Dhru Purohit Show - How to Win Friends, Influence People & Build Stronger Relationships Using the Power of Connection with Charles Duhigg

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Lumebox and AquaTru.  We understand that the quality of our relationships and connections within our community leads to a more fulfilling life and promotes happiness. However, communicating authentically and genuinely aren’t necessarily traits we're born with or that come naturally. Charles Duhigg is here to show us how we can change the way we communicate, add more meaning to our relationships, and extend our lifespan.  Today, on the Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with author and writer Charles Duhigg to discuss how to become a supercommunicator. Charles shares the top traits that super communicators practice in conversations and how these practices can lead to deeper and more meaningful relationships. He also delves into the science behind how these traits can promote longevity and overall happiness. If you're seeking guidance on becoming a better communicator, even with people you fundamentally disagree with, this episode is for you! Charles Duhigg is the author of The Power of Habit, about the science of habit formation in our lives, companies, and societies, and Smarter Faster Better, about the science of productivity. He currently writes at The New Yorker Magazine, and until a few years ago, was a reporter at the New York Times. There, he wrote “The iEconomy,” which focused on Apple and won a Pulitzer prize for explanatory reporting in 2013.  In this episode, Dhru and Charles dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): The top mistakes people make that prevent genuine connection (00:24 / 00:24) Ask yourself, why am I choosing to speak? (3:25 / 3:25)  Looping for understanding (6:27 /6:27) Neuro Alignment during conversations (10:09 / 7:58) Listening to learn about the other person (15:57 / 13:53) Acquiring the right tools (23:20 / 21:11) Keywords and demeanor and what they signal (25:37 / 23:30) Words or responses that show a communication disconnect (34:23 / 30:35) Why you should want to be a supercommunicator (39:55 / 35:57)  Every conversation is a quiet negotiation (53:45/ 50:02) How to connect with people who have different viewpoints (1:12:00/ 1:08:20) Four rules of a meaningful conversation (1:12:50 / 1:09:10) How super communication manifests to external success (1:24:10 / 1:22:12) Also mentioned in this episode: Charles’ new book: Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection Charles’ substack  Hello listeners! I could use your feedback about the podcast. If you click here and answer this question, it would mean the world to me. Lumbeox is offering my community $260 off their FDA-registered portable Red Light device! That's over 50% off! Go to thelumebox.com/dhru and get your Red Light device.  AquaTru is a countertop reverse osmosis purifier with a four-stage filtration system that removes 15x more contaminants than the bestselling water filters out there. Go to dhrupurohit.com/filter/ and get $100 off when you try AquaTru for yourself.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charles, welcome to the podcast. A pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much for having me. Today we're talking about unlocking the secret language of connection, which is so important to all aspects of our lives, not just our individual relationships, but our personal goal on living a long and healthy life. We're going to get back to that in a second. And I want to start off by talking about the mistakes that people make along the way. what are the top mistakes that you see people make every day that prevents them from authentically connecting with somebody that they want to connect?

It's a really great question because the way we connect with most people is through conversation, right? And yet, and we have conversations all day long. We talk all day long. And yet, despite that fact, despite that our brains are hardwired to communicate, we screw it up again and again and again. And I saw this in my own life. When I decided to write this book, I was having this issue, which was I'd come home from work and it would be like a long day and I would complain to my wife about like my boss is a jerk and none of my coworkers really appreciate me.

And my wife, very reasonably would give me some good advice. She would say something like, you know, why don't you take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other. But instead of using that as an opportunity to learn from her or to connect with her, I would do exactly the opposite. I'd be like, you're not listening to me. Why aren't you hearing what I'm saying? I want you to be, like, outraged on my behalf. And so I started talking to researchers trying to understand, like, why were these two people who love each other?

Why were we having trouble communicating during these moments when we should have been connecting each other, should have been supporting each other? And what they said is, look, the thing you have to realize is that every discussion is actually made up of multiple kinds of conversations, right? And in general, they fall into one of three buckets. There's usually an emotional conversation, a practical conversation where we're talking about fixing problems or making plans, and then a social conversation, which is about how we relate to each other in society.

And they said, you were coming home and you were having an emotional conversation. And your wife was responding with a practical conversation. And both of those are totally legitimate conversations. But because you weren't having the same kind of conversation at the same time, you failed to hear each other, you failed to connect. And ever since I heard that and got deeper into this research, I've realized this is actually kind of the Rosetta Stone to understanding the mistakes we make. Oftentimes when we make a mistake, it's because somebody is offering us a certain

kind of conversation, an emotional conversation or a practical conversation or a conversation about social issues like office gossip or how they feel about justice. And instead of matching them, what's known as the matching principle, we come in and we try and force our own conversation on top of it. And so we can't hear each other. We can't connect. So fundamentally, we have a mismatch between individuals, which goes right into something that I love that you talk about inside of the book, which was a little bit of a teaser into some of the super traits, these super connectors and communicators. do and practice, and that was one of the things that they do is before they open their mouth, they asked themselves, should I be or why am I opening my mouth?

That's exactly right. Right. Think about how many times you're like, you're in a conversation and you're like halfway through a sentence and you're like, what am I really saying? Like, why am I saying this, right? So this is, there are these things that we know about super communicators. Super communicators, they tend to laugh more than other people. people and emote more easily, they tend to ask a lot more questions, like 10 to 20 times as many

questions. But a lot of those questions are things like, you know, what did you think about that? Or like, what did you say next? Like questions that are that are so casual, we hardly even register them, but that make us feel invited to speak with them, make us feel heard. And you're exactly right that the other thing that they do is they tend to think just a little bit more. And this is a habit. It's not like they're like, you know, writing like a thesis to themselves before they open their mouth. But before they speak, they tend to think for two or three seconds about like, why? Like, what am I trying to get across here? More equally importantly, why are you talking to me? Like, you need something out of this conversation. You're actually telling me what you want.

How do I train myself to habitually look for what you're actually trying to tell me? since sometimes, as we all know, it might be captured by those words that I'm saying, but it might also be captured by my face or my gestures or how I hold myself. You know, in the classic sort of men are from Mars, women are from Venus sort of framework that's out there, you often get this sort of, let's just say, in the lexicon that's out there, you get this mismatch that's there that men get accused on average overall, generalizing, again, there's all sorts of different variation that's there. but for giving that more practical approach where, again, generalizing there's so many different

women and types. And of course, there's same-sex relationships, et cetera, et cetera. But on the women side of it, on the receiving end, they're having an emotional conversation. So again, fundamentally going back to this idea of a mismatch and a non-alignment. That's exactly right. And what's interesting, though, is to separate out what we're actually talking about and the communication habit that I have. So very often, and I think this is true of a lot of men, but not all men by far, is that when I'm talking to someone, I might sound very practical, right? I might say, like, look, this is what's going on and this is what's bothering me. But if you listen to the content of my words, what I'm actually saying is emotional, right? It's just that I feel more comfortable speaking

in a practical way than an emotional way. The same thing is true for my wife or for other people who are more comfortable with an emotional conversation, just because their voice seems emotional, just because they're talking an emotional way, that does not mean that they're necessarily having a specifically emotional conversation, right? It might be that they actually want to fix a problem or they want to be practical. And so the key to do, the key is to listen closely and most importantly to do this thing called looping for understanding. Because the thing that's hard about listening is that when we're listening to someone, we're not certain if we're actually hearing them correctly and they don't know that we're listening. When we're talking, it's so cognitively intense.

We tend to ignore what our audience is doing. So when someone finishes talking or when we're getting into a conversation, we do this thing called looping for understanding. It has three steps. The first step is ask them a question. We'll talk more about what questions are more powerful than others. ask them a question. When they answer it, we repeat back in your own words what you have heard them say. That's step number two. And then step number three, the one that we always forget is ask them if you got it right. Like, did I understand you? And the reason that's powerful is because, first of all, not only will it make that other person feel listened to. Like you really want to hear them. But second of all, it helps you figure out if you're hearing the right things. right? Are you actually hearing, are you getting distracted by how they look if they look upset when

they actually want to talk about solving a problem? This happens with my kids all the time. By asking them, here's what I heard you say. Am I getting it right? What you're doing is you're saying, what kind of conversation do you want to have? And then they'll tell you. This episode is brought to you by Lombox. One of my favorite daily practices is using red light therapy. There are thousands of articles and studies published in PubMed on its efficacy and its ability to improve all sorts of aspects of life, like improving our skin, helping with chronic inflammation. The list goes on and on. Many experts on my podcast, doctors, researchers have gone into just how powerful red light therapy can be. And one of my favorite ways to get that red light

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and start stimulating your mitochondria today. That's the T-H-E-L-U-M-E-Box.com slash D-H-R-U. That's me to get $260 off this portable red light device that I recommend. It's not just that these are words that are being spoken and received. There's actually something going on in the body. Yeah. And in the book, you talk about this idea of neural alignment, right? Not too dissimilar from this idea that we've talked about in the podcast before, which would be the idea of mirror neurons between people.

So can you explain that a little bit? Absolutely, absolutely. And so we're living through this golden age of understanding communication, really for the first time in ways that we haven't before. And a lot of it comes from neural researching, neuroimaging in particular. And what researchers have found is that when you and I are in conversation, like right now, although we don't notice it, some things start happening in our body.

