Paul Ingles interviews John Hoffman and Kahane Cooperman, co-directors of the film documentary The Antidote

PI: Congratulations on this moving and wonderful film.
What set the two of you on this path to creating this really unique celebration of compassion and kindness in the documentary called "The Antidote"?

JH: I’ll start. In 2017 and 2018 I was really disturbed by the growing sense of hate and division in the country.
I had a prior relationship with a very large non-profit health system that had funded some public health media work that I had done. I started a conversation with their CEO, a man named Lloyd Dean who has put kindness at the center of their mission as healthcare providers.

In talking to him and his senior leadership about how that came about, I realized that this was a really strong commitment on their part. It was a very authentic dive into kindness. They were funding a lot of work at places like Berkeley and Stanford.
I just made an offhand remark. I said, “Would you ever be interested in doing a documentary about kindness?” That took off. It wasn’t long before they committed to an independent documentary of which we would be given total control to explore kindness.

I didn’t know what that would be, but I knew that I wanted to tackle this with a cocreator. I started talking to a lot of people in my world of documentary film. Some people I respect tremendously, Dawn Porter and Fisher Stevens, both great filmmakers said, “You have to talk to Kahane Cooperman.” I reached out and we had breakfast. I’ll let Kahane take the story from there.

PI: Why did they have to talk to you Kahane?

KC: I had previously made a short documentary that was nominated for a 2017 Oscar. It specifically focused on how a small act of kindness has an incredible ripple effect beyond just the donation of an item. It connects strangers. It brings histories together.

Between that and some of my other work, they thought that I would have a good insight perspective and the humanistic viewpoint to potentially be a good partner for John on this.

Like John, when we had that breakfast in 2018, I was really concerned about the pervasive crumbling of civility that was happening all around me. It felt so unfamiliar and haunting because it hadn’t been there all along. I thought, wow, what an interesting time in history to really, really explore this idea of kindness and this aspect of being a human. What does it mean? Very quickly we agreed to work together on this project.

PI: There are about nine community compassionate programs from around the country creatively spotlighted and sometimes interwoven in the film.

Describe briefly the process of settling on where you were going to take your cameras and which stories you wound up telling.

JH: Well, Kahane mentioned earlier that we were reading and talking to lots of people. We really delved into political philosophy and economics and evolutionary biology. We were looking at this through the lens of not just kindness but compassion, empathy and decency.

At a certain point we said, “Maybe we’re full now. Let’s do an exercise.” We asked ourselves with the small team that we had created by that time when the film was done and we looked back on our accomplishment, “Are there questions that we could say now that we will have wanted to have answered. What might those questions be?”

It turned into a fascinating conversation that resulted in six very simple questions which are: how do we raise our children? How do we teach our children? How do we take care of the sick and the dying? How do we live and work together? How do we welcome the stranger? How do we lead?

We felt that those questions sum it up, so let’s start looking for programs that are really addressing those questions with a philosophical approach that leads with kindness and decency.

It wasn’t long after that conversation that we thought was really helpful that our world got rocked. I’ll let Kahane talk about that.

KC: As John said, we had these questions and then Charlottesville happened. It was such a moment of shock and reckoning for us and for so many people in this country. It’s not that we were unaware of the terrible injustices that plagued this country, but we hadn’t focused on it through this lens of kindness.

We realized that it wasn’t just enough to ask those initial six questions. We needed to put them in the context of what we ended up calling “The fundamental unkindness’s” that we identified as just being part of everyday life here for so many Americans. Those fundamental unkindness’s are lack of a safe place to sleep, lack of access to healthcare, lack of an ability to earn a living wage, the injustices of racism and homophobia, things that are fundamentally unkind.

We took those unkindness’s and put them side by side with our questions and together, those all became our north stars, our lens that we looked through to really start finding powerful stories that we could show and tell what people were doing in light of all these and also the right stories that could work together.

Obviously, we were making a film, so the stories need to be visual. They need to have subjects that people care about. All of that was criteria for the stories that we landed on.

PI: We’re going to meet a couple of the subjects that were included in the film. [inaudible 07:24] is one and I watched a Ted Talk that he gave about his work that we’ll hear more about later.

In general, he said, “It’s not about helping a few people beat the odds, which would seem like enough of an inspiration to do the work and is always great to see, it’s about improving the odds for everybody.”

What I hear you describing here is an effort to show the small picture but also pull back and (as we like to say at Peace Talks Radio) go upstream to find the sources and the way that this work can be replicated or can provide larger change that is really going to make a difference. Is that a fair reconstruction of what you’ve been describing?

JH: I love the way you just put that. It’s a completely different way of characterizing the film than I’ve hear others express or we have used ourselves. It’s absolutely appropriate.

Knowing creatively that we were going to be telling multiple stories, we also knew that we were making a film in which the sum is intended to be greater than the parts. It’s that sum that you are talking about. What are those upstream issues and even opportunities?

We hope that the film opens up conversations about the kinds of communities that we live in or that we want to live in and about the country we live in and what kind of country we want this to be.

Paul Ingles Interviews DeAmon Harges, a community organizer in Indianapolis.

DH: It’s a bike shop. It’s a community hub and it’s run by us as The Learning Tree and neighbors, elders and young people. We coop the shop. We do bike sales. We do bike mechanics.

We also do some advocacy around people and transportation from our neighborhood. It’s a place during the summertime where you see the most gatherings and parties happening. People who haven’t seen each other for a long time or have had quarrels become reacquainted as friends.

I should have given some context. The neighborh ood where we live and where the shop exists has been a rough place, not only just economically and socially, but it also has a lot of police runs that come through the neighborhood.

Also, the image of the neighborhood is seen as a bad place to be. I think our responsibility as co-owners of the shop is to really help shape the image and tell the whole story of the people who live there.

Like how we found the shop, and this is a practice of ours, finding what people do already and investing in them. Young people were hanging out with tools popping wheelies. We approached them in a way that said, “Hey, we would like to become your business partners.” We invested the first $500 to buy equipment like stands and extra tools for them to open the shop up. It took off from there.

It’s funny too, when we started asking about the young people that knew about tools, they were telling stories about other neighbors and other adults in their lives. Some of those people had images. I thought this would be a great place to do that. It was unexpected. We thought this was going to be something with young people, but we had somebody 70 years old hanging out at the shop working with young people. It was beautiful. It’s a beautiful thing.

PI: What in your life story do you credit with the inspiration to do the work that you’re doing in your community the way that you are doing it? Who were your first teachers do you think?

DH: I’ll go back first to my grandparents because they came from a community similar to mine, probably in more harsher conditions. Two things they valued, the stories of others, sharing stories and the kindness of neighbors. That’s my first.
In the year 2000, I met my friend Mike Mather. He is a pastor. We’ve known each other for 20 years. He recognized that probably is one of the things that I was doing is a gift of mine. It was kind of shocking to know. I didn’t think it was valuable.

PI: In your Ted Talk, you talked about Montel, a neighborhood teen who got involved in one of your initiatives who seemed to have the gift to help people in a big way who told you that he never thought that his acts of compassion in his own family or his own inner circled mattered. It must have sounded familiar based on what you just told me.

DH: It is. I think it’s what we start to realize. Like with the bike shop, I don’t think the kids believed that people were listening. Sometimes the extra kindness or really small things and listening and being present is one of those. And you’ve got to name it too. What happened with Montel happened with the bike shop. We named it. We said, “You have a gift. Montel and you young men and women, you have a gift as healers. We see that.”

PI: You speak in that Ted Talk of yours that we will be linking to on our website the South African word sawubona. Tell us what that word means and how it anchors some of your work in the community.

DH: It means I see you and the response is shiboka or [04:13 inaudible]. It means it’s good to be seen or acknowledge your being. That’s more than saying hi. South African is one of my favorite places to go. It is grounded in it because I believe that the first step into creating things like the bike shop, supporting Montel and his gifts is to stop and pay attention and be present.

PI: One of your nicknames is a bit of a take off on the name of your friend Reverend Mike Mather. He was called “Pastor of the Streets” and you are named the “Roving Listener.” Is that something that people have assigned to you or do you proudly say, “That’s who I am!”

DH: I proudly wear that. I proudly wear the “Roving Listener.” Mike and I cocreated that. It came out as a joke, but my role is something I was already doing. It wasn’t something that came up as an idea. It was a group of people just like Montel who said, “Hey, we see you do this.” I was really shocked. That continues to be my role in the community, and I play the role of listener in so many ways.

