Change Your Brain Every Day - Charles Duhigg: How to Instantly Connect—The Science of Supercommunication

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Why do some conversations feel electric while others fall flat? In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen sit down with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Charles Duhigg (The Power of Habit, Supercommunicators) to explore what really makes people connect. You’ll learn how brain scans reveal that during powerful conversations, people’s brains literally sync up. Duhigg breaks down the three types of conversations everyone has—and why knowing which one you’re in can instantly improve your communication. Discover the surprising myths we believe about connection, and why asking deep, meaningful questions is the real secret to becoming a “supercommunicator.” 00:00 Intro 01:24 Sponsor 01:47 Common Myths of Communication 03:38 The 3 Categories of Communication 08:04 Communication Skills  10:22 Alignment 15:03 Mismatched Conversations 18:02 Listening/Looking for Understanding 21:11 The Goals of Each Type of Communication 25:13 Connection When You Don’t Agree 32:19 Close Relationships 35:29 Digital Communication 39:50 Artificial Intelligence 40:48 Where to Start? 46:28 Sponsor 47:36 Wrap Up   Super Communicators, by Charles Duhigg: https://charlesduhigg.com/supercommunicators/

The goal of a conversation is not to convince you that you're wrong and I'm right, or that I'm smart, or you should like me. The goal of a conversation is to understand how you see the world and to speak in such a way that you can understand how I see the world. And if we've done that and we walk away from a conversation, still disagreeing with each other, not thinking that the other person is right, that doesn't matter because we've achieved our goal. We understand each other. And more importantly, we will feel more connected to each other. And it's that sense of connection that helps us persevere because none of us agrees 100% with everyone else.

Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. In this week's episode of the Change Your Brain Every Day podcast, Tana and I are joined by Charles Duhigg, who is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and the author of The Power of Habit and Super Communicators. We discuss misconceptions about communication, the different communication styles, and the

power of becoming an excellent active listener. I hope you enjoy this week's conversation. This podcast is brought to you by the change your brain foundation dedicated to ending the concept of mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. Go to change your brain.org to learn how you can support our mission. Welcome to the Change Your Brain Every Day podcast where we explore how to take control of your thoughts, habits, and communication for a healthier, more connected life. I'm Dr. Daniel Aiman. And I'm Tana Aiman.

And today we're diving into the science of communication, how we can listen better, speak more effectively, and basically how to build deeper connections. And to help us do that, we have Charles Duhigg, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of Super Communicators, his latest book on mastering the art of conversation. Welcome Charles. Thanks for having me. So Charles, let's start with a common myth with communication.

So I think a lot of people believe that great communicators are born that way. They're charismatic, they're extroverted, they're naturally gifted. And like, what do you think about that? Is that a misconception or is there some truth to that? It absolutely is a misconception. And in fact, this has been studied very extensively.

And one of the things we know is that anyone who's a great communicator, anyone who's a super communicator, and we're all super communicators at one point or another, it's because they've learned a set of skills. And these are skills that any of us can master. If you talk to people who are great communicators today and you ask them, you know, have you always been good at communication? Invariably, they say things like, no, when I was in high school, I had real trouble making friends. So I had to study how kids talk to each other or my parents got divorced and I had to be the peacemaker between them. So one of the things

that we know consistently is that people who are great communicators are not great communicators because they're born that way. They're great communicators because they pay attention to how communication happens and they practice until they get good at it. One of my favorite concepts in your book is that you outline that every conversation falls into three categories, practical, emotional, and social. Can you explain why identifying the type of conversation we're having is critical for connection? Sure, absolutely. And it kind of goes back to why I wrote this book. You know, I first got the idea for writing this a couple years ago when my wife and I fell into this bad pattern,

which I'm assuming might be a little familiar to the two of you and everyone else who's listening, which is I would come home from a long day at work and I would start complaining I was working at the New York Times at that point. And I started complaining about my day and like, you know, my boss doesn't appreciate me and my coworkers don't realize what a genius I am. And my wife very practically would offer me some good advice.