For instance, our pupils are dilating at the same rate. If we had heart monitors on, what we would find is that our heart rates are starting to match each other, as are our breath rates. The electrical impulses along our skin are becoming similar. But most importantly, inside our brains, if we could do brain scans of us, what we would see is that your thought patterns and my thought patterns are starting to align. That's what communication is, right? It's me taking an idea or a feeling and explaining it to you.

And you, in some sense, experiencing that idea or that feeling. So fundamentally that we can see in your brain that you and I are nearly, nearly entrained, that we have become cognitively aligned. When that happens, not only do we know that the ideas and the emotions and everything else are flowing back and forth in a pretty good way, like we're understanding each other. But equally importantly, we've evolved to crave that feeling. Think about the last time you had a really good conversation. Afterwards, you probably felt great.

And it's because our brain has evolved. It's been hardwired to make us crave connection, to make us want to align and nerely, neurally align and nearly and train with another person. It feels really good. And the reason why is because it's helped us as a species succeed. And so this alignment, this physical alignment that happens is critical. And it sort of leads to like what is the goal of a conversation? The goal of a conversation is not to convince each other of anything. It's not to, it's not even to find a common ground. It's just to understand each other. Because if If I understand you and you understand me, our brains are starting to look the same.

And we will both walk away from that conversation, feeling closer to each other, but also feeling better about ourselves. It's so powerful. And I think that fundamental shift for a lot of people is that their modality could be. And there's been times in my life when I've been guilty about this, right, is the modality in approaching communication in a conversation is, I want to convince the other person of something. Absolutely.

Right. And you have this idea of control, which really. that goes back to this sense of control, right? Everyone craves control. You write in the book, but trying to control someone else is destructive. And I think of that in the context of what you were sharing here, which is, are you approaching this conversation you're about to have from a place of control? If you're trying to convince somebody, if you're trying to manipulate them, if you're trying to bring them over to your side without first understanding them, then you are stuck in a place of control.

totally right. And sometimes it's very well-meaning, right? Like, like, I hear you say something and I think you're wrong. And I'm convinced if I can just give you the right evidence, if I can tell you the right argument, you'll agree with me, right? Because like, it's so obvious. It's what's true. And of course, we've all been in that situation. We're talking to our crazy uncle. And he's like, I think that, you know, the entire world is being run by lizards. And we're like, dude, there's no evidence. Like, let me show you the evidence that there's no lizards out there. It doesn't matter how much evidence you give him, he's not, that's not going to be, that's not going to convince him. He has to believe that you are listening to him, that you hear what he's saying.

And you're exactly right. The goal of a conversation is not to convince the other person. It's not to control the other person. Rather, the goal of a conversation is oftentimes to figure out what we can control together. And advances in marriage therapy and research on marriage therapy has really made this clear that when we figure out what to control together, like when we control ourselves, right? Like, are we interrupting each other? Are we listening? When we control the environment, if we're deciding to have this conversation, not at 2 o'clock in the morning when the baby's

screaming, but rather during the day when we're well rested, if we decide to control the conversation itself, the parameters of this discussion, we're not going to talk about your mother and vacations and money. We're just going to talk about this one thing that we need to resolve or we need to understand. When we control those things, we control them together. Instead of trying to control each other, which is toxic, we find things that we can cooperate on. And that means that we can still disagree with each other. Like, you might think that guns are great and I don't like them, or I might think that abortion is great and you don't like it. We don't have to convince each other. We don't have to agree. But if I understand

what you're saying and you understand what I'm saying, if we control things about this conversation together rather than trying to control each other, we're both going to walk away feeling like we have a more profound understanding not only of the other person and connected to them, but a more profound understanding of ourselves. Do you think with the idea of going into the conversation that I want to better understand the person, there has to be at least a sliver inside of us that no matter how strongly we feel about an idea or a viewpoint, that there's something more to learn or that there might be more of the story, right? Absolutely.

I think you're exactly right. And I think that, you know, in the book we talk about the importance of what are known as learning conversations, where your goal is to learn. Now, you know, when I'm talking to that crazy uncle and he's telling me that lizard people run the world, I'm probably not going to learn a lot of useful stuff about lizard people, right? Like, I'm pretty certain there are no lizard people. But he is going to teach me some interesting stuff about how he sees the world or why this is important to him or how a completely disaffected part of society have latched on to these ideas that I think are crazy. I can learn about him. And learning about another person feels great, right?

It might not be the lesson that they're trying to teach us. But when we actually try and see the world through their eyes, we learn. something more profound about how the world works. It's so true. And every so often, I'm sure you've been in this place, I've changed my mind on big topics. Absolutely. From some idea that initially I came across that I thought might be a little bit crazy.

And then you're willing to listen and say, oh, actually there might be something that's there, not all the time, not every single day. But I think most people, if they're honest with themselves, who said, hey, there was a point in time of my life where I changed my mind on something that I really strongly believed in. Forget about geopolitical, forget about sort of COVID pandemic or other stuff, even a fundamental idea about whether or not another human being.

Somebody in your family was a good person who meant well, but who was maybe misguided or was struggling through something. So we all change our minds on a regular basis, but it takes that sliver of being open enough and wanting to understand the other person. And just going into a conversation and saying, my goal here is just to learn, right? a learning conversation is a successful conversation. And there's a couple of tips that can make them easier to have. One of them, they teach us in schools to teachers, is that when a student comes up and

they're upset to say to that student, do you want me to help you? Do you want me to hear you? Or do you want me to hug you? Now, these are, of course, the three conversations, right? The practical, the emotional, and the social conversation. But think about how profound that is. if someone comes up to you and they're like, look, I see that you're, you're thinking through something, you're working through something. Do you want me just to listen to what you're saying? Or do you want me

to help you figure out like what the solution is? Like with my wife and me, we actually do this all the time. That's transformed everything, right? Because now I can say to her what I want out of this conversation, what kind of conversation I need. She can invite me to match her. But you're exactly right that the goal of asking that question is not to try and force on someone what I think they need. It's to ask them what they think they need to learn what they want. And then we can start to connect. You know, before we get into the three kinds of conversations that you break down in the book, you mentioned marital therapy. I'm a huge fan of the Gottman Institute. I don't know if you're familiar with the research. Yeah. The Gottman's are in the book. Yeah. And so my wife and I went to a

Gottman therapist. Did you? Before we had even decided to get married. Oh my gosh. It was almost like, which isn't that common these days, it was our version of working with a therapist here in L.A. to say, hey, we really like each other. I don't even think at the time we had said, I love you, right?

Like nobody, but internally. This is early. We both felt it. You guys are thinking ahead. We both felt it. And we said, I'm serious about wanting to be serious with you. Yeah. And what we want is like, especially us getting married at a little bit of a later stage,

I was just about to turn, you know, 37. We went into this with let's understand the person for who they are and walk us through. They have this deck of cards. It's called 52 questions before marriage and moving in. We're going to do some of these. But walk us through this dialogue of are we on the same page about important topics in life? And one of the fundamental things that the therapist just regularly did, you know, making space for us to have conversation is, okay, Drew, just repeat back to Yasmin what you heard her say. And in that insight, not that I was new to that sort of world, it just really dawned on me.

I asked the therapist afterwards, I said, how many times do people get it wrong when they're even in real time repeating back to their partner, husband, wife, whatever, what they just heard. He's like, you'd be surprised almost like 30 to 40% of the time in the beginning. People can't even hear what the other person was saying because they were thinking about something else. Exactly. They get in their own way. Now, let me ask you something about when you guys went and you did this work with the Gottman Institute. Did you, I mean, at this point, you and your soon-to-be wife probably knew each other pretty well. But were there some sort of big fundamental things that when she said it was kind of a surprise to you?

You're like, oh, I didn't know you thought that or I didn't know you felt that. Were there any big fundamental things that were a surprise to me? I think, you know, even though we knew each other really well, aspects of how sort of early childhood things might have shaped, you know, either her or me. I think those things. I think largely we were on alignment about life and future and other components like that. But yeah, like, wow, I never knew how much this event that you kind of read. referenced how tough that was for you and how that shaped your view on X, Y, and

and that's really interesting. Like what I hear you saying there that I think is so valuable is you and this woman had been trying to get to know each other for months and months and months at this point, right? It's those, it's like you're just asking each other personal questions. And yet there were still some things that you had heard that you hadn't understood how important they are, right? that like this one childhood memory is not just one among many. It's actually a seminal childhood memory.

Absolutely. And the only way you can get to that, the only way you can actually understand who that other person is, is not simply by like having casual conversations. It's by sitting down and saying, I want to learn everything about you. And more importantly, I want to learn how you see everything about you. And the only way I can do that is by asking you questions

and then repeating back what I'm hearing to make sure that I'm getting it right, but also to make sure that you're explaining it to me the way that you mean. It's such a powerful process. My wife and I still kind of do this. We just like, there's this thing called the 36 questions that lead to love, which are coming out of another set of researchers

on the Arens. And just asking each other these questions and then trying to listen as closely as we can and repeat back what we hear, you pick up on this stuff that you don't get at first glance, right? The deeper meanings that sometimes we don't know how to express until someone says, did I get this right? Like, am I hearing you correctly?

