Breaking Bread, Breaking Connection: Dinner Diplomacy and a Sudden Shutdown

After a magical day of food, wine, and instant connection with a new friend, Tina Singleton made one political comment that shattered it all. In this candid conversation, the founder of Transformation Table reflects on how a single rant cost her a budding friendship and what it taught her about ego, humility, and the fragility of connection. Inspired by a call from Bernice King after the tragedy at Mother Emanuel AME Church, Tina has spent years bringing strangers together over meals to practice curiosity across difference. This episode is a powerful reminder that building common ground is hard and that sometimes the hardest part is practicing what you preach.

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Transcript

Michael Lee: [00:00:00] When we disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. When you're calm, you can't imagine how you'll feel when you're angry. When you're full, you can't fathom desperate hunger. This is the hot cold empathy gap. Our inability to predict or remember emotional states different from our current one.

The psychologist George Lowenstein documented how this gap makes us terrible at understanding other's emotions or even our own future feelings. In disagreements, the empathy gap makes calm people dismiss others' emotions and emotional people unable to access logic. The empathy gap destroys relationships during conflicts in the heat of an argument.

You can't even remember why you love this person when the fight ends. You can't understand why you said such hurtful things. Your partner tries to discuss issues when they're upset, but you can't comprehend their intensity because you're calm. And [00:01:00] later when you're upset about something else, they can't understand your feelings because they're now calm in political discourse.

The empathy gap creates mutual and comprehension those feeling economically secure. Can't fathom the desperation of financial instability. Those who have experienced discrimination. Can't understand others who don't see systemic problems. Those who feel safe can't grasp others'. Fear. We debate from different emotional planets wondering why others can't see what's obvious from where we stand.

Understanding the empathy gap requires intentional perspective taking when calm. Remember that you always won't be when emotional. Recognize that you're not seeing clearly in disagreements. Acknowledge this gap. I know I can't fully understand how you're feeling right now. Sometimes the best thing is to wait and let emotional states align before trying to resolve conflicts.

I'm Michael Lee, professor of Communication and Director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. Our [00:02:00] guest today on When We Disagree is Tina l Singleton. Tina is the founder and curator of Transformation Table. Which is an organization that uses food to build community. Tina, tell us an argument story.

Tina Singleton : First of all, thank you for having me. So pre COVID I received a phone call from the concierge at the Bennett Hotel in Charleston, and it was at the time when I was still doing transformation table and he had a guest. That had come in with her husband from California, from Southern California for a golf tournament.

So she was asking him different things that they could, pos that she could do for the day while he was. While he was at this tournament for the weekend, so he suggested transformation table because he had been to one of our dinners as possibly something that she could do. So he gave her my phone. He contacted me and asked if she could contact me, and I said [00:03:00] absolutely.

So she contacted me. She called me and said, I heard. About what you do. And I'm in town and do you have a dinner that is happening while I'm in town? And I said, no I don't. I don't have anything going on, what are you doing? And she said I'm here with my husband who's here on a golf tournament, and I'll, I'm by myself and I'm just trying to figure out.

What I want to do. So I said I'm free and if you like, I'd be happy to come and pick you up, at the hotel and, we can spend the day together and we can go, do some things in Sightsee, do whatever you would like to do. And she said, oh, that would be great. So I went to the Bennett Hotel and I picked her up and she was, it was like we had.

Already known each other. We just clicked right away. She had already arranged a tour of, a historical tour downtown. So she took me along on that tour [00:04:00] and then she asked me, and then she really wanted to try out different restaurants in Charleston. So we went to maybe four different restaurants and she paid the whole day.

She paid and she was very Wow. Very clear from the very beginning. I don't want you to pay for anything. You've been, you're kind enough to come and, take me. So we ended up going to four different restaurants during the day. And she would order like maybe four dishes at every, at each place.

And we would just sample, and then we would have wine and we would drink and we would talk. And we were having like, like I said. We got along like a house of fire and I, we barely, we didn't even know anything about each other, but we just got along really well and we. Even people would comment because we talked to people at the restaurant and everything, and they would say, wow, you guys, how long have you all known each other?

