ideas about where they dream they’ll end up after high school, and increasingly, those “dream schools” have existed on a very short list of what we think of as prestigious, name-brand institutions. But what if we’re wrong about that list? What if everything we think we know about the factors that make a college great has been misguided? Higher education expert Jeff Selingo joins host Debra Wilson for a frank discussion of what needs to change in our approach to college admissions, and his new book, Dream School.

Guest: Jeff Selingo

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “I want to bring back some normalcy to high school so that not everything is about, not everything you do is about getting into college and into the right college, that you're doing things because you want to challenge yourself. You enjoy them, you want to try new things out…There's so much pressure around me to apply to a certain set of schools, and I wanna change that conversation.” (6:08)
• “The November 1 deadlines, the October 15th deadlines now, even earlier deadlines, has just moved up the entire college search process now really into the junior year. And then now what used to happen in the junior year is happening in the sophomore year. So you're not even getting through half of high school without really thinking about college.” (11:33)
• “I mean, the big unknown here, Debra, is the role of AI in the job market. What are the jobs of the future really going to be and what are they going to need? What are the skill sets they're going to need? It was pretty certain over the last 10 years that we've seen, one of the reasons why liberal arts colleges have kind of gone out of favor is because we've seen a huge shift in majors to the business and STEM because parents thought that's where the jobs were…Now parents are asking, huh, what is the, now what's the next major? And by the way, maybe this brings the liberal arts back into vogue and maybe the liberal arts institutions with their ability to have a mix of problem solving and communication and critical thinking and bring in hands-on learning to that, that might bring them back in a way that we didn't quite expect.” (34:14)

Related Episodes: 76; 74; 63; 44; 36; 29; 22

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.