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  After hearing Heather’s voice speak to him in the cab of the truck, Alfred thought for a while about how to start the conversation. Eventually, he said, ‘How long you been a tow-truck driver? You’re really good at what you do – the way you put that car up.’ The driver was responsive, and the two men got talking. ‘We found out that we both had three kids, and that we both worked multiple jobs, because we wanted to make sure they had the best future possible.’ As the truck drew near the tyre shop, it was about 1 a.m. Alfred asked the difficult question. ‘I said, “I just want to ask you something. Why do you have that flag in the back?”’

  The truck was still moving, but everything seemed to stop. The driver didn’t answer straight away. He had been driving with one hand; now he placed both hands on the wheel and stared straight ahead. Then he said, ‘To support my heritage.’ ‘Did your great-grandfather fight in the Civil War?’ Alfred asked, genuinely interested. The driver seemed unsure. ‘I think it was a great-uncle or something,’ he said. ‘OK,’ said Alfred. ‘You’re a public figure. You’re towing people’s cars. A lot of people are going to feel uncomfortable about that flag. I was, at first. But you and I, we have a lot in common.’ The driver agreed.

  At the shop, Alfred said thank you and got out. His wife was on her way to pick him up but hadn’t arrived yet. The truck stayed parked where it was. ‘I went and told him he could leave. He said, “It’s dark. You shouldn’t be out there by yourself.” So I knew he cared.’

  About a week later, Alfred got a call from the driver, who said he just wanted to check everything had gone OK. Alfred told him his daughter’s car had been fixed and thanked him for following up. ‘Oh and I just wanted you to know,’ said the driver, ‘I took the flag down.’

  * * *

  A few days after Heather’s death, her mother, Susan Bro, delivered a eulogy for her murdered daughter in front of millions watching across America and around the world. Bro had a message for Heather’s killer and his allies: ‘They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well guess what, you just magnified her.’ Those simple, defiant words instantly went viral, becoming a global headline for Bro’s speech. Powerful as they were, they overshadowed something about the speech that was perhaps less tweetable, but just as important. Rather than sanctifying her daughter, Bro described the unvarnished reality of living with a passionate, opinionated young woman:

  Oh, my gosh, dinner with her, we knew, was going to be an ordeal of listening. And conversation. And perhaps disagreement, but it was going to happen. And so, my husband would say, ‘OK, I’m going to go out in the car and play on my video game for a while.’ And she and I would talk, and I would listen. And we would negotiate, and I would listen.

  What made Susan Bro’s speech so special is that she didn’t just tell people to make a difference to the world, or to stay true to their beliefs. She also talked about how hard it is to disagree – yet how necessary it is for us to do it:

  Let’s have the uncomfortable dialogue. It ain’t easy sitting down and saying, ‘Well, why are you upset?’ It ain’t easy sitting down and going, ‘Yeah, well, I think this way. And I don’t agree with you, but I’m going to respectfully listen to what you have to say. We’re not going to sit around and shake hands and go ‘Kumbaya’ . . . The truth is, we are going to have our differences. We are going to be angry with each other. But let’s channel that anger, not into hate, not into violence, not into fear, but . . . into righteous action.

  Right now, there are people who are here willing to listen to one another and talk to one another. Last night in New England, they had a peaceful rally in Heather’s name to have some difficult dialogues. If you ever want to see what one of those dialogues looks like, look at her Facebook posts. I’m telling you, they were rough sometimes. But they were dialogues. And the conversations have to happen.

  Susan is a former teacher who lives with her second husband in a trailer park in Virginia, about a half-hour drive from Charlottesville. Since Heather’s death she has been on a personal mission to promote difficult political conversations. On Facebook and Twitter she tries to marshal tough, sometimes vitriolic arguments over race and politics. She is impressively polite to antagonists, even those who spout conspiracy theories about her daughter’s death.

  Bro does not, she told me, think everyone can be engaged in good faith. She doesn’t see much point in having dialogues with people who organise white nationalist rallies. But she is interested in reaching those who might have some passing sympathy with their cause.

  Twitter is a place where people stand on the corner and yell at each other. Children do that sometimes when they’re afraid and they don’t know what else to say. I think we can say more, but we’ve gotten into the habit of doing what’s easiest, which is just to yell and then block somebody. We’re not trying to learn from each other.

  Susan talked about finding the right context for connection.

  If I tell them I live in a trailer park, they instantly assume a certain set of political views and level of education. If I tell them I was a teacher, that changes perception again. Or I might tell them I love rock ’n’ roll. If you’re willing to be little transparent, you can open up the conversation.

  6. Let Go of the Rope

  To disagree well, you have to give up on trying to control what the other person thinks and feels.

  In 2013, a British man was arrested for planning to kidnap and murder a soldier. The suspect, who had a criminal history, had posted messages on social media in support of violent jihad. In a raid on his home, the police found a bag containing a hammer, a kitchen knife and a map with the location of a nearby army barracks.