'cause you're just going like this. And we're like, oh, we just met this morning. And people were [00:05:00] really surprised at that connection that we made. 

So this was throughout the whole day and throughout the whole evening. I picked her up, I think it was probably like around 10 o'clock in the morning, and by the time I dropped her off was going to drop her off at the hotel.

It was probably 11 o'clock at night. So we had spent hours and hours together. So just as I was dropping her off and we, I don't know how we got on the subject, but we got on the subject of politics. 

Michael Lee: Here we go. 

Tina Singleton : And yes. And. We had both obviously had, it was a full day. We had also had wine we were, I'm not saying we weren't drunk, we were feeling good and we were having, we'd had a really great day and somehow she said something and I went off.

And I, and during the day, she would say things that made me realize that we were at different [00:06:00] ends of the political spectrum, which was, which was fine because we were having such a great day, and it wasn't a huge deal for me. 

Michael Lee: What did she say? Do you remember that she went off on, 

Tina Singleton : I don't, honestly, I wish I could remember.

I was trying to think of what she said, but. It wasn't. It wasn't, from what I remember, I don't think it was anything super major. It was just a statement and I just took off on what she said. And all I remember is I was just started to rant and. The minute I started ranting, I, and I was in the driver's seat and I saw, I looked at, I, was going on and just talking, and I looked at her and I looked at her face and she had completely shut down.

Her face was, it was like that whole day had never happened, and the minute that I saw her face, I thought to myself, Tina, you just screwed up [00:07:00] majorly. It's like you effed up. You blew this whole day because we had spent this whole day together and it had such an incredible time connecting and talking about all kinds of different things, and that one minute that.

I said what I said and was going on and on, and she shut down. I just realized that I lost her. 

Michael Lee: I'm having this recollection of when I started this show and how mistaken I was about what this show would become. As you're telling the story, and I wanna share this briefly with you, and I'm gonna ask you about your rant.

So when I started this show, my idea was. I would ask people about memorable conflicts in their lives, and they would share what they said, what their arguments were and what evidence they had to back up [00:08:00] their arguments. And then I would ask them what the other person said, right? And what evidence they had to back up their arguments.

And the idea mistaken, and it sounds silly, even as I'm saying it now, the idea in my head was that people would have these really clear recollections. Yep. Of what was said, they would have a kind of like court stenographer in their mind. Oh yes. And what I overwhelmingly come up against is it's not what was said, it's what was felt.

And

Tina Singleton : absolutely. 

Michael Lee: I'm gonna ask you a follow-up question, and I'm guessing I already know the answer to it too. Which is, you said you ranted for about a minute. What did you say? 

Tina Singleton : Honestly, I, Mike, I don't remember what I said. All I remember was the feeling, like you're talking about the feeling, the felt sense.

I just remember that I had gotten riled up in me, yeah. And I got on my little high horse about whatever it was. I came to remember what it was about. But I just remember talking and going off and looking at her and realizing I, that I had blown it with her.

[00:09:00] And. And after that I lost her. And I just thought, oh my God, Tina, you just blew it. And so after I stopped, because when I realized what I'd done and what happened and the reaction that I was getting from her because she got very quiet. Okay. She got super quiet and I looked and I was just like, oh my gosh.

And I just said. I'm so sorry. And she said, I'm, I gotta go. And she left. She, she got out of the car and she, went into her room and I just had my head in my hand and I just thought, Tina, you had this incredible day with this woman and you just blew this whole day out of the water. It was like that whole day hadn't happened.

And 

Michael Lee: Or it was false? Yeah. Or it was false or it was all under this kind of like delusion that was all a setup for the conflict that would ruin it at the end. 

Tina Singleton : Yeah. I, I don't know because it was, because [00:10:00] the one thing I thought about, and of course I, so I drove home and of course I was feeling horrible and I just thought, how am I gonna fix this?

I'm like, I've got to fix this. So I tried to call her. She didn't answer. I sent her text message. She didn't respond. I luckily, I had her address, so I, and I sent her a text message saying, I really apologize. I totally, I re, I realized what I did. And I didn't want, I don't want that to ruin our whole day because I had such an enjoyable day getting to know you and meeting with you, and you were so generous with your, with your hospitality of me, hosting me the whole day.