PI: In the film, as you mentioned, you’re shown walking down the street with three youngsters and you’re gently trying to get them to open up about their families.

DH: I remember that scene. What was interesting is that I had never really gotten to see that out of all these years of doing that. Everybody laughs at me because they throw people in front of me now, neighbors. They’re like, “Hey, see this guy right here.” I love it that they do that. I think they were wonderful storytellers.

There are always things like this and people that gather like this in these rough spaces, but the magic is when you have people that can hold the community stories, all the stories they told woven beautifully together, it’s like being a roving listener itself.
They did a wonderful job holding that space and asking the right questions. I can imagine we interrogated them in the first place. I can imagine communities wanting to know that they don’t want to be put out there with a false sense of kindness, but they were awesome.

PI: A piece of the project is that you hire people to go out and meet their neighbors. Talk a little bit more about what was going on as we watch them knock on doors. What kind of reinforcement or improvement in the community is coming out of that effort?

DH: Most people always ask about the fear of doing that, but the thing we do is make it simple. We don’t tell people to do what they don’t already know. Start with the person you know already because most likely we haven’t asked their gifts.

PI: Say more about the process of asking their gifts. What do those conversations sound like, how do they start, where do they go and what feels rich and important about them?

DH: A great example is how you and I have started with our conversation.

PI: You saw a Bonnie Raitt poster over my shoulder here in my office.

DH: Yes, so we started talking about that. Those are the moments that people build connections. What we do is train people to know what people’s gifts are being activated. Those young people, after they go visit people, they’ll come back and say, “They lit up! They smiled. They named another name. They were animated.” Those are the things we describe. Or they’ll say, “I tasted it!” Or “I heard it” if it was a musician.” Or “They let me see their art.” Most of it is about really holding the question then being witness to what is there.

A couple little things that we use is knowing something about a person that they didn’t think we knew. Our do our little investigations, then the next thing we’ll do is bring people a gift. Sometimes it’s just baking some cookies. That usually loosens people up.

When you knock on doors, people are not expecting you and some people get like, “What are you coming to do?” We’ve also developed strategy about finding out the people who are most connected in the community. When you walk in the doors, the people are already loosened up. There are a few neighbors like that. The bike shop is like that. You want to meet a new person that you’ve never met before? Come to the bike shop because somebody has brought them. That’s always helpful.

Paul Ingles Interviews Sherry McIntyre, World Religions teacher at Peter Johansen High School in Modesto, California

PI: What are the ways that this project in your view has helped build on people’s gifts of compassion and kindness, which was really the focus of the film The Antidote?

SM: That’s a good question because a lot of people assume that because it’s a world religions class, what does that really have to do with kindness, but the truth is, the only way that we’re going to be able to get along in a world where we understand each other through the eyes of religion is if we are kind and compassionate and understanding and listen to each other and accept each other’s differences instead of constantly trying to prove ourselves right or prove the other person wrong. For me, that all begins with kindness.

PI: Doing it for so many years, I’m hoping you can answer this question. What turns out to be the most powerful elements of the course that seem to get the students attentions that are reliable “oh wow” moments each year or semester?

SM: Students love the introduction. They love learning about their rights. We talk about legal cases, we talk about the Supreme Court and how they judge First Amendment rights, particularly freedom of religion cases. They really like hearing about their rights. They always get very excited about that.

When we get into the religions themselves, what they tend to see is the similarities between religions. I think for a lot of students, that comes as a surprise. That usually sparks a lot of enthusiasm. They begin to see themselves in others, what they’re familiar with from their religion through the eyes of other religions. The pieces all start to fall together, and they begin to see how much more alike religions are than different.

PI: What’s a compelling example of several religions (I won’t ask you to go through all ten) sharing common precepts?

SM: Well, all of the major religions that we study have a version of the Golden Rule. That’s the way I introduce each religion is by teaching that religion’s version of the Golden Rule which is obviously “Treat other people the way you want to be treated.” Or it could be worded “Don’t treat other people in a way you would not want to be treated.”

We look at how each religion approaches that idea of the kindness that we should be showing each other. That’s something that they see right at the beginning that we all have in common is this requirement by all religions to really treat each other with kindness and compassion.

They also pretty quickly start to see that there are a lot of similarities in the fact that most of them have some sort of sacred text. Most of them have plenty of holidays or rituals. Those are the types of elements of religion that they see commonalities in over and over.