You know, what this book and what you shared is fundamentally about for the person who's listening who might feel like I'm struggling with communication is, you know, I'm going to read from a quote from the book, super communicators aren't born with special abilities. That's something important for everybody to understand. here. But they have thought harder about how conversations unfold and why they succeed or fail. Fundamentally, we're talking about nobody is born necessarily with this gift, but through a little bit of practice, a little bit of education, you can tap into these powers that many of these super communicators that you feature in the book have. And thus, your life will significantly improve.

And the way that I talk about life significantly improving when you tap into these things is you just have less friction. There's less friction. There's less friction. with your regular interactions, whether that's with your spouse, husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, whether that's with people that you work with, whether that's people that you disagree with. Some of my best friends, I have difference of opinions on big life topics, but my life is actually better because they're in it. And they challenge me and they make me better. But all throughout these relationships, there's a lot of congruance. There's a lot of harmony that's there because I'm not trying to control and I'm trying to fundamentally understand and hear the other person.

That's exactly right. And I think one thing you said that's really important is nobody is born knowing how to communicate well, right? This is literally just a set of skills that anyone can learn. The same way that you learn to read and you get better at it, you can learn to communicate better and learn how to hear other people better and how to speak in a way that they can hear you. And that's really, really important because it's hopeful. It means that all of us can become better communicators. And you're exactly right that once you know how to do this, it becomes habitual. It becomes an instinct. It's something you don't have to think about all the time because you've trained yourself to really hear what the other person is saying and what they need and to communicate

with them what you want to say and what you need. And once you do that, you can disagree with each other about all kinds of things. One of the prompts that I look for when I'm having a conversation to know about are we in sort of some sense of congruence, me and another person I'm talking to, is I look for when they're responding to something that I might be saying, as I'm sort of judging the situation and trying to feel it out, I'll look for, and I'll even try to catch myself doing this because I make all these mistakes too. I'm not a perfect communicator. I'll look for times that I start a sentence off with the word but. Why is that important? Well, it's a great one, right? Because So there's a couple of researchers, Uri Hassan at Princeton and Talia Wheatley at Dartmouth,

who have looked really closely at like how we start sentences and what that means communicates to the other person. And, and, you know, in improv there's this rule. You have to say yes and, right? The only way you can make an improv scene work is you basically like agree with the person across from you. You match them. You give in to their vision and then they're going to give into yours.

Keep it going. And exactly, exactly. Keep that thing going. No one knows what's going to come next. Now, there's a bunch of verbal ticks we have which can get in our way, right? If we say, but what we're not saying is, I agree with you, but. And as a listener, all we hear is the but. All that we hear is this person hasn't actually necessarily been listening to me.

They've been waiting their turn to speak. And if they're not listening to me, maybe I shouldn't be listening to them. Maybe I should just wait my turn to speak. That's where a lot of this friction and tension comes. If I can just communicate to you that I genuinely want to understand you, I genuinely want to listen, if I can prove to you that I am listening, then, and again, this is hardwired into our brains, you can't help but listen back to me. You can't help but feel closer to me. That feeling of neural synchrony or neural entrainment that I mentioned, it's at the core of our sense of closeness with other people and our sense of trust. If we become entrained, even if we completely, disagree with each other, even if we think each other like, you know, is completely wrong, we will feel some degree of trust and closeness. And that's something we can build on. That's how you disagree with your friends is because, you know, you share the same values. You share the same,

the same, you know, aspirations for life. Even if they believe that the way you do it is by buying a Maserati and the way you believe it is by giving money to charity, that doesn't mean that you have to ignore everything you have in common. You're saying yes and. This episode is brought to you by Aquitru. I've talked to so many experts about the importance of clean water as a foundation for great health. And this makes total sense because our bodies are mostly made up of water.

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best-selling water filters that are out there. The one I'm thinking about starts with the B, but I'm not going to say it by name. And Aquatru is made with BPA and BPS-free plastic, and they also recently launched a new glass craft container, which I'm a huge fan of. Right now, Aquatru is offering my community an amazing deal. Just go to drew filter.com, D-H-R-U-Filter-F-I-L-T-E-R-D-R-R-com, and get $100 off when you try Aquitru for yourself today. That's Drew, D-H-R-U-Filter.com to get $100 off when you try aquatrue for yourself. I teased it. We're going to get into in a second, the three types of conversations. We're going to talk about some of the practical sort of tips that are there for navigating these three types of conversations. But there's one more. In addition to starting off

you know, your sentences with butt, and I try to catch myself, and I'll say, you know what, let me take that back. I'm going to start over. Another thing that I see, either myself or other people doing, that it's a good sign to catch yourself. And I don't know if I saw this in the book or not, but I'd love your thoughts on it, is if so much of communication is about congruence and harmony and getting a sense to match each other. I'll even see it that in podcast interviews, when you're really getting a chance to vibe with the other person, you know, one person crosses their legs, another person crosses their legs. Totally. One person puts their hand up here, another person passes. This happens on a regular basis going back to this idea that you start

to match each other. Right. One of the things that I look for in myself is when I am intentionally sort of closing off that match because I feel that somebody might be threatening or I don't like their idea or whatever. One of the first things that I'll do or I see other people do is they'll cross their hands like this. Yeah. What's going on when people cross their hands? Well, so the point that you realize on this within within the psychology literature this is actually known as sometimes being a social chameleon that we all have this natural instinct again related to mere neurons and a lot of other research that when we see someone when we're in conversation with someone when we're aligning with someone we tend to physically imitate them and the things that are really interesting is

if one person uses an unusual word the other person will start using that word right we're trying to create like a little language between ourselves that we both understand. And it's not just a spoken language. It's a language of are we interrupting each other or not? Are we looking at each other? Are we looking at a sports game on the TV? We start to echo each other's bodies. And the reason why is because we've learned to pick up on those clues to figure out if this

person wants to connect with us. One of the most powerful of this is laughter. So what's really interesting is if you look at when most people laugh, it is not in response to something funny. Most people laugh to show that they want to connect with someone else. And when that person laughs back, it shows that they want to connect too. It's almost an inborn instinct. If I laugh right now with you, you have an instinct to laugh back, right?

And it's because you're smiling. It's because we know that that's a way subconsciously, that's a way for us to show each other that we want to align. And the same thing is true. If you look really concerned and sad and I look really concerned and sad, you know that I want to be there for you. Now, what's the opposite of a laugh? The opposite of laugh is that you're sitting like that and I cross my arms, right?

Or you're looking at me trying to make eye contact and I'm looking over here and I'm not doing it. Those are ways to pick up on when someone is feeling like we're not connecting with them. And at that point, we have to take a step back and ask ourselves, what's going on here? Like even if our conversation seems like it's working, even if we're just saying nice, placid things to each other, what's really happening that's making this person feel a little off, a little alienated? And sometimes it's just a matter of saying like, hey, what do you want to talk about? Like, I'd love to hear what's going on in your life and asking a special kind of question, which is known as a deep question. And you're asking a deep question to essentially try to show other person and you're proving to them, which is a big part of the book, you're proving to them that you are, listening, that you are here. You're letting them know that they are safe. They can be heard in this

situation. And I don't just mean from like, hey, this has to be a safe space type thing, right? But from a standpoint of fundamentally a human being is going to connect with another person if they know that they're going to be received, that their ideas are going to be heard, that, hey, it's not a combative situation. That's exactly right. And there's two steps to this, right? The first is, and I think we've had a lot of this in this conversation, the first is proving that we're listening, asking a follow. up question, repeating what you said in my own words. The second is what's known as emotional reciprocity, that when you say something revealing about yourself, when you say something that's a little

bit vulnerable, that I respond in a way that's a little bit vulnerable as well, right? You mentioned that you went to therapy with your wife. And I think maybe one of the reasons that that came to mind was because I talked about fighting with my wife, right? We had some reciprocity going on there where I brought up something personal and you brought up something personal and we signal to each other. And you asked me follow up questions about me and my wife and I asked you follow up questions about the therapy you had gone to. We're proving that we're listening to each other. That's really, really powerful because it shows just the same way that a laugh does that we want to connect.

What is the opposite of that? Just so people really get a chance to hear it, right? What is the opposite that you see? I mentioned a couple words that kind of cut things off. but you want to get your thing in. You're not listening to them. You're not proving that you're listening. I want to play devil's advocate.

Right? I want to play devil's advocate. That's like a terrible way. The devil doesn't need more advocates that are out there. No. No. What are some more? Just so that people can see an example.

I mean, honestly, the one that everyone that we almost noticed without even thinking about it is just when somebody doesn't respond to what we just said, right? Like you just asked me a question if I was like, you know what I'd really like to talk about is I'd like to talk about what I had for Brooke. Like, you would know that I'm not listening to you. And it wouldn't be that obvious. I might be like, what I really want to do is promote my book. So no matter what question you ask me, I'm going to move it into talking about my book

and promoting my book, you're going to know that we're not actually vibing, right? That we're not communicating with each other. And in fact, Dan Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard who wrote Stumbling into Happiness and is doing a lot of conversations research right now, he's found that this significant. of changing the topic is so powerful that it can actually make it really hard to figure out how to end a conversation. Because if I bring something up and you don't meet me, you don't yes and me, then both of us are trying to figure out, like, should we just end the conversation?

Like, is the other person bored? And so the number one thing to look for in yourself and in others is just to ask yourself, am I actually listening to this person? Like instead of thinking about what I want to say next, am I actually listening to what they're saying? And does it seem like they're listening to me? And the thing is, if you're doing it well, what you say might not be the most brilliant thing you've ever said in your entire life, right? You're in the moment.

I stumble over my words all the time. I miss phrase things. And the reason why is because I'm in the conversation. I don't have time to think about how to say it perfectly. Sometimes we think that if another person is a little clumsy, that it means that they're not with us. But we know in that conversation when we're clumsy and they're clumsy, but we're still getting those ideas across, that means we're actually listening to each other rather than just thinking about what we want to say next. There's this old idea that people don't always remember what you said, but they remember how you made them feel. That's exactly.

And so even if you're stumbling, you're leaving an imprint on them and they are walking away feeling like, you know what, they understood me. So if you want to figure out who the to your point, if you want to figure out who the super communicators are in your life, the best question is to ask yourself. So if you've had a bad day, who would you call that you just know is going to make you feel better? So when I ask you that question, does someone pop immediately to mind? Oh, yeah. My sisters, both of them. Okay. I have two sisters, one older, one younger, they're eight years apart, born on the same day. They are incredible super communicators. So, okay, so let me ask you this. So you're older and you're younger and you're younger. sister, are they like the most eloquent person you know? Like if if you ask them to like pop up and give a speech, are they like Barack Obama or like or are they people who talk sometimes in clumsy ways? They may not be Barack Obama, but they are pretty eloquent. Okay. Right. But they are pretty eloquent, but still going back to your idea, they fundamentally are incredible at being present and making me feel hurt. They, they, whatever they're doing, you know, whatever time of day, they can, and I try to be that for them too, they can kind of pause, even with

their busy lives, kids, other stuff, and they can clue in. And the other thing that I give them credit for, which is, I think, a big part of being a super communicator is when it's not the right time and they know they can't be present or something else is going on, they acknowledge me in that moment and say, hey, listen, I want to be there for you. There's a few things that are going on right now. I can't, I can't like focus. Can I call you? back in 30 minutes. Which is amazing, right? It's absolutely amazing. So when we think about the super communicators in our lives, they are often not the most charismatic person. They are not, they are not the funniest person we know. They aren't, sometimes they aren't even like

necessarily the smartest person we know, right? We have all these genius friends. But what they are is exactly what you just said. They're someone who with every gesture signals to us that they want to actually hear what we're saying, that they're listening to what we're saying. And they know how to communicate with us in a way that we hear what they're saying back. They know that if I come in hot and I tell you like, you're just making, you're an idiot, you're making a mistake that you're going to shut down immediately. So the way that they have to do it is to say, look, you're so good at so many things. And here's this one thing that I think you could be excellent at.

they know how they know how to listen they laugh more they ask more questions we don't even notice when they're doing it but that's what makes them a super communicator it's that capacity to just pay a little bit more attention that any of us can learn that allows them to figure out how to actually connect rather than just hoping that it happens let's zoom out big big big picture sure what is the reason why we should all want to be super communicators, right? Take us to the biggest aspect of it. Because for some people that are listening today, their feeling is like, okay, this feels like a lot of work to understand other people. What's in it for me? Absolutely. So, okay, so there's two things here, right? The first is personal. There has been study after study. And at the end of the book,

we mentioned the Harvard Happiness Study, right, which has been going on now for almost, we're coming up in a hundred years. Talk about that. Some of our audience knows about it. Some of it does. So it was originally known as the grant study because there was this guy who had actually dropped out of high school himself and had started 25 cents stores all over the country, like right before the Depression, and he had become incredibly wealthy. And he had all this money and he wanted to like, he wanted people to know how wealthy he was. So he said, okay, I'm going to give a bunch of money to Harvard. You can do whatever you want with it. But you got to help me figure out how to hire managers, hire the best managers. So they take his money. What they do is they're like,

okay, this manager question is interesting, but we're going to focus on something else. They start doing these intensive interviews with Harvard students. And eventually this expands to young people who are living in the tenements of South Boston. And as those people went to get on and got married and had kids, they included their husbands and wives and children. And what they did is that every 18 months, they followed up with each person over the course of their lifetime and they asked them a series of questions. What they were trying to figure out is, what are the correlates of success? Like, what are the things that if you have them make you more likely to be financially successful, to be healthy, to be happy? And they had all these

hypotheses, right? Their first hypotheses was people from broken marriages aren't going to be happy. People who learn to read late in life aren't going to be as happy. People who were born to a lot of wealth and prestige, they're going to be happier and more successful. and have better relationships and most importantly live longer. They'll be healthier. And what they found, as they did this for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years is that all of those were wrong. There was only one thing that was a correlate with longevity, with success, and with happiness. And that was how many genuine connections you have in your life. They basically would take people when they were 45 and they would count up how many genuine friends they have.

How many people they're in touch with, not necessarily every day, but in touch with in a meaningful sense. And that was the thing that best predicted at 65 and 70 and 80 and 85, whether they were still alive, whether they were happy and whether they were materially successful. Connection is the secret sauce. Like our ability. to connect with other people is why humans have been so successful as a species. It's how we build societies and families, towns, cities, countries. And the reason why is because connection helps us live longer. Not only does it provide us with the resources we need, it literally makes us healthier.

It makes us happier. And the way that we connect with people most of the time is through conversation. right you call someone up on the phone you go out to lunch with them you don't have to see them one of my best friends i probably talk to him once a month once every six weeks but every time we do it is a great conversation and he makes my life so much better so that's the first thing right is that for our own personal health and happiness connection is critical the second thing is that like and this is particularly true right now the united states all different democracies, we succeed because we know how to talk to people who are different from us and connect

with them. If you look at the constitutional convention that produced the constitution, it was basically people who hated each other coming together and having a conversation to build a new country. If you look at all the moments we're most proud of as a country or as a world, there are usually times when enemies or people who disagreed sat down with each other and worked something out. Particularly right now, when we're living through this polarized time and it seems like so many people have forgotten how to communicate, particularly right now learning how to be a super communicator is not only the most important thing for yourself, for your health, it's also

the most important thing for the world. Is that big enough? That's big enough. I think our own health and longevity and the foundation of democracy, I think those are big enough. Right. And to each one of those things, I think it's a fair statement and you correct me from wrong, is that the opposite is also true is that if you are not great at connecting. And I know some people like that, they're not the super connectors.

They might be the opposite. You fundamentally have to understand that it's you who's losing out on it. and it's not causative, it's going to be correlative, but you're going to live not as long of a life. Yeah. Because fundamentally, you're going to be left to your own devices. People are ultimately going to feel like it's not worth it because you're not willing to listen. You don't want to be helped and you feel, you know, Esther Perel, who's a friend of mine, the author, a relationship author, as she says, would you rather be right or would you rather be in love? and there are so many people that out there that feel

I am right on this thing and I refuse to engage with somebody who feels differently, even if that's their own family about just inter-family stuff that's there. This one person didn't send me a birthday card, never has been there for me. They have a whole story about how they haven't shown up

and been there for them at key moments in their life. It's a story, right? I'm sure there's some facts in it, but it's largely a story. And they'd rather stick to being right about their person. which goes back into their own ego instead of being in connection with the person. And I want to point out something you just did because this is why you're a super communicator. You started what you just said by saying, tell me if I'm getting this right, right?

Like tell me if you disagree. And then you essentially repeated in your own words what I had just said and then built on it and added something new to it, right, talking about Esther Perel. And you were exactly right. When we sit down with a relative and let's take politics, right? because like particularly we're in a we're an election year. There's going to be some tough conversations. Think about how much better it feels to sit down with, again, your crazy uncle.

And instead of saying like, I got to convince this guy not to vote for the person he wants to vote for, just saying actually like my, all I want to do is understand why they're going to vote for them. Like it's not my job to change their mind. I can't change their mind. But I genuinely want to understand like what they see in this person. And I want them to know that I'm trying to understand, that I care about them. I love them.

In that case, you're exactly right. It's not about being right. It's about learning their story from their perspective. And then once you do that, he's going to want to know your story, too. That's how we end up overcoming these differences. Well, since you brought up politics. Yeah. I would love to just chat about that for a second and sort of the second standpoint that you talked about,

which is, you know, if you don't study history, you don't remember or know or you've forgotten that the United States, with all its imperfections, has been a grand experiment in the way that it's brought democracy to the world, right? And sure, we have problems like any other nation that's out there. But this democracy is fragile. And part of that goes back to this idea of, you mentioned, in the, you mentioned, in the, even founding of this country, the willingness to be able to hear ideas that you fundamentally disagree with. And I think what's taking place right now in this space is that I know a lot of

people have thoughts about, let's say, a platform like Twitter referred to as X. The part that I feel really excited about when it comes, and I spend a lot of time on Twitter, I spent a lot of time on X, is that fundamentally I see so many conversations happening there, not that there aren't problems. I see conversations of people engaging with each other who have different ideas and yet still some civility being there. Now, there's the opposite of civility too, which will always be there, right? And that makes me feel like, you know, polarization is not that one person has one idea, another person has another, is that you have an idea one way. I have an idea another way and we're not willing to acknowledge each other's human beingness.

That's exactly right. We're not willing to acknowledge the other person. And that's a powerful. So in the book, as you know, there's a chapter about this experiment that was done where they brought together a bunch of gun rights enthusiasts, people who thought that we should be able to buy guns without any limitations and a lot of gun control activists. And these were people who, like, were devoted to their cause, right? These were professionals. And the goal of the experiment was to bring them together and not get them to agree, not even get them to figure out if they have a common ground. It was just to see if it would be possible to have a civil conversation. And so they taught them these techniques. They taught them looping for understanding, right? Asking a question,

repeating back what you're hearing in your own words, asking if you got it right. And most importantly, they taught them how to listen for what is underneath what the other person is saying and simply to acknowledge it. And I talked to a bunch of participants in this, and they all said the same thing. They all said, you know, I thought that like people who like were in favor of guns were like gun nuts. And then I listened to all these people talk to me about like how important it was that like they go hunting with their kids and they talk about ecology or how for years they have felt scared and afraid. And when they have a gun, it makes them feel empowered. It makes them feel like they can defend themselves even if they never use it. And once I heard that, once I acknowledge to them, you, you have a legitimate issue.

I'm not saying I agree with you or that I agree with the solution you come up with, but I hear that you're scared or I hear that you want to share something meaningful with your kids that your dad or your mom shared with you. Simply acknowledging that is the key to understanding each other. And that doesn't mean that everyone walked away from that weekend with their minds changed on guns. Almost nobody's minds were changed. But they all walked away feeling like they understood the other side and most importantly the people on the other side much better. And they kept of these relationships for years. Which is the first step for anything productive to be able to come. Exactly. Moving forward from there. That's what a democracy is, right? Like we don't,

we don't go to the polls because we all agree with each other. We go to the polls because we've been having a conversation about which way this country or this town or our family should go. do you feel that an important part of that is allowing debates to happen? For a while, we were in this sort of situation where you can't even really have a debate when it comes to areas about COVID, origin, et cetera. Like, do you feel that it's important to fundamentally that we need to allow people to have the conversation? Because the conversation's happening whether or not we allow it to happen. It's happening inside my head, even if you're not encouraging me to say it aloud. You're exactly right. So there's another story in the book about Netflix. Netflix went through this

huge internal controversy because one of their senior executives used a racial, one of their senior executives used a racial slur in a meeting. He did not intend it as a slur. He was just sort of describing something. He was describing disabled individuals using the R word. It was actually a little bit worse. He was making an analogy and he used the N word. Okay, got it. Sorry, this was a different example. But you're exactly right. It's the same basic story. And a lot of people in the meeting justifiably were really, really upset.

And this started tearing the company apart because it turns out there had been, there had been all these divisions within Netflix for years. People had been at each other's throats without ever acknowledging it, without ever talking about it. And so Netflix, which is confronting this situation where, you know, things might fall apart for the firm, what they decide to do is instead of saying don't have the conversation, They actually said, we need more conversations. We're going to create these spaces, these workshops, where you can come in and we want everyone

to talk about their racial identity. Now, what's interesting and important about this is they didn't just say to the black employees or the Asian American employees talk about your racial identity. They also said to the white employees, talk about your racial identity because you have a seat at this table as well. That does not mean you understand what it's like to be a black woman in America. That does not mean you understand what it's like to be a gay man in the city. But you have your own identity.

And by sharing that with us and then listening to other people share their identities, we're going to find places where we can understand each other better. And that's what ultimately ended up resolving the controversy. People want to be acknowledged. They don't want their social differences to be ignored. They don't want their identities to be ignored. They want to be recognized for who they are. and someone say, I see you.

And that's critical because when that happens, that's when we start to connect with each other. You know, there's this idea in the book as you set up the three types of conversations that every conversation is a negotiation. Yeah. What does that mean? So it's, and negotiation is kind of a tough word because it's what's referred to in the psychology literature as a quiet negotiation where the goal is not to win. Most of the time we think of a negotiation is like, I'm negotiating with you.

I want to win. The goal of a quiet negotiation is simply to understand what the other person wants and needs. So when we sit down for a discussion and we engage in a quiet negotiation, some of the things that we're doing, for instance, is I'm conducting experiments. Like, without even thinking about it, you're doing the same thing. If we interrupt each other, does that seem to bother each of us? If I laugh, do you laugh? Is this a conversation where we're going to talk about, like, personal stuff? or is this a conversation where we want to keep it formal?

This is like a business thing. At the beginning of a conversation, we're always trying to kind of conduct an experiment and see how the other person reacts. And this is what a quiet negotiation is. And what I'm really trying to figure out is what are the rules for this discussion? Like what are the unconscious, unwritten rules about how you and I can connect with each other? In some ways, this is referred to as the what's this really about conversation, right? And this is the practical conversation.

The practical conversation that often happens at the beginning of a discussion is me and you trying to figure out what are the rules we're going to use? Can I tell a joke? Can I be informal? Is it better to be like a little polite? Once we figure those out, that negotiation is over. We both know how we're going to make decisions together throughout this discussion. And that what's this really about is the first type of the three,

types of conversations. The second two are how do we feel, which is the emotional mindset, and it's who we are, which is the social mindset. So walk us through those in context. You talked about the first one a little bit. Right. I talked about the first one. And let me just sort of expand the first one, the practical, what's this really about to also say that sometimes when we need, when we figure out what this is really about is to make a decision together is that after we've decided how we're going to make decisions together, we got to actually make the decision together, right? Like, where are we going for dinner tonight? Like, what are we going to do about Jimmy's grades?

So that's kind of a practical conversation. And by the way, in a discussion, you'll have all three of these conversations. You'll just move from one to one. And the key is to move together to match each other. The second conversation, the emotional conversation, how do you feel? In that situation, my goal is not to fix your problem. My goal is not to come up with a plan. my goal should be just to understand how you're feeling, like to give you space to express your emotions.

And then the way that I show you I've heard them is by acknowledging them and reciprocating. Now that doesn't mean if you say you're really, really upset because, you know, your aunt passed away, that I should therefore say like, oh, I understand what that's like. My grandmother died 25 years ago. That's not reciprocity. That's taking your spotlight and trying to shine it on myself. But if you're talking about how upset you are about the passing of someone in your life, and I say, man, I really, I know how hard that is, and I'm really sorry, I've gone through this myself.

Tell me a little bit about your aunt. Like, tell me what she was like. That's reciprocity, right? Instead of trying to ignore your feelings, instead of trying to pretend like your feelings don't exist, I'm recognizing, acknowledging your feelings. and I'm giving you space to explain them more, and I'm showing I hear those feelings and I've felt them myself. That's the emotional conversation. The social conversation is kind of the conversation we were just talking about, the who are we conversation, where what we're trying

to work through is how we see each other and how we think society sees ourselves. And this is where identities are really important. This is where being able to say, you know, as a black woman, how do you see policing differently than you think I see it? As a gay man, how do you think about relationships differently than I think about them? Giving someone the space to explain how their own unique identities, their own unique experiences, help them see the world differently, and then showing them that we really want to understand that. Like we want to understand how they see the world. And the key of that, at the core of that is this basic insight that we all contain dozens of personalities, dozens of identities, right? I am a white man. I'm also a father. I'm a brother.

I'm a journalist. I'm someone who grew up in New Mexico. I'm an American. If somebody sits down with me and they're just like, look, you're the typical white guy. Tell me, me what a white guy thinks, it's going to feel terrible to me. But if they invite all those different identities out, if they say, I know you're from New Mexico, and I'm just wondering as like a father who's from New Mexico, like, do you think about like, do you think about raising your kids differently than if you'd grown up somewhere else? Suddenly, I feel like I'm being invited into a social conversation where you want to hear about the totality of who I am. And that's the key for that kind of conversation about who are we? I think the totality is so important because

is, you know, somebody could look at me and say, okay, this is an Indian man. He's a minority by the classic sort of definition of how we're looking at minorities. But the part that, not to acknowledge, not to say that I'm not a minority, but the component that's there, that if somebody is just looking at one aspect, which we do in society, they don't understand that, you know, you could look at me and say, okay, I'm a minority. And so I've gone through this tough experience and everybody's gone through different tough experiences. And they could look at a friend of mine who might be a white male and they could say, they can imagine that his life is a lot easier, but they may not know that he grew up in a, he grew up poor. Yeah. He grew up completely

economically disenfranchised. And so often when we only use, again, part of that and you're talking about using the totality, which I think is so important, we don't see that sometimes we have more in common with another person, even they're from a different, you know, race because there's a more shared experience on class. That's exactly. Right. Or something else. Or sports or this or that, whatever it is. It's the human aspect of the totality of who this person is. That's exactly. And that's not to downplay like privilege and social consequences of being a minority versus not being a minority. Like those are real things. And they deserve their place in a conversation because your white friend, even though he's poor, he grew up poor, might have experienced life very differently than if he had

grown up Hispanic and poor, right? And we want to recognize that. But at the same time, you're exactly right that when I'm talking to someone and they can share how they see themselves with me, then I begin to understand how they see the world. You mentioned before that we all have the story inside our head, right? Particularly when we're in conflict with someone. Usually the conflict exists because the story in my head is different from the story in your head and we don't realize that. We don't recognize that. So the first thing that I need to do is figure out what's the story inside your head. And if you say to me, look, the most important thing about me is not that I'm a minority. It's not even that I'm a man. The most important thing to me is that I have

two sisters who I love. That's really valuable for helping me understand how you see the world. And I have to show you that I hear that for you to believe that I'm listening. Do you feel that part of that acknowledging that we all have a story is that, again, just using that example that you used earlier, you know, your uncle that believes in lizards, right? Which anybody, if they want to know where that came from, there's like some conspiracy theory authorists. I don't even like to use that word, but David Ike, the funny thing about his stories over the years, they've always changed and he predicted a mass flood that would wipe out England and later on it went to lizards and this thing and that. But just going back to that uncle, even I would say is that, hey, maybe we don't

label him as, and you were just doing this conversation to kind of give an example, we don't come in and say like, hey, crazy. Right. Or conspiracy theorist. Or conspiracy theorist because there's people on the other side that feel like, oh, believing that, uh, you know, Russia like manipulated every aspect of our elections, that's another crazy thing. So when we label people even coming into the situation as crazy, we've already kind of not started to hear them, even though that wasn't your goal in how you were describing him. That's exactly. But we come in with our interpret of who somebody is, and then we start to see everything that they say as crazy, unhinged, or whatever.

Well, let's take another example that we discuss in the book that is more, is more, like, pressing for us, which is COVID vaccines, right? There are millions of people in the country who believe that COVID vaccines are dangerous for them. And by the way, everyone should get a COVID vaccine, right? I believe that everyone should get a COVID vaccine. but they're not uninformed. Vaccines have risks associated with them.

My wife is a biologist, and we talk about this a lot, that we're making a choice to take a small risk for an outsized reward, which is to protect our kids from COVID or from flu or from whatever the disease or influenza. But if you walk into a doctor's office and you say, I don't believe in vaccines, I think that it gives kids autism. And your doctor says to you, you are absolutely wrong. You just haven't done the research. Like there is no evidence that vaccines cause autism, which there is no evidence that vaccines cause autism.

If you say that, then you're going to turn off that patient. Like that patient's not going to listen to anything you have to say going forward. Right. The only way, and this is known as motivational interviewing, and they found that this is the technique to help people think about vaccines and decide whether they want to get a vaccine is to ask them, why do you believe like why do you think that like what are you worried about it where did you get your information from is it a reputable source secondarily once you got that information did you are you thinking through all the risks associated with something because you're right there are

risks associated with vaccines but there's also risks around getting ill long COVID like once you engage with someone and you have an honest conversation with them once you say I want to understand the story that's inside your head rather than just telling you that your story is wrong, that's when for the first time you start to have a real conversation. And they might walk out of that office thinking, like, I shouldn't get a vaccine. And that's okay. But at least they're making an informed decision rather than just feeling like they're under attack. So this is actually a good opportunity to sort of continue along with that component, you know, to expand on your statement. You know, your statement that I heard you say was that you believe that the COVID

vaccine had greater reward than there were risk associated, right? Is I, am I hearing that? For my family. For your family. For your family. For my family. And I don't, I don't presume to judge for anyone else. But like when we were making the decision for ourselves, we said, look, I mean, there

is a risk for every vaccine. And there's also a risk of getting COVID. And we long COVID seems really scary. And so we decided to get the vaccine. Yeah. And to add to that, you know, if you were having a dialogue or let's say when I was, you know, looking at sort of the data that's out there and seeing that there were countries in Europe that were saying, hey, for this population set, young men in particular and the association with myocarditis, which initially was sort of pushed aside. And now largely I think it's been

accepted, you know, in mainstream medicine that, hey, look, there is a risk of myocarditis. and every family has to balance that out for themselves, as you guys balanced it out. But how I came to there was that I want to hear the best debates on both sides. Absolutely. I want to hear a long format podcast with people who disagree, who are sharing their best evidence without shouting each other down, responding to the actual science, presenting it for the lay people that's out there.

I'm not a scientist that's there so that I could walk away and get a better sense of what I want to get a chance to do. And let me just say that like this balancing, like we didn't get our kids the COVID shot this year for a variety of reasons, one being that like the evidence seems to indicate that if you're young, you're not at risk and the variant had changed. So people are making these choices all the time. But you're exactly right. If someone had come to you and they had been said like, oh, you know, that incident of heart problems with vaccines, if you believe that you're an idiot. There's no way that that would have been convincing to you, right? There's no way you would have listened to that person. What's really important is to say, look, explain to me the logic

you use for making choices. Like, I want to understand how you reason through things. And then once you do, I want to offer my thoughts in the framework of that reasoning that you use so that you can make an informed choice. Yeah. And definitely it felt like for a period of time there was the sort of control and sledgehammer approach, which is the brute force approach. Even now, the CDC's, not to make this about a conversation about vaccines, but just relating it back and how people change their minds, people are pretty smart ultimately when all the facts get a chance to shake out. The CDC still recommends that every American get there, even young children, even though the data has largely spun out, especially for young children, that the risk benefit,

you've mentioned, there's always, any drug, any intervention, anything that's there is always going to be a risk benefit. And families have listened to all the sides, even though the CDC says, get your kids, the vaccine, and they've made informed decisions. And I really feel to tie it back into the larger idea that we were talking about the book and not to hijack the conversation is that if we only had a few channels where people got their information, instead of things like substack, which, by the way, you have a substack. We're going to link to the show notes. People can subscribe without having things like podcast, without getting a chance to hear the debate,

going back to the fundamental idea of the founding of this country, we want to hear the dialogue from both sides without getting a chance to squash. And then people are smart. They can make the decisions that they want to make. So I wrote this article, to your point, I wrote this article for the New Yorker about this group called the EIS, the epidemiological information. information service. And it's within the CDC. It's existed for dozens, for decades and decades. It was modeled after the CIA. And what it is is they accept a bunch of new recruits every year.

They train them in public health. Then they go out into the world. And it's like this little army that the CDC can use during an epidemic. The number one most important thing they learn is how to communicate. Because during an epidemic, communication is the most important tool that we we have. And the number one thing that they learn about communication is to admit what you know and admit what you don't know. At the beginning of an epidemic, you say things like, we should all wear masks all the time, or cloth masks are fine, or you don't have to wear a mask. It's fine, unless you're feeling sick. And we know that that advice is going to change over time. And so if you're a public health person, what you have to say is you have to say, I'm going to tell you what I think

is the best advice right now. I'm explaining why I think it's the best advice. With the caveat that it might change. Like, we're going to learn more as this thing progresses. And that, you would ask before about that sliver of curiosity, that sliver of saying, like, I have something to learn from you, no matter who you are. I think of it as humility. That humility to say, like, I've learned a lot, but I don't know everything you know. I certainly don't know everything you know about your own life, that humility, that is critical because it means that not only am I listening to you, it means that you recognize that I'm not just trying to bulldoze you. I'm trying to really connect. I think humility is key, especially in sort of public service, because there's a lot of

lessons for everybody to learn from how things were handled just because we were talking about that place. And when you don't lead with humility and you want to demonize any vast group of people, which at some point in time could have been 50% of the population. Absolutely. That's there. You lose trust. You lose trust in public health. You lose trust in service.

And, you know, that's how society grows, right? We learn from our lessons and we move on and we practice things in a better way. And nowhere is, I mean, I really feel like your book has come at such an important time. Because we all, if we're going to thrive individually and as a society, we need to know how to connect. We need to know how to communicate. and a big part of that is understanding. That's exactly right. A big part of that is understanding.

And for anyone who's listening, it's not just society. I mean, you know, so my father passed away about six years ago and my wife's father is very ill right now. And so we've started thinking about, you know, someday we're going to be old as much as I don't want to believe it. Like how do we start building now so that when we hit 60 and 70 and 80 we're healthy and we're happy. And the evidence is that, like, as we discussed, that those connections are really important, but just saying you should make connections isn't enough. Like, how do you do it?

Like, how do you, what should we be practicing now? Learning how to connect with people who are different from you is the way that you learn how to connect with the people who are most important to you. Right. When we practice communication, when we practice connection with the people around us, whether that's like someone we disagree with at work or the barista that we see every single day, we make it into a habit. And once it's a habit, those are the habits that when we're 60, 70, and 80 that keep us healthy and keep us happy and keep us spry. And so sometimes it's worth seeking out the stranger or it's worth seeking out the person

you disagree with. If for no other reason, then it's just going to let you practice and develop that habit about how to connect. beautifully said all right in the book there's so many practical examples and one of them is the four rules of a meaningful conversation right the first rule that's inside of there is paying attention to what kind of conversation is occurring that goes back to this sort of negotiation what is this individual looking for from this right do they want to be hugged do they want to be held do they want to be helped is are those hugged helped and heard yeah hugged helped and heard

Right. Another one that a lot of people miss out on is number two is share your goals and ask what the other person is seeking. Why is that important? What does that look like? So, you know, when I sit down and have a conversation with you, right? Like one of the things that I'm thinking is like, why did you invite me on this show? Like, what are you trying to accomplish? And at the same time, I'm sure in your mind is like, what does Charles want to talk about? What does he want to share with the world? If we both know what are. goals are, then it's so much easier to have that conversation. There was an actually experiment done by a woman named Allison Woodbrooks at Harvard Business School where she told people before you start a conversation, just write down three topics you want to talk about, right? This will take seven seconds. Like, I want to talk about the TV shows I saw last night. I want to talk about next week's game. I want to talk about where I'm going on vacation. And then she told everyone, okay, put it in your back pocket, that card where you just wrote down those three topics. And then they go and they

have conversations with strangers. And afterwards, she asked them, how many of you actually talked about the things you had written down? And only about 25 or 30 percent of them had. The rest of the people had never brought up those subjects. But they said that they enjoyed the conversation so much more, that they were so much less anxious about the conversation because they had something to fall back on. And so if I spend a little bit of time just thinking, like, what is my goal in this discussion? Is it to make my friend feel better? Or is it to explain to them why I'm upset about something? And I ask them, like, what?

It seems like you have something on your mind. Like, what do you want to talk about? What do you want to, what are you hoping to get out of this? Then we both start to understand why we're actually talking to each other. You know, one of my favorite ways to incorporate that in conversation when I'm catching up with a friend that I haven't seen for a while, my absolute least favorite question that people ask to start off a conversation is, so what's new. Yeah. It puts so much emphasis on what is new and instead not what's meaningful. And my replacement question from that that I've

stole from a group called Summit series that they incorporated with this program that was part of. And then I'll ask it in different ways. So it doesn't come across so formal when I'm meeting somebody. It's like, just tell me something small in your life that you're celebrating right now. And if you wouldn't mind, tell me something small in your life that you're navigating right now. What's one thing you're celebrating and what's one thing you're navigating? The level of depth that happens instantaneously when people can come and tell you something that maybe they haven't even told anybody recently. They might not have not even spoken out loud to themselves.

One thing they're celebrating that they're proud of and one thing that's maybe a little sticky in their life. It's a whole level of a different conversation. And what I love about that is that we had mentioned deep questions before. those are deep questions. A deep question is something that asks someone about their values, their beliefs or their experiences. Because when you ask that, like what's something you're celebrating, what you're really asking them is, what do you value? Like, what are the values that are meaningful to you? When you ask them, what are you navigating right now? What you're really

asking them is what are the experiences that you're trying to work your way through? And no matter how they answer, they're going to tell you something meaningful about themselves. I actually, what I find about deep questions is that they're really easy to ask if you, if you started just start looking for them. Like this guy, Nicholas Epley, who's a professor at University of Chicago, who's done a lot of work on deep questions, he has this thing where he's like, he asked someone like, what do you do for a living? And they say, I'm a lawyer.

And he says, oh, do you love the law? Like, do you love your job? Have you always wanted to be a lawyer? What made you decide to go to law school? Those are easy questions to ask. They don't seem overly intimate. But think about what we're really asking. What are the experiences that pushed you to become a lawyer?

What are the values that you try and live by that the law embodies for you? How do you make decisions about your life? And if somebody says, I went to law school because I really wanted a high-paying job, take care of my kids, then we know something about them. And if they say, I went to law school because I saw my dad get arrested and I wanted to fight for the underdog, think about how much we've learned about who they are with this simple, easy, deep question. And you're exactly right. If I ask what's new with you, I'm asking about facts. What I should ask instead is what do you make of something? Yeah, that's so key. And I think

the other thing about what's new is that because it's so over-relied on, people immediately feel that you may or may not be paying attention. Yeah. It's sort of a default question. Kind of like if you're at the checkout stand at the supermarket, so how's your day, right? We've heard that before, not that I don't think anybody here in LA talks to each other when they're checking out anymore, but we've heard versions of that. You see this a lot with parents. I can remember being a child and being in the car if my parents pick me up from school. It's like, how is your day? Yeah. Right? You kind of feel as a kid, okay, is my parent really asking like what do they want to know? Sometimes this happens in relationships. Your wife gets home from work or you get

home for work and it's like, how is your day? And sometimes that's a genuine question. A lot of times it's maybe the tone of it. But what would be something else that would be a way to start off a conversation? So I do this with my kids all the time because like it's super automatic. They come home from school and I'm like, how is school? And they're like, it's fine. I'm going to go watch TV. Right. So like I have to come up with new questions. And so the thing I do is I ask them about an experience they had that day or I ask them about a belief that they're. I ask them about a belief that they have. And I do it kind of sneakily. I'm like, sometimes particularly with my younger kid, I'll be like, what was the worst class you had today at school? Because he loves talking about the

worst class. And then he's just on a tear. He's telling me about this one teacher who like made them do this boring assignment. And then I can ask him, what was the best class you had today? And he feels like he has to answer the question because he answered the first one. Or to simply say like, hey, you know, I saw that like LeBron had a pretty good game last night. And he was a and And I'm just wondering, do you think LeBron's the best player ever? Like, is he better than Michael Jordan? Like, this is the most random question to ask a kid. And my son will answer that question for 15 minutes, right?

Because I'm asking him about his beliefs. I'm asking him about what he values. I'm asking. And the question is so unexpected. It's so, like, so fresh that, like, he thinks that I'm actually curious. He knows that I want to hear his answer. And even bigger than that, to just jump in, is that you're thinking about how do I connect with my son.

Exactly. Versus an automatic response that's there, right? An automatic thing. We're texting. I don't have kids yet, but, you know, we're texting. Our child is coming home. They're throwing their backpack on the floor. They're getting ready.

You're fixing them something to eat later on. You're dealing with some slack message about a deadline. It's like, how is your day? We're not present in this situation. No, I'm just feeling the silence there. You're feeling the silence. So there's not a thought about connecting. Can I ask you a question?

Yeah, of course. Not that I haven't been asking you a ton, but do you think that there's something that you've gone through in your life that has put you in a situation besides your just general curiosity, being a writer, you know, being a journalist and wanting to look in this topic,

what has led you to a place where you have placed value and understanding on the importance of being present? Because one thing that I've seen is that you can practice these habits and slowly over a period of time, people will get better. But fundamentally, you can't necessarily force somebody into being more present as an individual.

That motivation has to come internally. So what was that motivation for you to value wanting to be present with another human being? So I had this experience probably about seven years ago now where I was a reporter at the New York Times and they asked me to become a manager. And I basically, I was like, of course, like I'll be a great manager.

I've had lots of bosses. I went to Harvard Business School to get an MBA. I was like, I'll be great at this. And what I discovered really quickly was I was terrible at it. And I was fine at like the logistics part, right? I was fine at like figuring out schedules and giving people assignments. What I was terrible at was the communication part. Like people would come and talk to me and I basically wouldn't hear them. Like they would come and they would want to talk about like, you know, they feel like they need more respect in these meetings. And I would try and solve the problem immediately instead of acknowledging how they were feeling and talk through those feelings. And this was really, this really threw me the fact that I was so bad at this. And so I went home

when I, and I actually took a piece of paper and I tried to write out for the past year all the conversations I had had that I felt like hadn't gone well, like where my kids had come to me with some problem and instead of engaging with them, I was distracted by my own stuff or where my wife came to me wanting to talk about how she feels and I tried to solve her problem or vice versa or at work. And the list was like shockingly long to me. Like if I was judged by that list, I would be a failure as a person. And I'm a journalist. I'm supposed to be able to communicate for a living. And it was at that moment that I was reading that and sort of realizing like how many times I've let this opportunity be squandered that I decided like, this is too valuable.

Like these are the opportunities to connect with my kids and my wife and my coworkers and my friends. And I'm prioritizing something else without even thinking about it, without making a decision. And that's what made me decide to write this book was, wanting to figure out, if life gives you these gifts multiple times a day to really connect with another person and learn something about them and learn something about yourself, and you're just ignoring them, you don't deserve success or happiness, right? And so that's what made me think, like, I want to start living more in the moment and seizing those chances. Well, just seeing how you handle yourself in this interview and how you communicate as an individual, not that you always

haven't been a great communicator, at least a presenter, right? You've been a speaker, you've been presenting your ideas out there, you've written other books. I can definitely feel you practicing everything that you talk about. Oh, thank you. How have you, for the person who's listening, where did you, where would you say that you saw the biggest shifts that were most important for you? I think the biggest one. And then I want to ask you the same question, like how your communication is evolved because you're an incredible communicator. I think for me, the biggest shifts have been learning to listen, right? Like, oftentimes when we think about a conversation, we think about what we're going to say. And that's natural. But the more we learn to actually listen to someone else,

the more we learn what we want to say and what they're trying to tell us. So there's been a ton of different shifts. I ask more deep questions. I pay attention to how people laugh if they respond to my laughter, if they respond to my emotions. I try and think about what kind of conversation is happening right now and how to match each other. But the biggest thing is that I think I just listen so much more fully. And once you do, you start to understand there is so much that you were missing before, right? That when someone, when someone's describing something and there's that pause and it feels like there's something emotional going on, it's so easy to ignore that. So easy to skip over it.

But if you just are looking for it, then you can say like, oh, this is something important. This is something meaningful. This is a chance for me to find out who this person really is. Or when they laugh and I laugh back, those are these moments when we have the opportunity to really connect. And I think that's been the biggest difference. That's huge. How about you?

Can I ask you? Like, yeah, could I ask you one more final question on that? So those are the internal things you've felt, the things that are meaningful for you. Have you seen it manifest in your life in terms of what people would maybe consider like external success? Oh, oh yeah. Can you talk about some of those? Absolutely. Absolutely. So, yeah, it's actually I, you know, I wrote this book about 10 years ago called The Power of Habit. And when this book was coming out, I went and I listened to some of the podcasts I had done. And like basically I kind of bulldozed over. over the interviewers in those podcasts.

They would ask me a question and I would answer the question that I wish they had asked me instead of the one that they did. And there was a lot of like ships passing in the night. And now when I'm in a conversation, I think if somebody's watching or the way that I talk to my wife, right, where like instead of just jumping into a topic, we always start by saying like, okay, look, what's the important thing we want to get out of this conversation? Like, do you want me to listen to you or do you want me to solve your problem? Like where let's just check in and make sure that we're on the same wavelength. Like all those things that happen, I think that like, I think if I was watching myself from the outside, it would seem radically different. I think I'd seem like a totally different person.

And I think a huge part of it is this interview notwithstanding because we're talking about my book. I just talk a lot less. And I just, I just invite people, I hope I try, invite people. to share more of who they are. And then I try and show them that I've heard them. So when I do talk, I feel like I'm actually saying things that are not only valuable to other people, they're more valuable to me.

Like I learn what I'm thinking and feeling by describing my thoughts and feelings to other people. And sometimes you have to have some space to do that. That's beautiful. Does that answer your question? It totally does. You know, I think that, you know, you were asking me the same question. I think on a very basic level, when people, feel understood, they like you.

Yeah. And when people like you, they're more willing to go out of their way. If they're a team member or employee and they feel that you genuinely understand them and that you're willing to listen to them, they're going to put in the extra effort on something where they were at a crossroads to say, should I do this or should I put in a little extra effort? And they feel connected to you. Absolutely.

If it's your wife or husband, anybody in a relationship knows there's moments on a daily basis where you go through periods of time of even if you love somebody, you like them a little more right now and you like them a little less because maybe you had some conflict or there was something that was there. And when your husband, wife, partner, whoever likes you, like genuinely likes you, sure, they may love you, but do they like you? and are there more times that they like you? And how deep is that like is interesting?

Because in the Gottman Institute, one of the things they talk about is that the fundamental reason there's so much conflict and relationship is there's old resentment that was never resolved. And on top of that old resentment, there's stories that get built. And when those stories are built, we use these four henchmen of the apocalypse to basically show our disdain for the other person. And those are, you know, belligerence, right? Hypercriticism. Freezing someone out.

Freezing stonewalling. Right? These are all things that we do that are an external reflection of, hey, I don't like you right now. Even if things seem okay today, there's deep unresolved conflict that's there. That maybe I didn't have the courage to bring up, but it's still there. And this is the only way that I know how to express. And those four horsemen, the thing that they all have in common is I'm sure. showing you that I don't want to listen.

I'm showing you that I'm not listening, right? And you're exactly right. If someone is listening, we can disagree with them all the time, right? My wife and I, she's a biologist. I'm a journalist. I don't even like nature that much. We disagree about so much. And yet we really, really like each other.

We really like hanging out because we have that connection. And once you have that connection, you can talk about all kinds of things. you can talk to your crazy uncle and be like, tell me, tell me why you believe in the lizard people. And I guarantee you, if he thinks you're listening to him, you're going to learn something kind of fun and interesting. Like, I didn't know that like there was a whole society of people who believe in lizard people. That's interesting. I don't agree with them, but it is kind of interesting to know that they're out there. Yeah, I really think it comes back to this idea that when we have these human connections, not only do we flourish, but on a

a practical fundamental level when people in the office like you, they feel understood. Yeah. They're going to talk well about you. Even when people disagree with you, they're going to respect you. You know, I saw this beautiful back and forth other day on Twitter on X. And it was with Mark Cuban and a few people that are also prominent Twitter accounts. I have a lot of respect for Mark Cuban. I like Shark Tank.

I love how much success he's built in his life. And they were fundamentally disagreeing about this topic of how does diversity and hiring for diversity, what are the benefits and what are the cons? And regardless of what everybody's opinion was and how that's implemented, mandated, what is successful, what's not successful, the most beautiful thing that I saw out of that was people who had staunchly different views. And Mark Cuban led this. When he posted a tweet, he said,

you know what? Over the last few days, there's been a lot of people on Twitter that have come out and challenged my ideas that I've shared over the last few days because they had a different opinion. But I want to say that the amount of inquisitiveness and the deep thoughtfulness in the response

has really made me feel, I'm paraphrasing here, a little bit of like, hope for humanity, right? That actually the purpose of debate, if we think about classic debate in college or high school, is that a worthy opponent who has a different opinion than you actually makes you a better individual. That's right. It's like playing a tennis player who's better than you. You don't get upset. You get excited because they're going to make you better, even if they have a different style or even if they believe in something different things.

That's a wonderful analogy. And, you know, it's interesting you mentioned debate because, like, when we think of, like, the platonic or the Aristotelian, like, where debate happened in Greece, the goal was not for one side to win. The goal was to find the truth. And the way that you find the truth is by crashing ideas together and respecting that people have different ideas and walking away from something saying, like, this guy convinced me on this one thing, but the other guy convinced me on this other thing.

Like the more sophisticated, the more deeply we think, that's when we're going to be successful. That's when we make better decisions. That's when we do better business. That's when we find the most interesting people to spend time with. The goal of life is to think more sophisticatedly. You think deeper. And we only do that by having other people challenge us. I love that.

Charles, this has been fantastic. I mean, our time has flown by. on this podcast here. And I wanted to definitely still leave a little bit of room for talking about how people can, you know, continue this conversation. Of course, the book is out there. People can pick it up if you wouldn't mind just mentioning the title. Absolutely. So it's super communicators is the name of the book, unlocking the secret language of connection. And it's available at Amazon and Audible and Barnes & Noble and Walmart. All the places. All the places you go to get books. Yeah. In your local bookstore and your local bookstore. If you can find one that's still around nearby you, I love local

bookstores. If somebody was thinking about getting this book for somebody in their life, who's the perfect friend to get this book for? I think the perfect friend, I think in many ways, this is a book for the people who you know want to be great at communication and who just love to learn about it. So like someone who's graduated from college, this is the book that tells you how to succeed in corporate America, how to succeed in your first job. right? For that couple, you know, who like are so great together, but then they get in these big fights or even if they don't get in fights. Sometimes it just seems like they want to connect more deeply. This is the book that helps them sort of figure out how to do it. But most importantly,

it's a book for ourselves. I love that people buy it and give it to other people. But ultimately, just like the power of habit, it's a book about how do I improve myself? Because I want to be a better communicator. I want to be someone who connects more with other people. And that's what it's been written for. And I will say, if anyone wants to find me, my website is Charles Dohigg.com. You can just Google me or the name of the book. My email address is on my website. And it's in the book. And it's very surprised when I was reading at the end. And I'm reading and I'm seeing your email in there. And you're saying that, hey, reach out to me. I will reply. I'm like, this is a brave man for putting his email out there. So we've already, I've already, I've already,

I've been doing this since Power of Habit and I respond to 28,000 emails. And it's a genuine promise because the point of this book, the point of life, is to connect and communicate with other people. And if you take the time to write me a note, like if you give me the investment of reading my work, I owe it to you to reply. I owe it to you to respond. And so anyone who sends me an email, I can promise you, I will read that. I will reply to it.

And hopefully, hopefully from our conversation and from this work, you'll figure out how to connect with other people who will give you such meaning and such joy in life. That's all that we can hope for. It's a beautiful lasting comment to leave for people. And it's a hopeful message, especially in this time where there's so much disconnection that's out there, but there is a different path, and it starts with us. A lot of us have ideas, including me, I'm guilty of it, about what everybody else can do to fix the world. The number one thing that we can do to support connection and actually move humanity forward is

understanding our fellow human beings. That's exactly. And your book is the manual to do that. So thank you so beautiful so much for coming on the podcast. The link to the book is in the show notes. We'll also link your substack. Are you active on any socials if people want to find me? I'm on all the socials. Yeah, they can find me on all the. Luckily, Doohigg is a pretty uncommon last name. So I'm the only Charles Duhigg out there.

Charles Duhigg, thank you again for coming on the podcast. And thank you for putting this incredible manual together. Thank you for having me. Hi, everyone. Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app.

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