I said, I just want you to know how much I appreciated that, and I'm so sorry about what happened in the car. And she didn't respond. And then I also sent her a card. I mail her a sorry card and she never responded. 

Michael Lee: Wow. 

Tina Singleton : And that has stuck with me because she was somebody [00:11:00] that if that hadn't happened or if it happened in a different way, because I think we could have easily had a conversation.

About politics if we wanted to, but it was just the way that I went about it. 

I just shut her off and I think she, after that, she was just like, she might've then made an assumption about me and thinking, oh wow, okay if this is how she, talks about politics or if this is how she, talks about things, I don't want anything to do with her.

Michael Lee: I'm really glad you came on and are telling this story too, because it's illustrating a lot of things. One, you're somebody who we're gonna transition a little bit. Let's talk about your work. Sure. But somebody who has practiced hospitality at a massive scale, that somebody has tried really hard, your entire professional life to facilitate connections.

Somebody who has tried to facilitate dialogue across difference and compassionate curiosity. You have spent your life as I like to say, putting together bad dates, putting people with [00:12:00] as little as possible in common. 

Tina Singleton : Yeah. 

Michael Lee: To eat food they've never had together. And this is a story in which you were chastising yourself for being inhospitable, chastising yourself for.

For hurting a connection absolutely. Chas yourself for losing your sense of self in a moment, in that moment became very impactful for a relationship. So it's hard to be perfect. It's hard to practice what we preach sometimes. And this show at its best is really, people reflecting on how hard it is to do the things that they preach to do all of the time.

So thank you for sharing 

Tina Singleton : that. Absolutely. No, and that's what I, and that's what I thought too. I was like, Tina, you host, you put these dinners together and look what you did. Yeah. And which also made me realize, okay, yes, you're human, Tina, and you don't always get it right either. Yeah. And you still have much room to grow.

You're not perfect. You're gonna mess up. And when you do mess up, [00:13:00] just say you're sorry. Try to make it better and, give yourself some grace and move on. 

Michael Lee: Yeah. Let's back way up. What is transformation table and why did you start it? 

Tina Singleton : Sure. So Transformation Table began in November, 2016 as a in response to a challenge that Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King, issued to the Cha Charleston community at the one year anniversary of the mass shooting at Mother Emanuel, a ME Church.

She was at a, she was the keynote speaker at a tree dedication ceremony at the Gillard Center. And during her talk, she said to Charleston, she said, Charleston, if you're serious about change, you have to find ways to love and understand each other despite your differences. She said, you have to get intimate.

And she said, go to each other's homes, have dinner. And when she said that, I thought, oh this is something that I might be able to [00:14:00] do because before I moved to Charleston, I was working in Afghanistan as a development worker, and I would sometimes host these 10 person lunches with Afghans and and expatriates just as a way for us to have a nice meal and just be in a relaxed environment. In a really stressful environment. And also in the work that I always did, I used to work in international development and I lived in different countries. And when I thought about it, food was always my way into community.

Whether it was a colleague asking me to come to their home for dinner or we would go out and have, or it would be a tea break, and cobble, with my colleagues. Food was always. Always my way in. And so when she said that, I thought I tried this in Afghanistan, so let me see if I can do this in Charleston.

And I had wanted to do something like that. And her issuing [00:15:00] that challenge gave me the context in which to do it. Because I was very new to Charleston. I had only been there in this, in Charleston for two months before the anniversary event. So my first dinner was November 2016, and I.

I asked a woman that I had recently met if her and her husband would be willing to host 10 strangers in their home for this meal. I invited some people that I had met, just different people that I had met to see if I could test this concept. And then a friend of mine put me in touch with a Vietnamese she was a home cook at the time, a Vietnamese home cook named Janice Hudgins.

And she became my first chef. So she made a. Beautiful Vietnamese dinner for for us, and we were at the home of Ashley and Kendrick and I just tried the concept and I didn't know what we were going to talk about. I [00:16:00] asked them like, one question, what is your favorite food memory growing up?

And from that question. We found out a lot about each other. And then after that, the conversation just was very organic, and people's stories started to come out. We started to find out, where people lived, what they did, how they grew up. So it was really just a way for people who may not otherwise meet, to have the opportunity to come together over a meal, to connect human to human, and to connect face to face.

Michael Lee: I have a theory about why food music kind of experiential activities are so good for finding common ground, and I'm curious, given your experiences, what you think of this theory. And feel free to trash it, which is that we talk a lot, especially in my world and in our polarized world, we talk a lot about quote, finding common ground, emphasizing common humanity.

And these are [00:17:00] very abstract concepts. And usually when people are talking about finding common ground, they're talking about. You and I both agree that schools should be safe perhaps, or you and I both agree that right children shouldn't be hungry or just finding some common value or even a policy position or even we both agree that there is gravity finding common facts, but food, music and other experiential activities are the doing of common ground.

We are literally experiencing each other's common humanity in the sense of both the necessity. Food to keep us alive of sustenance and the experience of joy and the physical experience of consuming food together. And so it enacts the very thing that we're trying to seek so hard. 

Tina Singleton : No, I would agree with that.

And I think for me. I almost, because one question that I get asked a lot is what do you talk about? What's the subject, what's the topic that you're gonna talk [00:18:00] about? And I purposely don't have a topic. And the reason that I don't, and this is just my personal point of view, and the way that I, to do what I do, is that when you give people a topic or you tell them what the subject is going to be.

They're gonna come to that dinner already knowing or in their head about what they wanna say about this particular topic what their point of view is about it. And the exercise of listening becomes maybe less listening to understand than listening to respond. So for me, I almost, I al for me it's more about the connection and how people are connecting.

So whether you're connecting about travel or you're connecting about food, you're connecting about. Race or immigration or education or whatever the topic is. And we talk about [00:19:00] the gamut. It really depends on who those people are around the table, that particular table. So for me, it's about giving people the room and the space to connect however they want to connect.

Michael Lee: You have a very, some of these approaches are a little more. Prescriptive and descriptive about first this person says this, we go through this question. Yes. 

Tina Singleton : Yeah. 

Michael Lee: Everybody gets the talking stick for two minutes. We go around the room. Yeah. It is a little paint by numbers. Yeah. You, it sounds That's 

Tina Singleton : not 

Michael Lee: us.

Like just put a bunch of strangers at a table and give 'em some food and see what happens. 

Tina Singleton : Because also too, and again, this is just me, is. For me, it's more organic and I like and nobody's the same, every table. And the way that I curate the tables is, everybody is different around that table.

And everybody has different life [00:20:00] experiences. Everyone has different perspectives. Any way that can be drawn out in an organic manner. So people don't even necessarily have to feel like they're on the spot because sometimes it's hard to. It's hard to respond right away. And I think that's part of the reason why food is such a good way to do that, because food relaxes people, right?

People love to eat, and especially if they're. If they're having a cuisine that they've never had before, it's just another level of experience, right? That people relax and people you are, they're already making a connection over that food, over that particular type of cuisine.

So you've already started the connection, you're just layering it by letting people have that space to talk. Now it's also. It is also I'm not gonna say scripted, we have conversation guides, 

Michael Lee: Uhhuh. 

Tina Singleton : Okay. That make sure that people at the, that everyone is participating and that, that the conversation is flowing and all [00:21:00] that.

So we do have a method to the madness, but. It's definitely not scripted, and we, we have questions, we know we have questions in our head about what we might wanna ask, but a lot of times we find that once people sit down and once they feel comfortable, and I think for me, the most important piece of it is making people feel comfortable enough to want to share.

And so for us, that's the main thing that we really focus on is creating the atmosphere and the space that people feel relaxed, that they feel comfortable, and that they feel willing to talk to each other. 

Michael Lee: It sounds a little bit like you are at least tacitly, subtly, getting people to feel comfortable with various kinds of novelty.

So comfort with the novelty of who is there, comfort with the novelty of talking to somebody that they wouldn't have talked to in their normal life. Comfort with talking to them in this [00:22:00] completely new setting. 

Comfort with new types of food. If I'm hearing you it sounds like you're bringing in cuisines that perhaps that people are not eating at Applebee's or wherever they consume their food.

