In her book, Talk: The Science of Conversation and The Art of Being Ourselves, Alison Wood Brooks (Crown Books, New York 2025) discusses a depressing statistic in her chapter “L is for Levity”. At age 23, 84 percent of those questioned reported smiling and laughing a lot the day before. [Read More]
Having mediated several thousand disputes over close to 20 years, I sometimes forget that for one or more of the parties appearing at mediation, he/she has never been in a mediation (It is quite new and foreign to him/her.) and so may be quite anxious about it all. Thus, my [Read More]
If you have ever mediated a case with me (and most of you have not), you know that I crack jokes, especially in the opening joint session. There is a method to my madness; to take the tension out of the situation and try to put the parties at ease. [Read More]
