Springtide Research Institute’s Research Associate Dr. Hannah Evans was featured on the podcast Spark Dialogue – A Generation Spark Podcast. You can see an excerpt of this conversation in part below, but we encourage you to visit Spotify to listen to the piece in its entirety.

I really think empathy is so foundational to why I got interested in the research that I do and how it shapes what I do now. I really am just so inspired by young people. I spoke just a few days ago with someone who is an organizer at the Hindu Society of Minneapolis, and she is a young person herself and she is incredible. She had been to the White House, and she was so incredibly well-spoken about her work and what they do at the Hindu Society and why they do it. I just learn so much from talking to young people about what it means to be in relationship.

We do a lot of interviews with young people and so one of the things we learned, from interviewing young people this year for our big report, was that most young people don’t actually want to give up a relationship even when there’s political disagreement or social disagreement. The relationship is so important to them. Young people care so much about connection and I think that’s really moving. We have so much to learn from young people about what it means to be in a relationship with people even when we don’t always agree and learning how to disagree well. I think young people really want to learn how to disagree well. I find that really inspiring and I don’t think it’s possible to have belonging without learning how to disagree well.

Click here to listen to the full episode.