Yes. Or cook at home. Comfort with different topics, maybe even taboo topics or topics that feel yes, religion, politics, race type of stuff. So it does feel like a kind of experiential helping people feel more comfortable experientially in a group setting. Slowly but surely. 

Tina Singleton : Exactly. And it's also recognizing it's one dinner, and that, one dinner isn't going to, isn't going to, it's the start. It's the start. And for me, that's what I always think about is, okay, so what difference is one dinner gonna make, but for me it's the start of connection and it's the start of people being open and willing to talk to people that they don't know.

Michael Lee: You've 

Tina Singleton : Even outside of, outside of the dinner. Hopefully when they. Go back out into the world [00:23:00] and maybe they've had a meal at a Muslim person's house that when they hear something about Muslims that's negative or derogatory, they're going to be thinking, I didn't have that experience at this couple's home.

They were absolutely fabulous and we had a great conversation about the difference between Islam and Christianity. And their experience of quote the other or other people in their communities. They're gonna have a heightened awareness of, and I think they're gonna think a little bit differently.

At least the hope is that they think a little bit differently about the people in their community. 

Michael Lee: I'm curious about when these dinners go the best for you, which is, do these di, is there even a way to say, at a high level, these dinners go best? When do these dinners go best? When people talk comfortably and curiously about their.

Differences. People talk comfortably and curiously about the ways in which they're similar. All of the above, or none of the above? 

Tina Singleton : Honestly, it's all of the [00:24:00] above because again, every table is different. 

And we approach, every table is different. Like our conversations are different at each table.

Our guests are different at each table. What is going to go best? At that particular dinner may be different than what has gone best for a different dinner. So it's it is. I think for me I guess I would just say when it goes best is when people are open and they're willing to hear and listen to each other.

And I think again, it goes back to. People understanding that when they come to one of our dinners, it's not going to be a debate. It's not going to be a screaming and yelling, yelling match or any of that, it's not gonna be confrontational. People are going to, we have a set of core values.

We have a manifesto that we share with everyone, which are basically our ground rules for the table. So we can, so [00:25:00] people already know when they come that this is the behavior that is expected of you. And I think part of the reason why it works so well is because people.

People respect that and people respect and they understand, okay, when I come to this dinner, I know that this is what is, this is what is expected of me behavior wise, which gives people the opportunity again, to connect, to be respectful to and to disagree. People disagree. Of course they do.

And we encourage that. We don't encourage everybody. Having to say agree on anything. But if you are going to disagree, you're going to do it in a respectful manner and you're going to do it in a way that everybody hears you and everybody listens. 

Michael Lee: Last question, and this is my favorite custom last question is always a big one, and you are so well traveled.

You've lived all over the world. You've brought people together all over the world, and I'm very poorly traveled. I've barely left my own zip code. And so I ask you this from a space of ignorance. [00:26:00] I've heard this debate that I'm fascinated by, which is people who have really been to a lot of places say, the more of the world I see, the bigger the world gets.

The more varieties of humanity, the more bizarre. Cultural practices, the more surprises. You're like, how do you live that way? Why does this language sound that way? I can't believe you eat that. All of these kinds of like just amazing varieties of the human experience. I've also heard the opposite. The more I see of the world, the smaller it gets, and people are all just fundamentally the same, breathing in the same air.

They wanna feel full. They wanna be close to their families. They wanna feel safe. They wanna have love in their life. Maybe they do different things to do that. Some cultures eat rice, others eat bread, others eat something else to feel full. But it's the same experience of fullness. Where are you at on that?

Tina Singleton : I'm an Air Force brat, so you know I am, my father was in the military I grew up being used to moving around and I do think that there is something to be said that the more you are exposed to, [00:27:00] the bigger your world becomes and the more open your perspective becomes about the world, right?

We're all different people, we have. We have mosques, we have, different restaurants that serve different kinds of food. We have different people in the community and even in a community where we quote, think we're all homogenous. We're not, we're all different. So we, we can we can have that difference even within our own communities that we don't think are so different.

Michael Lee: Tina Singleton, thank you so much for being on when we disagree. 

Tina Singleton : Thank you for having me. It was great. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Michael Lee: When we Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse k and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at When We [00:28:00] disagree@gmail.com.