PI: I’m going to guess that participation in the class doesn’t require that they ever share exactly what their faith might be. How is that handled?

SM: That’s right. I don’t ask. Occasionally they’ll share with me their own personal faith. Sometimes it’s because it’s a minority faith and they are just tickled to death that someone is talking about their religion and they’re just proud. When we get to Buddhism, I’ll have a student who will say, “I’m Buddhist!” and they’re just so thrilled to be able to say that and proud that they can share that.

I try to present each religion as if it were coming from me personally. I try not to use words like “I believe,” I say, “they believe.” I always keep it very neutral. I think maybe they’re waiting for me to say, “We believe …” but it never happens. I never say “we.” I always refer to the religion as “they, they believe” as though I’m an outsider looking in, but at the same time, I will defend it as it it’s my own.

They know pretty quickly not to say anything rude or judgmental and to be very kind in their statements. I’m very careful to let them know that they have the freedom to ask a question and to have a comment, but they should always think about how they word the question or the comment.

They shouldn’t say, “Why do they believe that?” That just sounds judgmental, but if they said, “That’s interesting. Where did that belief come from?” Now they’re just curious and anyone in the room who practices that faith is going to be flattered that you want to know more. I teach them how to properly word questions and comments and opinions in a way that is fair to both themselves and anyone else in the room.

PI: You mentioned that there are ten religions that you cover. How much time do you spend with atheism or agnosticism? I saw in the documentary that you were referring to it.

SM: We define it. We talk about what it means, but we don’t spend a great deal of time beyond defining it and understanding what it means. I know that’s one area that I would like to go deeper into personally. I think it would be fascinating to include many different viewpoints beyond religion, but unfortunately, we really cram quite a lot into the amount of time that we have as it is.

If I were to design this class from scratch with 20 years of experience, first of all, I would make it a whole year. That would be fantastic instead of two-thirds of one semester. I would include a lot more other viewpoint like atheists and agnostics. We’d go deeper into Native American traditions. There is a lot that we don’t get a chance to cover. Covering ten in the amount of time that we have is a lot.

PI: I was thinking that even if you define agnosticism for example, the result of learning about ten other world religions and being encouraged to have an open mind about them could lead a student to saying, “Well, they all sound pretty good to me. I’m not sure. I don’t know” which would make them an agnostic.

SM: Yes, exactly.

PI: Obviously, you’re not taking polls, but I wonder if that can be a result of the class.

SM: I suppose it sure could because you’re right, we start out defining what it is to be atheist and what it is to be agnostic, what it is to be a humanist. We do talk about scientific perspectives, but I don’t spend a lot of time on any of those things. I just give them a real general understanding that there are other viewpoints besides religious. Then we jump into ten religions and by the time they’re done, they have a lot of information.

PI: I think we skirted up around this next topic before. You told me that there has never been explicit resistance to the schools’ world religion curriculum from parents in any large or organized way if at all. Did you say that there has not been a peep from parents in 21 years?

SM: To my knowledge, if there have been any complaints, they haven’t been to me. It is taught at all the high schools so if any of the other teachers have had conversations with parents to quell their fears and to give them a little bit more information about the class, if that happened it is so simply taken care of that it didn’t become well known because I have not heard of any major complaints from individual parents and certainly absolutely nothing large and organized.

PI: If other school districts around the country have even been talking about this, wouldn’t you imagine that that would be an obstacle that a school board member would say right away. Can you imagine the parents in our community screaming about indoctrination or challenging faith or anything like that? It sounds like your community has not had any of that.

SM: Nothing, nothing, you’re right. Every time I’m asked that question, I answer it honestly. I always worry that that doesn’t change, but it’s been 21 years now and still I honestly and truly believe that a big part of it is the fact that we teach this class in such an objective way, that we don’t proselytize. We teach not preach. Not only do we teach the class that way, but we explicitly tell our students that we will be teaching and not preaching. This is not about trying to convince them of anything.

This is just background information for them to live their lives and to take to their history class as sophomores. World history is full of religious situations and if you have the background knowledge, all it makes more sense. We spend a lot of time talking about the reason they’re taking this class and why it’s important. By the time they’re done, if they had any doubts about what the class was about, they shouldn’t because we make it pretty clear.