  Shortly after his arrest, the suspect was interviewed by a counter-terrorism police officer. The interviewer wanted him to provide an account of his plan and to reveal with whom, if anyone, he had been conspiring. But the detainee – we will call him Nick – refused to divulge any information. Instead, he expounded grandiloquently on the evils of the British state for over half an hour with little interruption. When the interviewer attempted questions, Nick responded with scornful, finger-jabbing accusations of ignorance, naivety and moral weakness: ‘You don’t know how corrupt your own government is – and if you don’t care, then a curse upon you.’

  Watching a video of this encounter, it is just possible to discern Nick’s desire, beneath his ranting, to tell what he knows. In front of him, a copy of the Qur’an lies open. He says that he was acting for the good of the British people, and that he is willing to talk to the police because, as a man of God, he wants to prevent future atrocities. But he will not answer questions until he is sure that his questioner cares about Britain as much as he does: ‘The purpose of the interview is not to go through your little checklist so you can get a pat on the head. If I find you are a jobsworth, we are done talking, so be sincere.’

  It is impossible to watch the encounter without feeling tense. Periodically, Nick turns away from the interviewer and goes silent, or leaves the room, having taken offence at something said or not said. Each time he returns, Nick’s solicitor advises him not to speak. Nick ignores him, though in a sense he takes the advice: despite the verbiage, he tells his interviewer nothing.

  Nick: Tell me why I should tell you. What is the reason behind you asking me this question?

  Interviewer: I am asking you these questions because I need to investigate what has happened and know what your role was in these events.

  Nick: No, that’s your job – not your reason. I’m asking you why it matters to you.

  The interviewer, who has remained heroically calm in the face of Nick’s verbal barrage, is not able to move the encounter out of stalemate, and eventually his bosses recall him. When the new interviewer takes a seat, Nick resumes his inquisitorial stance. ‘Why are you asking me these questions?’ he says. ‘Think carefully about your reasons.’

  What would you say?

  The interviewer could simply repeat what the last interviewer had said; after all, it w
as the truth. But that would probably trigger the same response. I was struck, watching this video, by how it resembled arguments I have been in: ones where you get stuck in a battle of wills in which nobody wants to give an inch. Only when somebody shifts position or simply changes their tone is the conversation unblocked. You realise, the argument wasn’t really about what you thought you were arguing about. It was about who is in charge.

  The new interviewer begins speaking. ‘On the day we arrested you,’ he says,

  I believe that you had the intention of killing a British soldier or police officer. I don’t know the details of what happened, why you may have felt it needed to happen, or what you wanted to achieve by doing this. Only you know these things, Nick. If you are willing, you’ll tell me, and if you’re not, you won’t. I can’t force you to tell me – I don’t want to force you. I’d like you to help me understand. Would you tell me about what happened?

  The interviewer opens up his notebook, showing Nick its empty pages. ‘You see? I don’t even have a list of questions.’

  ‘That is beautiful,’ Nick says. ‘Because you have treated me with consideration and respect, yes I will tell you now.’ Nick went on to give a full account of the planned crime.

  * * *

  What was it about the second interviewer’s approach that meant Nick opened up? Laurence Alison thinks it was the way the interviewer spelt out, so clearly, that Nick did not have to talk. The worst way to get someone to share a secret is to tell them to do it.

  Laurence is a professor of forensic psychology at Liverpool University, and one of the world’s leading authorities on effective interrogation. I watched the video with him and with Emily Alison, a professional counsellor. Husband and wife, the Alisons are responsible for having constructed, in close co-operation with the British police, the world’s first empirically grounded model of effective interrogation.

  Pausing the video, Emily Alison grimaced. ‘When I watched this tape the first time I had to switch it off and walk away. I was so outraged, my heart was pounding in my chest. Of course, in the room, it’s one thousand times worse.’ Laurence nodded. ‘As the interviewer, what you want to say is, “You’re the one in the fucking seat, not me.” He’s trying to control you, so you try and control him. But then it escalates.’ The moment an interrogation turns into a struggle for dominance, it fails. As we watched the Nick video, an officer in Britain’s counter-terrorist police force was in the room. ‘Cops are used to being in control,’ he remarked. ‘A big thing we talk about is leaving your ego at the door.’

  Emily met Laurence after arriving in the UK from her home in Wisconsin to study forensic psychology at Liverpool University. Laurence, then a PhD student, was already a rising star of the field. As Laurence built an academic career, Emily, who had worked as a counsellor in Wisconsin prisons, started a consultancy helping social workers counsel families afflicted by domestic abuse. Laurence sometimes got calls for advice from the police on the conduct of tricky interrogations and he would partner with Emily, whose counselling experience had taught her a lot about interviewing difficult people. The Alisons soon gained a reputation for unlocking the most challenging suspects.

  In 2010, Laurence was offered funding by a US government agency that was commissioning research into non-coercive methods of interrogation. He set his sights on an audacious goal: persuading Britain’s counter-terrorism unit to give him access to video of interviews with terrorist suspects. Two years and over a hundred phone calls later, they agreed. The videos included interviews with Irish paramilitaries, al-Qaida operatives, and far-right extremists. Some were incompetent bunglers caught up in something they didn’t understand, others were highly dangerous operatives.

