Six Conversations We're Scared to Have by Deborah Frances-White

In Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have, Deborah Frances-White offers an urgent and compassionate overview for navigating the social minefield of modern discourse. Known for her sharp intellect, wit, and decade-long stewardship of The Guilty Feminist podcast, Frances-White draws on her unique life experiences — including a formative upbringing within a religious cult — to examine why difficult conversations are increasingly avoided, and how we might instead approach them with courage, empathy, and intellectual honesty.

This is not a book that seeks to settle debates with certainty. Rather, it acts as a guidebook to thinking — and rethinking — in a world that often rewards certainty over curiosity. Frances-White poses questions rather than prescribes answers: Why is the public square so flammable? What lies beneath the polarising “trans debate”? How has comedy become a battleground for progressives? These are knotty topics, and she refuses to untangle them with glib solutions. Instead, she suggests that genuine listening, rigorous thinking, and holding space for discomfort are the only viable routes forward.

At its heart, Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have is about intellectual and emotional bravery. Frances-White invites the reader to reflect on their own instincts — to challenge their certainties and nurture a new kind of empathy, one that demonstrates increased openness. She is especially perceptive when discussing how social media’s algorithmic architecture has eroded nuance. With humour and humanity, she argues for a slower, more considered way of engaging with complex social issues — one that acknowledges competing truths and welcomes moral complexity.

The book shines brightest in its insistence that changing one’s mind is not a failure, but a strength. This theme recurs across the chapters: that disagreement, if approached with integrity, need not end relationships; that debate can be generative rather than destructive. Drawing from diplomatic tools, personal anecdotes, and cultural analysis, Frances-White makes the case that silence and censorship are more dangerous than any awkward or heated conversation.

That said, not all readers will find themselves aligned with her positions — especially on topics such as gender identity. Some critics have felt that the tone, at times, strays into assumption or moral certainty — the very things the book claims to resist. Yet, to her credit, Frances-White often acknowledges the limits of her own lens, and the tension between advocating for justice and making space for disagreement is handled with more care than many public figures dare attempt.

Where Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have truly succeeds is in its insistence that dialogue is still possible — and necessary — in our era of division. Frances-White refuses to offer a blueprint for every discussion, but she provides something far more valuable: a call to approach others, and ourselves, with more humility, courage, and curiosity.

Bold, witty, and fiercely intelligent, this book is both timely and timeless. It challenges us to be braver thinkers and kinder communicators. In a culture quick to cancel and slow to consider, that may be the most radical idea of all.

Reviewer: Chris Reed

Hachette