She would say something like, why don't you take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better. And instead of being able to hear what she was saying, I would get even more upset, right? I would say like, why aren't you supporting me? You're supposed to be outraged on my behalf. She would get upset because I was attacking her for giving me good advice. And this would happen again and again. I don't know if this is familiar to the

two of you, if anything, at least one person shaking their head yes. So I went to these researchers, these neuroscientists, and I asked them what's going on here? And they said, well, we're glad that you actually showed up because, and asked this question, because we're living through this golden age of understanding the neuroscience of communication like never before. And one of the big things that we found is that when you are having a discussion, you assume

you know what that discussion is about. You assume that it's about one thing. We're talking about my day or the kids' grades or where to go on vacation or a budget for next year. But they said, if we look at people's brains as they're communicating with each other, what we see is they're actually having multiple kinds of conversations throughout this discussion. Right? And as you pointed out, most of those discussions tend to fall into one of three buckets. There's these practical conversations,

which is about making plans together, solving problems. But then there's emotional conversations where I tell you what I'm feeling, and I don't want you to solve my feelings, I want you to empathize. And then there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other and how we relate to society,

the identities that are important to us. And the researchers said, look, what we've seen is if two people are all those different kinds of conversations are all equally legitimate, right? And during a conversation, you might cycle from emotional to practical back to emotional and social. But if two people or more aren't having the same kind of conversation at the same moment, then they can't really hear each other and they won't feel connected to each other. What they have to do is they have to match the kind of conversation they're having. Within psychology, this has become known as the matching principle that successful communication

requires having the same kind of conversation at the same moment. That's why it's so important to figure out what kind of conversation is happening and to match others and invite them to match you. I love that. That's so interesting to me. Matching is something I really like. I mean, even just in normal job interviews, whatever it is you're doing, sales, doesn't matter.

It's really helpful. But it also reminds me of a parenting program that I found basically because I realized I was really not a great parent on my own. And one of the things that it taught me was to ask kids when they come home and they're either excited about something or they're complaining about something, really doesn't matter, whatever it is they're talking about. You ask them, do you want to be helped, heard or hugged? And it's really about figuring out where they're at. Do they want advice? And if they don't, don't give it to them.

And so that's what that kind of reminds me of. Yeah, and they're actually teaching teachers to do this now. And of course, helped, hugged and heard are the three kinds of conversations, right? The practical, the emotional and the social. And what's nice is you, I'm sure saw with your kids is that if you ask a kid, do you want to be helped hugged or heard, they'll tell you which one they want.

They'll tell you like, no, I need a hug right now, or I don't need a hug. I just need you to know that Jimmy's being mean to me. We often know what kind of conversation we want to have, but we don't do a great job of asking each other about it. Interesting. What's the one most surprising thing you've learned about how our brains form social connections? Well, I think that there's a handful of skills that allow people to communicate with each other and form those social connections really, really well. One of them that I think is kind of surprising is that the best communicators

tend to ask more questions than the average person, but like a lot more questions, like 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person. And some of those questions are questions like, you know, Oh, what did you think about that? Or they, Oh, did you like that movie? Like there are questions that are designed to invite us into a conversation. But some of the questions, the most powerful ones,

tend to be known as what, tend to be known as a deep question. And a deep question is something that asks us about our values or our beliefs or our experiences. And that can sound a little intimidating when I say like, oh, you should ask deep questions. But it's as simple as if you meet someone who's a doctor instead of saying to them,

oh, what hospital do you work at? Asking them, oh, what made you decide to go to medical school? Right, that second question, what made you decide to go to medical school? That's actually a deep question that invites them to talk about their experiences. They might say, you know, I saw my dad get sick as a kid

and I saw the doctors heal him and I wanted to become one of those healers. They might talk about their experiences. They might say, you know, I saw my dad get sick as a kid, and I saw the doctors heal him and I wanted to become one of those healers. They might talk about their values, you know, I like to be useful to my community. And so I work in this clinic where I can give healthcare to people who wouldn't otherwise get it. That second question is a deep question because it invites the other person to say something real. And when they do, it's very, very natural for us to answer our own question, right? If I ask you, you know, you say, this is, I became a doctor because I saw my dad get sick. It's very natural for me to say, oh, that's so interesting. Cause you know, I'm a lawyer and I became a lawyer because I saw my uncle get arrested when I was

a kid. Now we're having a real conversation. Now we're sharing things about ourselves. as a kid. Now we're having a real conversation. Now we're sharing things about ourselves. And again, because of how our brains have evolved, it's almost impossible once we start that reciprocal vulnerability and reciprocal authenticity for us not to feel at least a little bit more trusting of each other.

So that explains then why active listening is so important and like repeating back what you hear from someone and it makes people feel so safe. Can you sort of explain why that strategy is so important and how we can use that better in our daily lives? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And there's actually a technique for this. So I'll explain a little bit of the science behind it.

One of the big findings of the last 15 years when it comes to the neuroscience of communication is that when you and I are in a conversation, including this conversation right now, our bodies and our brains will start to match each other, to mimic each other. So without us realizing it, our heart rates and our breath rates have become similar

during this conversation. Even the dilation of our pupils, it tends to mirror each other. And a lot of this research comes from a guy named Uri Hassan at Princeton University and his colleagues. And in addition to our bodies starting to match each other, if we could see inside our brains, as you and I spoke to each other,

what we would see is that our brains started to look more and more similar, right? The neural activity that our brains started to look more and more similar. The neural activity within our brains would become more synchronized. Within neuroscience, this is known as neural entrainment. It's at the core of communication. It's at the core of how we understand each other, how we share with each other, how we learn to trust each other. And so what's really important is that I want to activate the same parts of my brain that you're using and you want to activate the parts of your brain that I'm using. And so the question is, how do we do

that? Well, one thing is that we just pay attention to what kind of conversation is happening, right? If someone comes to us with a really practical mindset, if they're saying like, look, we got to get this budget solved. We got to figure out how much to spend next week. They're obviously in a practical mindset. I might get practical with them and I might say, okay, let's sit down. Let's do the spreadsheet. But if they come up and they say something like, we got to get this budget solved, I'm feeling really anxious about we might have to do layoffs and I just don't know how I'm going to tell people that. Well, if I'm attuned for it, I hear that you're actually describing an emotional situation to me.

It might seem like budgets are practical, but you're telling me about your emotions. And that means that you need to have an emotional conversation before we can move on to the practical, which might just be a matter of me acknowledging and empathizing with what you're feeling, saying, you know, it's really natural to feel that way. I feel that way too. I think the best way for us to cure this is to try and figure out what the practical budget is. When we become aligned that way, what we're doing is we're letting the same parts of our brains work at the same moment. Because if I'm having a practical conversation and I'm using my proof of mental cortex and you're having an emotional conversation

and you're using your amygdala and basal ganglia and other interior structures, it's hard for us to become nearly entrained because we're literally using different parts of our brains. But if we just get briefly aligned, just say, let's have the same kind of conversation for the same moment, just for a couple of seconds. Then we can move from conversation to conversation together. And we achieve that neural entrainment. Sounds almost like you're leading someone a little bit, not in a manipulative way, but sort of like you're meeting them where they're at and then leading them to a different place. That's exactly right. Or sometimes inviting them to meet you where they're at, right?

They might come into the meeting ready for a for a practical budget conversation. And you say, look, before we get into the practicalities of the of the numbers, like I need to tell you about how I'm feeling. In that case, I'm inviting you to match me. Now, when it works with kids, and I have a new book out called Raising Mentally Strong Kids. And I often say if you're bonded with your child, they tend to pick your values. But if you're not bonded,

they tend to pick the opposite ones just to piss you off. And bonding requires two things, time, actual physical time, and listening. And so I love your book so much for that. And I think too often parents talk over their children because they want to download all their experience. and they're just not great listeners. And if people just got that skill, active listening, and you expand on that, it would save so many relationships.

Yeah, it's really powerful. I mean, it's very powerful how mismatching in conversations can be such a problem, but rather than reacting and for intentional about how we engage, you know, that it really brings us closer. So can you share an example of how mismatched conversations can create conflict?

Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. And a way around it. So let's just talk about married couples, right? When we're talking about money, oftentimes one person wants to have a practical conversation. We need to figure out, like, we're spending too much money. We just need to figure out where to cut back. Like, do we stop shopping at Whole Foods?

Do we buy less of X or Y or Z? But for the other person, talking about money might be a very emotional conversation because it brings up all these anxieties. They feel stupid. They feel foolish. They feel like they don't know enough. They feel concerned about the future because they're not certain if their future is secure enough. So oftentimes, sit down and we wanna talk about money and we assume that we're having the same conversation, right? Because we assume that we're both talking about money, but actually one of us just wants to have

like a pretty practical conversation, just come up with a budget, like what are we gonna cut back on? And the other person is having an emotional conversation. Why, like when you tell me I can't spend as much, it feels like you're trying to control me or it feels like you're saying I'm bad at managing money. And so just taking a moment and just saying, look, are we having a practical conversation or are we having an emotional conversation? When I come home now, my wife often does this.

And I start complaining about my day. She says, do you want me to help you figure out a solution for this or do you just need to vent you figure out a solution for this? Or do you just need to vent? And of course, I usually say, oh, I just need to vent. Like this isn't a big deal. It's just super frustrating that this happened. But her asking me what kind of conversation do you want to have? It helps us get on the same page and it helps us avoid that conflict that otherwise might occur. I can see why that is so important. That's why we fussed that one day. I was having a very emotional response to it.

My mother passed away and I was overwhelmed with the estate and trying to get things in order. And he was trying to be super helpful, but he was trying to talk to me about lists. And I was like, what are you talking about? What's interesting is that you probably weren't actually hearing each other. I mean, this is one of the things that we know is that when you're having different kinds of conversations, it's not that you hear what he's saying and you're like, you don't understand.

It's that literally his words are kind of like not entering your brain and your words aren't entering his brain. And as a result, we feel disconnected even with someone that we love. Right. But it makes sense now because he was being very practical and I was very emotional. And I wanted to soothe your pain, but I created pain because we were just in different conversations. Right. So I mean, that's just a great example. So Charles, across all the great communicators you've studied from CIA spies to surgeons to marriage counselors, was there one universal skill they had?

Well, so we talked about asking questions, right? We talked about trying to figure out what kind of conversation is happening. Another really important skill, and this gets to something that you just mentioned, is listening. That most people assume that listening simply means keeping my mouth shut and my ears open and kind of paying attention to what you're saying.

But everything that we know is that listening is, that's a necessary first step, but that is not listening in totality. There's other things that have to happen for you to be a good listener. In particular, one of them that we know is really important is that oftentimes you have to prove that you're listening, particularly when you're discussing something that's heated or a conflict that you have or something you disagree about. There's always this sneaking suspicion in each person's brain that the other

one isn't actually listening to them. They're just waiting their turn to speak. And so what's really, really important is that we prove that we're listening. And there's actually a technique for this they teach at Harvard and Stanford and all these other fancy schools. It's called looping for understanding. And it has three steps. Step one is you ask a question, preferably a deep question if you can. Step two is after that person has answered the question, repeat back in your own words what you heard them say, right? And the goal here is not mimicry. The goal here is to prove that you're really paying attention. In fact,

that you're processing this. Maybe you're bringing up something that they said last week too and comparing it. You're proving that you're paying attention. And most of us do these first two steps pretty intuitively, right? Like once we learn to communicate, it's pretty natural. It's step three that I always forget, which is once we've done that, once we've said, what I hear you saying is this, ask, did I get it right? Am I understanding you correctly? Because at that moment, when we ask if we got it right, what we're actually doing is we're asking them for permission to acknowledge that we were listening. And one of the things that we know about social reciprocity

and the way that our brains have evolved is that when we believe someone is listening to us, we become more likely to listen to them in return. And so this looping for understanding, this is something that you see the best communicators do. And it's not that they need to repeat what they just heard to make sure they got it right. They know they got it right. They're repeating what they just heard to prove to you that they're listening. And then they're asking your permission to acknowledge that they were listening. That's really, that's actually really important, I think.

You think that's really important? I do. But I'll point out, you actually mimicked, right? So it doesn't work if it's just mimicry, because then it feels like someone's like, like a used car salesman, right? So empathy is also the foundation of connection, I think is one of the things you say, and what are some of the simple ways that we can demonstrate empathy in a conversation? Yeah. So if we're having an emotional conversation, let's talk about the goals of the three kinds of conversations, because they're a little bit different from each other. If we're having an emotional conversation, let's talk about the goals of the three kinds of conversations because they're a little bit different from each other. If we're having a

practical conversation, the goal is oftentimes to find an answer that we can both agree with. Where should we go on vacation? What's the budget? We don't necessarily need to empathize with each other in that conversation. We need to come to some consensus and agree with each other. with each other in that conversation, we need to come to some consensus and agree with each other. In an emotional conversation though, we might not agree with each other, and that's totally fine as long as we're showing empathy

to each other. So you might say, I'm really, really upset because, you know, I don't know, because it's Wednesday. And I might be thinking to myself, I'm not really particularly upset because it's Wednesday, but if I say, I hear what you're saying is that it's a really tough day for you and that you feel that that's weighing you down. I'm not agreeing with you, but I am acknowledging your emotion. That's what empathy is. And then in a social conversation, oftentimes what we want is we just want acknowledgement of

the identity that's important to us. For someone to say, look, I understand that you see this a little bit differently from me because you have different experiences or different background or you belong to a different religion. Again, I don't have to agree with that. I don't have to show you that I empathize with you. I just have to acknowledge that this thing that's important to you, I recognize that it's important to you. These three things that

coming up with some type of answer that we can agree with, empathizing or acknowledging for the three kinds of conversations, they're the ways that we really connect with each other. And knowing what kind of tactic to use, what kind of approach to use for each conversation is really helpful because it tells you what the other person's looking for. Learning that in parenting was huge for me. Like you can let your kids pay consequences as long as you use empathy to do it. Yeah. As long as you're empathetic about what they're going through and not rescuing them. And it was just- Absolutely. Absolutely. Let me ask you, how old are your kids?

Well, my daughter now is 21. She's our youngest and she's 21. And we have my two nieces that we took in. So the youngest is 14. But parenting and allowing them, like not rescuing them, which they can see as being very mean, as long as you're using empathy along with that. And it's like, oh, I'm so sorry, really actually truly being there with them, but letting them pay the price for what they did and just being there and understanding or if they have a bad day, it changes parenting. And I think a lot of parenting is modeling

good communication for our kids, modeling ways to help them understand how we communicate with each other, right? How we communicate with our partner, how we communicate with people in the world, because we know that they're paying attention, that they're trying to learn from us. And so, you know, you had asked, are some people born with this?

The other, nobody's born with this, but the other answer is that sometimes we're raised in environments where our parents model really good communication for us and they push us to practice. Part of not knowing being born a great communicator is that nobody would ever be surprised if you said like, is someone born a great weightlifter or someone born a great piano player? And you would say, no, no. Right? Like you have to learn how to play the piano.

It's not like it's something you're born with. And by the way, the first time you try and play a piano, no matter how, whether you become a concert pianist or not, it's not gonna sound great. You're gonna have to make mistakes to figure out how to learn. Communication is the same way. The more that we help our kids learn to experiment, to practice, to make this behavior into a

habit, the more we're empowering them to eventually become super communicators. So, one of the toughest parts of communication is polarizing topics. We are living in a time of chronic stress. And in my book, The End of Mental Illness, I imagined if I was an evil ruler and I wanted to create mental illness, what would I do? And I would create the news because the news is, well, you work for the New York Times. If it bleeds-

I did previously. I work for the New Yorker now. If it bleeds, it leads. It's not about noticing what's right. It's about noticing what's wrong. And in our political environment, no matter what side you're on, they're looking for dirt on the other side. And so we even had suggestions after the election that if from a Yale psychiatrist, I'm so embarrassed that if people didn't vote the way you voted, well, maybe you shouldn't go to the Thanksgiving dinner, which is just insane. How can people

handle these high stakes conversations without turning it into a debate? Yeah, it's a great question. And I'll mention as someone who's in the news industry, I don't think it's that we're always looking for dirt or that we're always looking for the worst thing. I think that the news focuses on what's new and the things that are new and oftentimes seem the most concerning or the most important are the things that seem not great, right?

But as Steven Pinker has pointed out, we could also run a newspaper that every single day very accurately would have a headline that said, more people were brought out of poverty in the last year than in all of history combined. And that would be accurate. But you can only run that headline so many times before people start reading your newspaper because they're like, now I wanna know about what else is going on. So to answer-

I think I've seen that headline once. I mean, I- And I read every day. So I'm like- It's in the New York Times pretty frequently. If you look for it, there's a lot of things in the New York Times and the New Yorker and other places

about what's going well. We tend to remember the things that aren't going well, and we tend to pay more attention to them, right? I think people are hardwired to notice what's wrong. Yeah, yeah. And we're hardwired to notice what might be a threat, right? That's a product of evolution that a threat is more dangerous to us than a piece of good news. And so the threat stands out. Now, the question is, so when how do we have conversations

so that those threats don't become so dominant that we're fighting with each other rather than trying to understand each other? And in the book, there's a story in Super Communicators, there's a story about this experiment that was done, where they brought together a bunch of people who are gun rights advocates, like people who believed very strongly in the Second Amendment, and a lot of gun control activists, people who had been victims of firearm violence and were

fighting to limit the number of guns in the United States. And so they brought together like, you know, 100 people who had worked on this. And the goal of this was not to get them to agree with each other. Like the goal of this was not even to get them to find common ground. The goal of this was to try and figure out how do you have a civil conversation? How do you connect with someone whom you don't agree with in, in the most like dramatic sense? And so before the, before they brought these people together to have conversations, they gave them all a training.

And in that training, they taught them things like looping for understanding, right? This process of proving that I'm listening to you. But they also taught them some other things. They taught them that, instead of talking about generalities, instead of saying, here's what the facts are on gun deaths, to talk about our personal experiences, to say, here's how guns have affected me personally.

Now the reason why that's so useful is because oftentimes when we're in a conversation where there's conflict, it's because we're trying to prove that we're the expert and the other person isn't the expert, even if we're doing it subconsciously, right? You have your facts, I have my facts, your facts are wrong. Let me explain to you. If I can just get you to understand my facts and can see that they're right, then you'll agree with me. But the truth is that usually in these debates, it's not that there's a discrepancy of facts. It's that people have different facts and different kinds of expertise. Now, the thing that we're all an expert on is our

own personal experience. If I say, look, guns are really important to me because I go hunting with my uncle every Thanksgiving. And it's just this way I've gotten to know him that I never would have had otherwise. Or if I say, guns are really scary to me because my kid was at school last year and there was a lockdown because there was a shooter on campus and they weren't injured, but it was terrifying. I'm an expert on my own experiences. The other person isn't going to say, oh no, that never happened, or you didn't feel that way. What they're going to say is, you're telling me this story

and it actually touches something inside of me, right? I know what it's like to want to be close to your family members and to have these rituals that we can do around times like Thanksgiving. And mine doesn't include guns, but I understand that instinct or I understand what it's like to be scared for your kids and to be worried about a world where you can't protect them all the time. So when they did this experiment in Washington, D.C., what they found is that nobody walked away having changed their minds. People who were against guns were still against guns,

people who were for guns were still for guns. But they did almost all say that they felt so much closer to these other people whom they disagreed with. And this gets at one of the goals of what exactly we're trying to do in a conversation. The goal of a conversation is not to convince you that you're wrong and I'm right or that I'm smart or you should like me. The goal of a conversation is to understand how you see the world and to speak in such a way

that you can understand how I see the world. And if we've done that and we walk away from a conversation still disagreeing with each other, not thinking that the other person is right, that doesn't matter because we've achieved our goal. We understand each other and more importantly, we will feel more connected to each other. And it's that sense of connection that helps us persevere

because none of us agrees 100% with everyone else. That's interesting. That's actually so true. Some simple tips to help people feel heard. So we talked about repeating what you heard, asking them if that was correct, sharing stories to humanize the situation. What else do you think has been well, and asking those deep questions, right?

Asking deep questions is really, really powerful. And then paying attention to what kind of conversation is occurring. And it's worth kind of noting why this is all worth doing, which is, you know, there's this study that I'm sure you're familiar with, the Harvard study of adult development, that for over 80 years, researchers at Harvard have been falling around thousands of people trying to figure out what are the conditions that allow someone to be healthy and happy and successful as they age, no matter how you define sort of success for yourself. And they had a whole bunch of theories when they started this project 80 years ago. They thought that maybe if, because they were at Harvard themselves, they thought if you went to Harvard, you'd probably be healthier and happier and more

successful as you got older. And that turned out not to be true. They thought that if you got married and never got divorced, that like, divorces, like avoiding divorce would definitely make you happier and healthier and more successful. And that wasn't really true either, right? Some people regretted divorce, some people regretted not getting divorced, some people enjoyed their marriage, others didn't. They actually only found one thing that seemed to predict if someone would be happy, healthy, and successful at age 65. And that is if they had a handful of close relationships at age 45. Because of course, if you have close relationships at age

45, then you actually probably have had close relationships for a while and you're going to continue to have close relationships. Having close relationships with other people is the thing that makes our brain stronger. It makes our brain more healthy. It makes it easier for us to access happiness. It makes us healthier. You know, the Surgeon General has said that being lonely is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And it turns out that having these close relationships, it also helps us be more successful because we have friends who see opportunities that we might not. And the way that we develop close relationships is almost always through conversation. And so that doesn't mean that you have to have conversations

every day or every week or even every month. There might be someone who you feel close to that you only talk to once or twice a year. But what's important is putting aside that time once or twice a year to catch up with each other. And the first couple of minutes are going to be awkward, right? Because you're going to be talking about your friends and your dogs and your kids and what happened last time? Is he married? Is he not married?

But once you get over those first couple of minutes, once you start having real conversations, once you start asking each other deep questions, you're going to feel connected again. That's really important. Dr. John B. Reilly We live in a world where so much of our communication is online. Some might argue that's at least part of the rise in mental illness among the young. How does digital communication change the way we connect? Yeah, so it's a good question. It's obviously still being studied right now. Jonathan Haidt has this book, The Anxious Generation, in which he compiles a lot of the evidence that social media is playing a role in, particularly teenage girls and affecting their self image.

What's important to note though, is that there's a difference between social media and online communication, right? Social media is really like me just watching other people post videos about themselves. Communication, which can happen on social media, but isn't exclusive to it. Communication online is something that's been around for about 15 years now.

What's interesting is that if you go back 100 years and you look at when telephones first started becoming popular, there was this kind of interesting thing that happened. There were all these studies that appeared when phones first started spreading saying no one will ever have a real conversation on the phone. Like, keep in mind up until that moment, all conversations that happened face to face, maybe through letters, right? But people said, look, if you're on the phone and you're talking to someone and you can't see their face, you can't see their gestures, you can't hear their voice with like full

fidelity, you're never going gonna have a real conversation. It's just not gonna work. And what's really interesting is that at that moment, they were exactly right. In fact, for the first 15 years after phones became popular, if you look at early transcripts of phone conversations, what you see are people who basically didn't know how to use telephones to have conversations.

They would use them like telegrams. They would call up their local grocer and say like, here's my grocery order, I'm gonna come pick it up and then hang up the phone. They would call their stock broker and people just didn't know how to use phones. Now, by the time you and I and everyone who's listening to this was 15 years old,

we could have conversations on the telephone that lasted for hours every night, right? And they were some of the most important conversations of our life. So what happened? Like what, why is it that our generations managed to learn to use the phone in earlier generations? It took them so long to figure out how to use this thing. And the answer is, it's because we practiced with it, because we learned to experiment with it, particularly when you're a kid, you get to experiment with how to talk to someone on the phone a bunch. And so right now, what we're seeing when it comes to digital communication is we're seeing that

many adults are struggling with what digital communication is supposed to be and how it works. Because we didn't grow up with it, because it's only about 15 years old, because it doesn't feel intuitive to us. But I have two teenagers at home, and you guys have teenagers, and it sounds like, you know, I'm sure you have the same experience I do,

which is they have this fully robust communication with their friends over their devices. And it's easy for us to say like, oh, that must not be real, or it must not be powerful, or it must not be X or Y or Z. But the truth is that for them, it is real. And in fact, if you dare, if you or anyone listening dares does this and they have teenagers at home, if you dare, if you or anyone listening dares, does this, and they have teenagers at home, go home and ask your kids to show you some of their text messages. And what you'll see is that some of the messages

is just a string of emojis. And what that is, that's an emotional conversation. They are learning how to have emotional conversations over their phones. And so I do think that when it comes to social media, you know, John Haight's points are well taken and we should be cautious about the aspects of digital communication that are not actually communication, but are just broadcasting. But when it comes to the back and forth, the actual communication that occurs, there's a lot of reasons to feel

encouraged about this next generation and what they're learning. forth, the actual communication that occurs, there's a lot of reasons to feel encouraged about this next generation and what they're learning. Interesting. How do you think AI is going to change our communication? I don't know. It's a good question. I mean, I think that we're, you know, I cover AI for the New Yorker and it's very easy to forget that we're like literally like a year and a half into the AI revolution. You know, it wasn't that long ago that

ChatGPT first came out. And I think that we don't know where the future's going. We don't know if people are going to be able to have authentic conversations with AI where it feels like you're talking to another person or if there's always going to be this uncanny valley where they're great for kind of like being a foil or great for doing research for you. But it's not, it doesn't feel the same as having an actual conversation. And until we see where the future goes, it's pretty hard to say how it's gonna shape us. Yeah. So if someone is listening and wants to become a better communicator like right now,

what's one simple habit they can start practicing today? Yeah, the best thing to do is to just tomorrow, pledge to ask someone a deep question, right? Then just say like, look, at some point, I'm gonna be sitting in a meeting, waiting for the meeting to start. And the guy next to me, I'm gonna turn to him

and I'm gonna say, hey, what'd you do this weekend? And they're gonna say, oh, I went to my kid's graduation. It was awesome. And instead of just saying, oh, congratulations, that's so great. Oh, man, that's awesome. Let's get down to the agenda. Instead of saying that, say, oh man, that's so great. Ah, man, that's awesome. Let's get down to the agenda. Instead of saying that, say, oh man, that's awesome.

What did that feel like, watching your kid walk across that stage? Was it amazing? That's a deep question, right? And I promise you, that person you ask that question of will be overjoyed that you asked. And they'll tell you all about what the day was like. It'll only take like 45 seconds.

It's not gonna be a long back and forth. But when that meeting does start, when you say, oh, man, I'm so glad to hear that. I've been worrying about my kids' graduation because they're going to be leaving home. But it's so good to hear that it's been such a positive experience for you. Now, I guess we should probably get down to business.

Let's get out the agenda. In other words, when you say, I like having an emotional conversation with you, let's move to the practical conversation. You guys are going to be in link. You're going to be on the same page. And that conversation is going to go so much better. And so I would say the number one thing that someone can do tomorrow is just set a goal for yourself of asking one deep question. It does not have to sound deep. It does not have to be important. It's just that rather than asking about the facts of someone's life, ask how they feel about their life. And you'll be shocked at how good you feel afterwards. And you give a couple of more examples of deep questions.

Sure. Well, I can ask you guys some deep questions. So, I mean, let me ask, why did you guys decide to start a podcast? To educate people, to get them excited, to love their brains and love their lives and have a connection. Yeah, I think to spread the message of what we do and but do it in a platform that is not 30 seconds or less to be able to actually take more time and share what we do and how we live. Well, and think about how much you just told me about both of you guys without having to actually say it.

You told me that education is something that's really important to you. That giving to your community is important to you. That you are people who enjoy complex thoughts as opposed to brief thoughts. That it's something that you're willing to devote time to helping other people. Right? Yeah. I know a little bit more about your values and I know a little bit more about your experiences. And I could ask the same thing about your relationship. Or if I asked, you know,

you told me that you had taken in two nieces. Like asking like, what's that like? Like, is that, I imagine that there's challenges and there's joys to that. Like, what's that like? That's a deep question. Almost anything can be a deep question if underlying it is just, tell me how you make sense of the world.

Tell me why you make the choices that you make. As I mentioned, shallow questions oftentimes ask about the facts of someone's life. What hospital do you work at? Deep questions ask the why of their life or about how they feel about their life. Why did you decide to become a doctor? And it's magic. So I was at the National Prayer Breakfast last week.

There were thousands of people there and I sat next to somebody I'd never met. And just like we're talking about today, the regular questions just are not that interesting. Yeah. And so I just asked her, I said, What are you most excited about this year? And it was so great because she just sort of went on and on about the things in her life that mattered. And that was felt better than what do you do? Yeah, exactly. And that's, it's not a hard question to ask, right? It's a really easy question to ask. I mean, particularly at a prayer breakfast, even just turning to the person and saying, tell me what you're praying for today.

Like that's, that's the kind of thing that, that opens up a whole box. I love that so much. Super communicators, Charles, how can people learn more about you and your work? Yeah. So I'm online at CharlesDuhigg.com. That's D-U-H-I-G-G.com. Or if you Google Super Communicators or if you Google my first book, The Power of Habit, I will almost invariably show up on your Google results. And my email address is on my website and I'd love to hear from folks. Great. Thank you so much. We are so grateful. Thanks for having me. With a better brain always comes a better life and with a better brain and super communicators, you're going to be more connected to the people you care about.

Are you struggling with anxiety, depression, obsessive thinking, to the people you care about. Have you had a brain injury, concussion, or just don't feel the same after COVID? Is your memory worse than it was 10 years ago? Or do you have a parent or grandparent with dementia and want to work on prevention? Yes, prevention is possible, but the sooner you start, the better. For 35 years, we've been changing people's brains and their lives using brain-spec imaging and a personalized natural approach to brain and mental health care and we have some of the best published outcomes anywhere. Go to amenclinics.com to learn more and when you call us, mention Podcast 10 for a 10% discount.

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