  The Alisons analysed the interviews in minute detail, using an intricate taxonomy of interrogation behaviours. They studied the tactics employed by suspects (total silence? humming?), the manner in which the interviewer asked questions (confrontational? authoritative? passive?), and, crucially, the amount and quality of information yielded by the suspect. They gathered data on 150 different variables in all. When the process was complete, a statistical analysis of the data was performed. The results showed that interviewers who struck up better relationships with suspects elicited more and better information from them. The Alisons had made the first empirical proof of what had, until then, been something between a hypothesis and an insider secret: rapport is the closest thing interrogators have to a truth serum.

  That wasn’t the full extent of the Alisons’ discovery. They also got further than anyone else towards defining what, exactly, rapport is. Despite its reputation among elite practitioners, the concept was vaguely defined and poorly understood, and often conflated with simply being nice. In fact, Laurence observed, interviewers could fail because they were too nice, acquiescing too quickly to the demands of a suspect. The best interviewers knew when to be sympathetic, and when to be direct and forthright. What they never did was make the interviewee feel like he was being pressured to speak. Interrogators who emphasised the suspect’s ability to make their own choices were more likely to be successful. For instance, ineffective interrogators tended to mumble through the legal declaration of rights at the start of the interview (‘You have the right to remain silent . . .’). The successful ones are more likely to make a big deal out of it, explicitly emphasising the suspect’s right not to talk. In Laurence’s paraphrase, they might say something like, ‘I can’t tell you what to do. This guy [the solicitor] can’t tell you what to do. It’s up to you. You can leave the room now if you like. I’m just really interested in how you got here.’ Then they listen.

  During the years when she worked on police cases with Laurence, Emily Alison had come to see interrogation as a close relation of addiction counselling. Both involve getting someone who does not want to be in the same room as you to talk about something they do not want to talk about. As she pointed out to me, around two decades ago the practice of addiction counselling was transformed by the incorporation of a simple truth: nobody likes being told what to do.

  * * *

  In 1980, a 23-year-old South African called Stephen Rollnick started work as a nurse’s aide in a rehabilitation centre for alcoholics. The centre’s clinicians took a confrontational approach to the job. They believed their clients were lying to themselves, and others, about the severity of their problem. Before setting the patient on the road to recovery, the clinician needed to challenge the patient on their dishonesty and strip away their illusions – to break their resistance.

  This clinic was not atypical. The post-war medical consensus on addiction treatment regarded patients as wayward children who needed to be taught how to behave. The counsellor’s job was to tell the addict the truth about their condition, and, if they denied it, to do so again more forcefully until they accepted it. To Rollnick, this seemed bound to poison the relationship. In the coffee room, he observed that the off-duty conversations of the counsellors were tinged with contempt for their patients.

  One of the clients under Rollnick’s care was an alcoholic called Anthony, who would leave group sessions having barely said a word. One day, he walked out for the last time. Rollnick discovered the next morning that Anthony had shot his wife and then himself in front of their young children. Shattered by this tragedy, Rollnick resigned from the centre and left South Africa, settling in the UK. He embarked on a course in clinical psychology at Cardiff University and began to search for a different way of helping addicts.

  A couple of years in, Rollnick came across a new paper written by a young American psychologist called William Miller and was startled by the extent to which he agreed with what it said. Miller, who specialised in the treatment of alcoholism, argued that counsellors were having the wrong kind of conversations with the addicts. Miller understood them to be caught between a desire to change and a desire to maintain their habit, and being told what to do had a perverse effect: as soon as they felt themselves being judged or instructed, they thought of all th
e reasons why they did not want to change. By positioning himself as an authority figure, the counsellor might make himself feel better, but he reinforced the addict’s determination to carry on.

  Miller proposed an alternative approach. Rather than insisting on change and instigating confrontation, counsellors should focus on building a relationship of trust and mutual understanding. The patient should be allowed to talk through her experiences without ever feeling the need to defend her choices. Eventually, she will begin making the arguments for change herself. Then, because she has reached her own decision, rather than acting on someone else’s instruction, she will be much more motivated to change. Miller called this approach ‘Motivational Interviewing’, or, MI. Rollnick began using MI in his clinical practice, with transformative results. One day, he met Miller at a conference, and told him about his enthusiasm for MI. The two men ended up writing a book together, developing Miller’s ideas.

  In the book, Miller and Rollnick note that most addicts sincerely want to change. They understand the impact that their habit is having on their lives and on those around them. They want it to stop, but at the same time, they want to carry on. They are ambivalent. Ambivalence is often misunderstood. It doesn’t mean not caring about what happens. It means the opposite: an ambivalent person has an excess of motivation: she wants two incompatible things, which battle against each other in her psyche. This isn’t just true of addicts: we all experience ambivalence. Miller and Rollnick showed how it can manifest itself over the course of a sentence: