Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - Why Better Conversations Will Improve Your Health, Essential Skills To Enhance Your Relationships & Why Men Struggle To Open Up with Nihal Arthanayke #446

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Today we’re going meta, as they say. Because this is a conversation about…conversation. More than that, it’s a deep and meaningful exchange about why effective, authentic dialogue is so important to humankind – and yet seemingly in decline. And who better to exchange words with on this topic, than my fellow ‘professional conversationalist’, Nihal Arthanayake.   You may know Nihal as an acclaimed broadcaster and TV presenter. He presents a national daytime show on BBC Radio 5 Live, which has over 1.2 million regular listeners, and his unique style recently won him Interviewer of the Year at the BBC Radio and Music Awards. Nihal is a good friend, so I can testify to his ability to ‘give good chat’. But he’s also brilliant at having public conversations that are bold, thoughtful and honest. Guests from the world's biggest stars to leaders of inner-city gangs have lauded his ability to stimulate positive discussions without the need for confrontation.    In his wonderful book, Let’s Talk: How To Have Better Conversations, which has recently been released in paperback, Nihal explains that all the scientific evidence points towards us now sharing fewer conversations than we ever have done before. We may have hundreds of connections on social media, but fewer than ever in our daily lives. So, could learning the art of conversation be an antidote to loneliness?   In our conversation, we discuss the importance of empathy and active listening, with your heart and mind as well as your ears and eyes. Are you listening to understand, says Nihal, or simply to respond? We talk about vulnerability in conversation, why men in particular find that difficult, and why it feels so hard for male friends to exchange words like ‘I miss you’ or even ‘I love you’.   Nihal shares his personal experience and advice, such as how he’s approached conversations with friends who are going through tough times, or why he went to couples’ therapy with his wife on realising their interactions had become more transactional than conversational.   He also explains the evolution and psychology of dialogue, as well as the neuroscience of what’s happening in the brain during meaningful discourse. And he shares some powerful, high-profile case studies who’ve proved that it is possible to find common ground with anyone, even those who are your sworn enemies, by finding your common humanity.   I really think that the skills Nihal is encouraging us all to cultivate are essential if we are to live happy and contented lives, but also essential when it comes to our physical and mental wellbeing. This conversation was relaxed and light hearted but at the same time, powerful and provocative. As Nihal says, great conversation is the glue that binds us all together. Find out more about my NEW Journal here https://drchatterjee.com/journal Thanks to our sponsors: https://drinkag1.com/livemore https://calm.com/livemore Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/446 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

The history of humankind is based on great conversation. It's only in this age of technology, of artificial intelligence, of mobile phones, of social media, that we've began to kind of roll back. Meaningful conversation, deep conversation, effective conversation is the glue which binds our society together. And if we lose the ability to be able to converse with each other in a meaningful way, we will start to fracture. Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and this is my podcast, podcast, Feel Better, Live More. Today, we are going meta, as they say, because this is a conversation about conversation. More than that, it's a deep and meaningful exchange about why

effective authentic dialogue is so important to humankind, and yet seemingly in decline. is so important to humankind and yet seemingly in decline. And who better to exchange words with on this topic than my fellow professional conversationalist, Nahal Arthanaike. Now you may well know Nahal as an acclaimed broadcaster and TV presenter. He currently presents a national daytime show on BBC Radio 5 Live, which has over 1.2 million regular listeners. And his unique style recently won him interviewer of the year at the BBC Radio and Music Awards.

Now, Nihal is a good friend, so I can testify to his ability to give good chat, but he's also brilliant at having public conversations that are bold, thoughtful, and honest. Guests from the world's biggest stars to leaders of inner city gangs have lauded his ability to stimulate positive discussions without the need for confrontation. Now in his wonderful book, Let's Talk, How to Have Better Conversations, which has recently been released in paperback, Nahal explains that all the scientific evidence points towards us now sharing fewer

conversations than we ever have done before. We may have hundreds of connections on social media, but fewer than ever in our daily lives. So could perhaps learning the art of conversation be an antidote to loneliness? In our conversation, we discuss the importance of empathy and active listening with your heart and mind, as well as your ears and eyes. Are you listening to understand, says Nahal,

or simply to respond? We talk about vulnerability in conversation, why men in particular find that difficult and why it can feel so hard for male friends to exchange words like I miss you or even I love you. As an experienced interviewer, Nahal has plenty of anecdotal evidence about successful communication. It's something he demonstrates daily on the airwaves, but he also shares his personal experience and advice, such as how he's approached conversations with friends who are going through tough times,

or why he went to couples therapy with his wife after realizing that their interactions had become transactional instead of conversational. He also explains the evolution and psychology of dialogue, as well as the neuroscience of what's happening in the brain during meaningful discourse. And he shares some powerful high-profile case studies who have proved that it is possible to find common ground with anyone, even those who are your sworn enemies, by finding your common humanity. I really do think that the skills Nahal is encouraging us all to cultivate are essential

if we are to live happy and contented lives, but also essential when it comes to our physical and mental well-being. This conversation was, in many ways, relaxed and lighthearted, but at the same time, powerful and provocative. As Nahal says, great conversation is the glue that binds us all together. I've been thinking about where to start our conversation. It's always the hard bit. I've been thinking about where to start our conversation. It's always the hard bit. I've been reading the conclusion to your book this morning.

And in your conclusion, you say this. Alongside wanting a better body, a nicer car, a bigger house, and more respectful children, why not try aspiring to have better conversations? It was interesting for me how if we think about improving our lives, I think people think about all kinds of things, but they don't think about improving the way that they conduct their conversations. Why do you think that needs to change? Well, I think it's really interesting

because I'm a professional conversationalist, as indeed are you. But quite often the conversations we have at home, I think, professional conversationalist, as indeed are you. But quite often the conversations we have at home, I think, especially with our partners, become about function. They're functional conversations. They're transactional. And I had to be really, really conscious of the fact and went to marriage counselling for it to really overcome that transactional nature of a conversation with my partner with my wife who you know and see her and ultimately what a great conversation is is about feeling seen and making

that person in front of you feel seen so So whether it's the non-verbal communication that we have or whether the eye-to-eye contact, it's about making that person feel valued in that moment. And I think that at a time where the loneliest group in the UK are 16 to 24 year olds, you have to think to yourself, why are we not connecting with each other? And perhaps we're not connecting with each other because we don't give enough time for conversation. It's quite easy, isn't it? To just be on that phone. And I'm super glad that we're here now and maybe we'll talk about it later. There are no phones on this table. and maybe we'll talk about it later, there are no phones on this table.

There are no phones on this table. And phones have impacted upon our ability to communicate with each other in a meaningful way more than any other implement in human history. You know, we can be together alone, Rangan, right? Together alone, right? And that's something we have to be really careful of. You mentioned loneliness. And whilst I've been reading your book and thinking about our conversation,

I was thinking about this spectrum that exists in society, how on one hand, you mentioned that young group, 16 to 25 year olds, right? But even beyond that age group, we are more lonely now than ever before. It is a loneliness epidemic. And I had that in mind as I was reading your book now, because I thought, wow, on one side, you have loneliness. On the other extreme, you have great conversation. Because if you have the ability to have great conversation,

you could argue that we would feel a lot less lonely. Unless we fooled ourselves into thinking those machines in our hands are connectors. And in some ways they are. But posting on social media is not conversation. People who troll me on social media will say, when I just tell them to go away, will say, well, that's weird. You wrote a book about conversation as if they've kind of done a gotcha on me. And I always reply to them, you're fooling yourself if you think we're having a conversation here. Social media is performative. It's actually a series of monologues. It's not a dialogue. It's not what you and I are doing here. And you fool yourself into thinking that you are, and that goes across all kinds of social media. Do you notice when you're walking through a

shopping mall, the kind of restaurant area, right? Have you noticed how many people who are sitting in front of each other, Rangan, are not looking at each other? They're looking at their phones. Have you noticed in a restaurant you look over and there's a group perhaps of younger people or even older people and they're not talking to each other? Together alone. Together alone, right? Together alone. So we're fooling ourselves and we're being drawn into this.

After all, what is a mobile phone designed to do it's a piece of hardware but the software what is that designed to do it is designed to monetize your eyeballs that's what it's there for right and the apps will monetize the amount of time you spend looking at that phone if you're not looking at that phone and you're talking to me and I'm talking to you, how can we be advertised to? It can't be. So it has to be addictive. Has to be. And we have a choice to say no. We have a choice to say, actually, to go back to your first point, loneliness here, conversation here, to say, actually, to go back to your first point, loneliness here, conversation here, to say, well, let's move towards each other. Let's move towards each other or let us who are

conversationists move towards those who are lonely and say, come and talk to us, come and spend time with us. You know, as a medical professional, the power of conversation, right? To people who are vulnerable, scared, lonely, you teach it, in fact, to doctors how to be better conversationalists. I mean, your previous guest, Charles Duhigg, talked about communicators. I say conversationalist. That's what I say. You also said at the start that you're a professional conversationalist and I am also a professional conversationalist now I imagine that you may have

meant or people may have interpreted that as me as a podcaster and you as a radio host right but I've reflected over the past six years of doing this podcast as to why I enjoy it so much, why I feel really comfortable in this setting more and more. And I

thought, well, I spent over two decades talking to patients and I actually don't see this interaction as, it's not as different as you might initially think. I see this as an extended doctor-patient relationship, which is what? It's a relationship. It's an interaction. And I think that's what's always drawn me to medicine. What I've enjoyed the most about medicine is actually not the fancy high-tech stuff. I love people. I've always loved meeting that person and trying to understand why they've come in. So when you say professional conversationalist, I guess my question to you is, given the conversation, the ability to have good quality conversation is the foundation of any good quality relationship, should we not all aspire to be more like professional conversationalists?

So going back to Charles Duhigg, he said we're all hardwired to be great communicators, right? And I totally agree with that. And, you know, I know the school that you went to was very much about a growth mindset, right? Not a fixed mindset. So as I write in the book, it was Carol Dweck, I think, who came up with that, the academic. A growth mindset is saying through hard work, perseverance, knowledge, I'll get to where I will need to get to. Fixed mindset is whatever I do, I'm just never going to be good at this, right? And I fully believe that you must have a growth mindset when it comes to conversation. You can be better at it. You can, 100%. Interesting you said you spent two decades

talking to patients, right? The question I put back to you is, can you say categorically that you spent two decades listening to patients? Because talking to and listening, they're two different things. What's the difference? Well, I can talk to you, talk to you, talk to you, talk to you, talk to you. You then talk back to me and I go, okay, I'll break it down even simpler, right? My daughter came home with this from school, right? Are you listening to respond or are you listening to understand, right? Now, you could be talking because all you're doing is listening to respond. So I'm just waiting my time, Rangan Chatterjee, until you finish talking because I want to get a point across, right? So that's talking. That's just talking, right? But if I say I'm actually listening to understand,

which is what you teach doctors, right? That's the difference between talking and listening, right? Are you talking to respond or are you talking to understand? And you know, because you've come across it, because you wouldn't have to teach these courses, there will be people who are only talking to respond. To answer your question, over those 20 years, have I been truly listening or doing more talking? Again, it's impossible for me to look at every single interaction and say you know of course I would like to think of course that I did a lot of listening but it's probably something I got better at of course as I progress which I guess speaks

to what you're saying yeah it's a skill that we can all get better at. There is a part in your book, I think when you talk to Tanya Byron about why conversations fail, right? I find that really interesting. We're going to talk about how we can have great conversations, but in terms of why they fail through the lens of a doctor-patient relationship, I think often what gets in the way of a conversation is our own inner dialogue, our own insecurities, our own fears. Projection, as they call it, I think. Yes, if a patient comes in and I, as a young doctor, is not entirely sure what's going on, instead of sitting with that and dealing with that and trying to potentially say to your patient

actually i don't know i'm gonna try and find out for you we try and shut down and just talk to the patient which is i think one of the reasons why patients often go out feeling unheard not all the time but much of the time because there was too much talking and not enough listening. So one of our guests is a scientist who once said to me, I'm acutely aware of the vastness of my ignorance, right? And I think that applies to what we're talking about here, in that if you're acutely aware of that vastness, then you will be brave enough to say to that patient, I don't know and I are going to project a sense of weakness, a lack of knowledge onto a patient, and they're then going to project onto you, I don't trust you, then that's a terrible way to be communicating with each other.

Because ultimately, you want authenticity. And interestingly, one of the other guests in my book, Professor Elizabeth Stokoe from Loughborough University, when I said to her, what's a good conversation and what's a bad conversation? She said, we don't use words like that. What is an effective conversation and what is a less effective conversation? And you as a medical professional, this is so apt to what you do, right? Because an effective conversation

is the one where the patient fully understands what the issue is. And if you don't know the answer, you'll say, I will go and get that for you. So they then are not being blagged, essentially. They're being told very clearly that part of it we don't understand yet. I will go and discover that and we will get back to you on that the ineffective one is where you you just kind of go around the houses she uses this brilliant paint this image right yeah so you're in a hot air balloon right you're in the basket and you're looking down at this field right and there's a it's filled to square and in either corner is a gate, right? So in walks a dog walker, right? The dog walker has got his kind of ball on a stick or something

and the dog's chasing it around and the dog walker's having to go after it and run after it, et cetera. And then it's just going and it's a hassle and it takes ages to get from one corner to another, right? Then another dog walker comes in and walks with the dog. The dog walks right by their side. They go on this path, this well-worn path that goes right through from one corner to another, right? That's the difference between an effective conversation and an ineffective conversation. And you know what the ineffective conversation is in terms of that. It's a very simple image, but that's what you're trying to get. She also gives us another example,

right? In the book, you walk into a coffee shop. I know you like your coffee, right? You go in and ask for a coffee. Person says, yeah, there's a coffee. Then they go, then you have to say to them, do you have wifi? And then they go, then you have to say to them, do you have Wi-Fi? And then they go, yes. And then you go, well, can I have the Wi-Fi code, please? By this stage, you're kind of annoyed, right? Like you're like, really? She did this. This happened to her, Professor Elizabeth Stokoe.

She then went into another coffee shop. She asked for her coffee. The person on the other side said, here's your coffee. Oh, and if you need Wi-Fi, we have it. There's the Wi-Fi code, right? That is the difference between an ineffective and an effective conversation right there, right? It's not a meaningful conversation. It's not deep. I'm not asking you about how your parents are and how, you know, I've lost my dog and all of that kind of stuff. It's an effective conversation. So therefore, what we define as effective is going to depend on the context. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Oh, OK. That's an interesting point, isn't it? OK. okay so if you came to me and said i want some coffee and i said the wi-fi thing that's effective if you came to me and said my dad has died right then i still have to be effective right i still have to help you and that's a much more difficult conversation to have but i have to still use my words incredibly thoughtfully and effectively i still need it to be effective for you and for me yeah that's true right okay not because i'm a counselor but because what i don't want to do is make it worse for you, not that I probably could make it any worse for you, but I have to be incredibly thoughtful. Another guy in the book,

who's a, you know, he's a captain of industries, the chairman of NatWest, Rick Hathornthwaite. When he went to America to an elite university after Oxford, and he was gathered there with these kind of consultants, right, that were just saying to all of these really high achieving individuals, right? It's back in the 80s. You will never pick up a hammer. You will never pick up a saw. Your tools are your words. So choose them wisely. I mean mean that's profound right it reminds me something at the start of your book where you quoted a professor who gave a tedx talk and i think he said that language is one of the greatest technologies ever invented this is why i'm an evangelist of conversation and for the art of it because we have seen historically what is possible, Rangan,

through conversation. It is mind-blowing. It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up right now as I'm talking to you when I think what has been achieved through conversation. My history lecturer said to me in the 90s, apartheid will never, ever finish. Really? Yeah. He said that to me and it would have been the late 80s right or 1990 just before it did in fact a couple years before it did he said it's always been there people have always kind of trying to campaign about it it will always be there it wasn't yeah right and they didn't go to war. There was violence without question. And also the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that happened after the fall of apartheid, through understanding, through dialogue, through conversation. Look what we can achieve as humans. But equally, look what we can do when we have ineffective conversations. Look what happens to us as people. What's the health case for better conversation?

Oh, mate, I mean, we talked about loneliness. You will know the health implications of loneliness and isolation, right? Yeah. Blood pressure, heart disease, various cancers can be linked directly to depression, loneliness. So in terms of connection, the health case for conversation is how it makes us feel and how the connection between our mental well-being and our physical well-being is beyond discussion right like it's just that's done now right we know that and in order to connect with each other and feel less as if we are disconnected from society

we have to be able to converse with each other and understand the importance of that so i mean oxytocin right that hormone that's in our brain the pleasure hormone the cuddle hormone that is produced through conversation. A good conversation will produce that as an antidote to the cortisol, which we do need cortisol as well as a warning mechanism, but we do need this. I mean, I'm not obviously a medical professional, but it was really fascinating looking at how the brain reacts to a great conversation. Just think about how you feel, Rangu, right? When you're sitting, and I've listened to so many of your podcasts,

that feeling you get, that energy that you get when you've connected with someone. Yeah, I think this is something, Nihal, that people often underestimate. We are this lonely society, this isolated society. We're spending more and more time on these devices that we think are connecting us with others.

But for most of the time, I would argue, it's a kind of low-grade junk form of connection rather than a whole food form of connection, as it were. Good comparison. And I have noticed on so many occasions, when I've come into this podcast studio, maybe feeling a bit tired beforehand. And at the end of a two-hour conversation

where there's been no phone, no distraction, you're just fully engaging with someone else, I'm buzzing afterwards. I've got energy, vitality. I've got a new love for life because it's who we are. The ability to connect with someone else, it is who we are. And I think we are losing that skill at our peril. We have to be very, very concerned that we're losing the art of conversation, which is, you know, on a wider scale, you've written your book, Let's Talk. Okay. Fantastic book. There's a lot of books coming out about conversation,

about connecting. Charles Duhigg, you mentioned Super Communicators. There's other books. And I think it speaks to something that society is potentially missing at the moment it's like well in fact here's a question for you now why if if humans are wired for good quality connection and good quality conversation why is it in 2024 we need books to teach us how to do it. Because, as I said earlier, the mobile phone and social media is the great disruptor of conversation. We need to be reminded that it was once regarded as an art form. Now, who in your lifetime,

in all of your schooling, did anyone stand up and say to you, conversation is an art form, right? Debate, they may have talked about, but not conversation. So I wanted to remind people, I wanted to think of the coffee shops of London a few hundred years ago, where Samuel Johnson and others would gather with coffee and have these extraordinary conversations, these kind of battle of wits and ideas where your ideas were stress tested. And you didn't fall out over it.

You were polite, but you exchanged ideas. You listened to your verbal opponent. You processed what they had to say. And then you came back with your own selection. It is an art form. Ancient Greece, where people used to gather at symposiums around people's houses

where the landed aristocracy, all men sadly, would come in a room and then they would then regale each other with great conversation. The history of humankind is based on great conversation.

It's only in this age of technology, of artificial intelligence, of mobile phones, of 5G communication, of social media, that we've began to kind of roll back text speak, Snapchat, WhatsApp, but nothing, but nothing replaces what we're doing now. And while this is not a revolutionary manifesto, it is an important reminder that conversation is an art form and we can be better at it. Yeah. Right. I wanted to ask you actually, because you asked me the question about the medical benefits of it, the health benefits of it, but you're a doctor, you know, you must have seen it. You health benefits of it, but you're a doctor. You know.

You must have seen it. You must have examples where you've seen it in action. I mean, there's several ways to look at that for me. One is, yes, we can look at loneliness and isolation and all the data showing the toxic effects of feeling isolated and alone are comparable to smoking, are comparable to obesity, increase the risk of premature death, all those kind of things. But I think there's also something else which doesn't get spoken about enough, which is that if you're not able to have meaningful conversation with somebody else, your partner, conversation with somebody else, your partner, your children, your work colleagues, your boss,

whoever it might be. Often it means that we're holding stuff back. We feel a sense of frustration. There was important things that we had to get across that we didn't. Now, if we can't connect with the world around us, with the people around us, with the world around us, with the people around us, that creates a level of internal stress. And I'm convinced that the reason why so many of us struggle to change our behaviors on things like food and sugar and alcohol and whatever it might be, I think you can also tie that down to conversation. Because if you can't have good quality conversation, you do feel isolated on some level because you haven't shared important parts of you with someone else. And then that internal discomfort that you create by not being able to have those conversations has to be neutralized. And I think a lot of the time, we now neutralize that internal discomfort, time, we now neutralize that internal discomfort, that loneliness, that isolation with sugar,

with alcohol, with three hours of Instagram scrolling, with online pornography, with whatever behavior we have to hand that we choose to engage in. And I don't think that link has been made enough because we can keep hammering people that too much sugar is bad for you, too much alcohol is bad for you, but people are still doing it. So for me, Nahal, it's not necessarily that people need more knowledge, or certainly not more external knowledge. We need to understand the internal drivers that are leading to those behaviours. And I think good quality conversation totally fits in that. I don't think it's a massive leap. For me, it's a very logical thought pattern. I don't know if anyone's put it like that to you in the past.

I don't know what comes up for you when you hear that from me. Well, that's interesting. So we seek dopamine hits, right? So then if we can't find the dopamine from conversation because we're not seeking it out, and I think this might be particularly a problem for men, we'll find it elsewhere. I think that's a really interesting point

and not a connection I've thought about before, but it does make sense. I mean, we did a show about male loneliness and i think men find it very difficult to tell other men that we miss them i miss you you might have to add brough on the end of it or bro on it to make it feel a bit more match up i would say i'm pretty open, but I honestly don't think I've told any one of my close male friends before that I've missed them. Right. Why? And have you? You probably have missed them. Yeah. Right. So why haven't you told them?

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It would be what we think is the norm. You know, how do guys interact? How have we previously interacted? You know, it's interesting because my really tight group of friends, we all live in different parts. We're all scattered, right? It's all from our time at Edinburgh University, basically. And we are realizing more and more as we get into sort of mid, late 40s, that actually we need to meet up regularly. And actually when we last met up in November in Wales for the weekends, I would say that we were the most open and honest that we've ever

been before. And I think it's probably because we're all craving something. It was less of the male bravado and it was actually us really sharing stuff, like stuff that we're struggling with, stuff that's going well, stuff that's not going well. But going back to your point, I don't think any one of us have directly said, I miss you. We might say, oh guys, this feels great. We should do it more often. But I don't think any one of us would yet go to that next step and say, oh, I missed you. So what about I love you? yet go to that next step and say, oh, I missed you. So what about I love you?

I don't know. It's interesting, as you say that, I'm thinking, no, I don't think I've said that to my tight group of friends before. So this is really, do you love them? Yeah, I do love them. Right. So how fascinating is this, right? So I'm talking to Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, right? One of the most open-hearted, open-minded, with strangers, right? You get people on here, you talk to people,

you talk about their lives, but yet you have never told any of your closest friends that you miss them or you love them. Not once. Yeah, it's pretty mental, isn't it? Now, could one argue and say, okay, now how, but can we perhaps show that in different ways? So for example, not everyone communicates in the same way. And maybe this is a male thing. Maybe I'm projecting now. I think we all know that we care about each other and that we're all going to be there for each other so I guess the question to you then is what is the benefit for me or any of my friends to say to each other I love you and I miss you I think it is to go against the male conditioning that has told you it's not all right to say those things and to say that thing in a way that my wife has no trouble saying how much she loves her friends

to them right she's no trouble with that and i can imagine how i can see it in your face yeah how awkward the idea is when i said i yeah i love you you laugh like about phoning up someone one of my mates tonight and say i love you and they might actually say are you mate are you okay right right they might also think they might also think that you are in the midst of a crisis and that's why you've said it, because that could be a goodbye. Yeah. Right? That's a good point.

Right? And it doesn't need to get to that point. We say I love you, put the phone down, as I'm sure we could probably find stories of, where that man then never called back again. Right? So my best mate andy we finish every phone call by telling each other we love each other did you always no absolutely not so what happened the first time well we've we've we've all we're quite emotional men right he's a geezer like he's in

in the world that he's in, in TV production. You know why I'm laughing? Yeah. I'm actually just imagining phoning up one of my friends tonight and saying, I love you. And I do feel uncomfortable. Of course you do.

I really do. Of course you do. Of course you do. See, I can say it to my kids. I can say it to my wife. All day long. I can say it to my mum. All day long.

But my male friends all day long yeah this is interesting i've got something to work on here yeah right because what is stopping you from doing it what is stopping every man listening to this podcast watching this podcast from going i miss you i love you we're here to talk about conversation, right? And conversation, meaningful conversation can mean vulnerability, right? What is, I think, more vulnerable than saying to another human being, I miss you and I need you in my life. And how special is it for that person to feel? Your mate, Bantz, right? Okay. Edinburgh University, all medical students, mostly I can imagine or if not.

They're not all actually, but yeah. Okay, right, okay, right. Gone away, gone around the world, all successful. You know what? I don't need to say I miss you before it gets so dark that I don't have anyone else. Men have bigger social groups in their 20s than women. By the time men get into their 50s, they're non-existent.

They shrink. Every decade, our social grouping as men shrink and shrink and shrink, right? And I wonder if some of that is to do with the fact we just don't pick up the phone and say, I miss you. Yeah. And I need you in my life. And they go, cool. Because what the other man is thinking, and this comes down to conversation, is thinking, well, I'm not going to say it because even though I feel it, I don't want to make a fool of myself because they may not think it.

And then the other person's thinking, well, I'm not going to say it because I don't want to make a fool of myself because they probably don't miss me like I miss them and then you say it and they go well actually you know what I miss you too Rangan I haven't seen you too listen

let's do this by stages you don't need to go to the love bit straight away okay zero to I love you it's a big it's a big journey right

it's a big journey but isn't that funny that you with all of your openness have never said that and listen I know so so, my other best friend Terry said, big love, bro. Big love, bro.

So that feels different. Right. Big love, bro is different from I love you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big love, bro sounds a bit more. So I couldn't, I'm not sure I could go I love you to Terry in the same way that I say, I love you to Andy.

Okay. Right? I'm not sure because, but he's on that journey where he's like, he'll go, Big Love Bro. So it's about increments, right? It's conversations about where you become most comfortable. But the fact is, I've started on this journey. I'm older than you.

I've started on this journey. You haven't started on this journey. Well, it's interesting. So I think for me, I think the the really really interesting point there is certainly about men and the increasing rates of suicide in men the declining biggest yeah it's it's a it's a massive problem. And I realized a few years ago that, wow, I really am not prioritizing my friendships as much as I perhaps could be doing. And again, I think we all have to cut ourselves some slack.

The modern world is pretty busy. We have lots of different things to do. I've been very preoccupied with the health of my parents and particularly my mum over the past few years. But one thing I did do about a year ago in February, I remember I was traveling back from a book fair, and I was on stage with Professor Roseanne Kenny, actually, who is a longevity expert from Dublin. And she was talking about loneliness. And, you know, I talk about loneliness. I write about it.

But as she was talking about it on stage, and this is a couple of months after my mom got seriously unwell, I remember thinking, wow, I think I'm feeling pretty lonely at the moment. And I remember leaving the festival, being at the airport, and I phoned one of my mates, Jeremy,

who's part of this group. And I did say that to him. I said, hey mate, you know what? So I didn't say I love you to him, but I phoned him and I was totally raw and open with him. Said, mate, I think I'm a bit lonely. It was just awesome to be able to share that. And I felt less lonely at the end of that conversation.

So I think that I love you thing is interesting because I think, I don't want us to put anyone off saying you have to say I love you to your friends. It's not the wider point that we need to be open. We need to be vulnerable. We need to be sharing how we're feeling. And of course, not everyone is going to want to communicate that with an I love you. So how often did your dad tell you he loved you? Never. Right. And how often do you tell your kids you love them? Multiple times a day. Right. So you've evolved.

Yeah. Emotionally, right? So we all have our capacity within us to evolve emotionally. My dad never said it. I say it to my kids hourly. They're sick of it. They know so much. I love them. It's like a verbal tattoo on them that they have to carry. Well, they've been branded by this word, right? Yeah. I'm obsessed with it. So we do change, right? We can't kind of say, well, you know, we're not comfortable with it. We can't, you have to overcome that. Yeah. You have to, you You have to, because you have to connect with you. Someone said to me the other day, oh, I'm sick of all this, you know, this mental health stuff.

They never used to have these problems years ago, right? And he said to me, he said, oh, you know, this stuff, we didn't have this stuff years ago. I said, yes, we did. We just didn't have the language for it, right? And men bottled it up and men killed themselves and men are continuing to kill themselves because they're bottling it up but now we have a language and that language is connection and it's communication and it's conversation so while

you say look we don't have to all go around and tell each other we love each other. If I'd said that to you about your kids, you don't have to tell your kids you love them. Right? Yeah. You wouldn't have gone, oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, true, I don't. But you do. And you feel great for it.

And they feel great for it. Right? Yeah. You can change. Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable, it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, right? Yeah. You can change. Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable, it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, right? So if someone is sitting there going, there's no way I could ring up my mate now and say, I miss you.

Tell me what's the worst thing that's going to happen if you ring up someone who is your friend, right? Don't ring up your work colleague steve and go steve wednesday afternoon just wanted to say i miss you get the get the report in will you miss you right he may not react well to that but i would love to know if you called jeremy and and at the end of the call said, you know what, I really miss you. Can we meet up? How he reacts to that.

I feel like we're on some live stage show now. It'd be like, get your phone out. And we prepared this for Jeremy. And a big screen is Jeremy on the screen. Do it in real time. Do it in real time. I guess, you know,

leaning into that discomfort, that's massive when we're thinking about conversations, right? You mentioned before about this coffee shop scenario where the barista says hello and gives you the Wi-Fi password. But we also discussed the scenario where someone comes in and tells the barista that their dad has just died. And that would require a different response for that to be an effective conversation, an effective bit of communication, right? Our internal discomfort to say the wrong thing often gets in the way of us having meaningful conversations, and I would say grief is one of those situations. Let's say a friend's father or mother has died, right? Or we hear about someone dying. I know for a fact that many people, they don't communicate because they're scared. They don't know what to say. This is so common. Well, I didn't know what to say. So they say nothing or they say something really mundane because they don't want to lean into that

discomfort. So leaning into discomfort is huge, isn't it? So if someone is in that situation now, how do the tools in your book, how does this idea that we need to have better conversations, how does that play into the scenario where someone's just heard that their friend's dog or their parent has died and they don't know what to say? How would you advise them? So I've seen this a lot whereby someone posts on social media that a loved one has died and then everyone puts the message on there right so sorry for your loss heartbroken sending love sending hugs etc etc when i see that as if i know this person i call them i call them. I call them and they pick up the phone and I say, I've just seen that your dad has died and I just wanted to call you and talk to you. And after they burst into tears,

because that's usually what happens, there is silence. You don't jump into that silence. you don't jump into that silence they're gathering their thoughts they're processing the fact that they've lost their dad but they're also uplifted by the fact that someone has reached out to them in human connection by the fact that someone has reached out to them in human connection. You're not going to solve this. So you don't get nervous and say, I'm not going to call, because you can't solve it. You're not there to solve it.

The simple act of reaching out to them in itself is a form of love. So you don't have to, and men are often like this, aren't we? We're solution-based, right? So the reason I'm not going to call is because I don't know what to say, right? But it's not about what you say in that context. It's about you just being there and reaching out and giving someone the space to communicate. And what happened with my friend Louis was he just started to talk about his dad. And I started to ask him questions like

I would ask you about yourself, about his dad. And he then told me more about his dad. So in some ways, it's almost as if you begin to interview that person. And that's the thing you're terrified of, right? Because you're thinking, well, I don't want to compound his grief. But you're not going to make his grief any worse. Don't kid yourself. If you go into it thinking, I don't know what to say, that's almost as if you've made it about you.

But it's not about you. It's about them. And the greatest thing that you can do for them in that moment is to show that you care. So don't go into it saying to yourself, right, I have a three-step plan. When I call Louis about his dad, firstly, I'll do this. Secondly, I'll do this. And thirdly, by the end of it, he'll be happy again. because we know that's not the case right you're not calling someone through when they're going through grief to solve it because i've lost a father and i've lost a dog right i'm not comparing my father to a dog but the grief that you feel never really goes away you know if i was to now spend 15 20 minutes talking about how much i love my dad, I'd almost certainly cry again, right? It never leaves you. So that person who calls, I'm telling you now, mate, I did it with another friend, Tim, when he lost his dad. I went out with him. I just went out and we had a drink and we spoke to each other. And you know what? We didn't really.

I just listened. I just sat there and listened and they poured it all out and that was the greatest gift i could have given them better than the flowers better than turning up at the wake just listened and the art of talking this book's called let's talk rongan but it actually could have been called let's listen yeah yeah that's really powerful the first thing that struck me when you were talking there now is you were talking about the social media post and all the comments and now you don't add to that you picked up the phone to talk to him and i think that's a point that a lot of us miss you touched on it earlier in the conversation as well, social media for most of us, I appreciate some people may have a different perspective on this,

for most of us, it's often not the right medium to have the types of conversations we're trying to have on them. And we kid ourselves. Yes, you're not having a conversation. But it is, I'm very similar to you. If I see something like that, I'm going to text them or phone them or whatever. I don't want to do it on social media. Now, we also have to acknowledge that we're, you know, we have public profiles, right?

And of course, not everyone's in that situation. But I strongly feel, and it's something I've really evolved with over the years, is that there's certain things I choose to engage with on social media and certain things I won't, because I don't feel it's the right medium. And I know that probably frustrates some people sometimes when they want my opinion on something. So you'll get my opinion on this show. I'll bring those things up with a guest in this long form medium where we go back and forth we're nuanced but i won't do it on social media anymore even those

you sometimes have to restrain yourself yeah i'm like no this is not the right medium there's a part in this book now the middle section conversations in extremists which i found utterly fascinating a lot of people do, yeah. And it's about difficult conversations. And you talk about Mary McAleese. Former president of Ireland, yeah. Dia Khan. Documentary filmmaker. And John Sutherland.

Crisis negotiator of the Met. Now, I wanted to bring those three people up because I think when you go to the extremes in anything in life, you can learn the lessons that then apply to everyone. 100%. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that section. Oh, I love that you picked out this section. Achilles, at some point, sat opposite people who, not that long before, would have gladly killed her and her family. with the guys who were way out on the fringes, right? The real extremists. You didn't start them.

You started with the people who, through intelligence, but not in a kind of weird, surreptitious way, but those people who were most open to the idea of sitting down. And what was the commonality that they all had, right? And this is really important in conversation, especially difficult conversations, is where is the commonality? Because so often when we have difficult conversations, we only focus on those things that separate us, right? Whereas what she did was, she and those around the table agreed on one thing and that one

thing was that they didn't want their children to have the future that they had had as children right they didn't want history to be repeated they didn't want their children to grow up surrounded by bombs and army checkposts. They didn't want any of that. And that they could agree on. And for people who are not familiar with the Troubles in Northern Ireland, maybe listeners in other parts of the world, just sort of set the scene for them in terms of what was going on? So there was a period in Northern Ireland where, which was called the Trouble. So, the Ireland of Ireland is split into two with Northern Ireland, which is a part of the UK, and Southern Ireland, which is a country, a sovereign country of its own. It was predominantly Protestant. And there was essentially a civil war taking place.

And that civil war was incredibly violent between Catholics and Protestants. There are segregated housing, segregated schooling. And Mary McAleese, as a Catholic, was born into that. Those troubles started in the late 60s. They went right through, really, until the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, I think. And throughout that period, thousands of people were killed. You know, extreme violence took place on both parts. So what you're doing is,

you're seeing at this period in the late 90s, when Mary McAleese becomes, interestingly, President of Ireland, the sovereign of Ireland, she becomes president. And these conversations are being had because there's essentially a stalemate, right? Nobody can win. There has to be a point at which you have to talk. Yeah. And her job was to try and help facilitate those conversations.

Her job was to try and help facilitate those conversations. It was quite interesting when loyalists, which is the kind of Protestant side, so they were loyal to the UK, to the royal family, and they are part of the UK. That's loyalists. She said, look, when they visited, we didn't get them in through the back door. They came in through the front door. They had to be seen as equals in this conversation. And that is incredibly powerful. And to your point about how these in extremis conversations can impact upon us, look what is possible.

So you may not talk to someone because, you know, they complained about your kids playing football, right, in your back garden and their neighbour you don't think, right, okay? And you think, there's no way I'm ever going to be able to speak to that person again, right? Mary McAleese and many others sat around a table with people on both sides who just a few years before were willing to kill each other. And they sat around a table and they spoke and they began to understand each other. They began to understand that beyond these tags of Catholic, Protestant, Republican, Loyalist,

there were human beings who actually wanted a shared future. They may not agree religiously, politically, but equally, they weren't trying to convert each other. That was another important point. In that conversation, Rangan, they weren't saying, come over here and we're going to convert you to our way of thinking, but to find compromise. And that's important in so many of our lives. Yeah, I think you wrote in that section, if the outcome you desire from a conversation is for the person to become more like you,

it should be self-evident that the conversation is doomed. Right? And that's so indicative of the state of politics. I mean, look at America, and you have lots of listeners in America. Many people that I speak to, certainly political analysts, former politicians, et cetera, in America, say they have never known it to be more divided, right? You're a Republican or you're a democrat

but it's a problem of labeling as soon as we label people we separate them from us there's a separation and as you say we've got something in common on some level with every single person on the planet without question but we often don't think we do. So there's an interesting quote in the book. So Ronald Reagan, the former US president, said, my 80% friend isn't my 20% enemy. So that which you and I do not share should not define the entirety of our relationship, you and I do not share should not define the entirety of our relationship, right? So Brexit and Remainer, right? You voted Remain, therefore you are this. You voted Brexit, therefore you are this. And that's all that you are. But it isn't all of who you are. You know, going back to in extremis, Dia Khan is a brown-skinned muslim woman she's a documentary filmmaker an

emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker the reason i mention her gender and ethnicity is because and her faith she's muslim is because she decided to spend time with american neo-Nazis. You can imagine how much they loathed her and the labels attached to her, Muslim, Pakistani heritage, all of the things that they would think invader, terrorist, all of these terms. She actively sought out to engage with them to try and understand how they became these people. How brave is that, Rangu? Do you know why she did that? Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to the mental wellness app, Calm. Now, do you ever feel like your brain is on overdrive and your mind is constantly racing? The plans, worries, and to-do lists can often feel never-ending. Well, Calm can help your mind take a break from

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slash live more, you'll get a special offer of 40% off a Calm premium subscription and new content is added every week. For listeners of the show, Calm is offering an exclusive offer of 40% off a Calm premium subscription at calm.com forward slash live more. Go to calm.com forward slash live more for 40% off unlimited access to Calm's entire library, that's calm.com forward slash livemore. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now, journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision making, and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress,

make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits, and improve our relationships. There are of course many different ways to journal, and as with most things, it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three question journal. In it, you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening.

Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much this has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal, that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three-question journal completely free

on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal or click on the link in your podcast app. She said, I can hold a placard up in a square and say, down with Nazis, no more Nazis, right? But what do I actually want? I want less Nazis in the world. Is holding that placard up going to give me less Nazis in the world? Or going to talk to them to understand how they became Nazis, challenge some of those explore commonality rather than difference what will that result in and weirdly and just brilliantly because i write

in the book how utterly life-affirming this documentary she make white right meeting the enemy right is that at the end of it a few of those neo-Nazis said, we're leaving the organisations. We're no longer, Felix, because you're a Muslim, but we were taught all this stuff about Muslims. We were taught that the reason our family, the reason that I am now going to be poorer

than my parents' generation, I was taught that that's because of immigrants, because of Muslims, right? But actually isn't, is it? Because the Hispanic or the African-American working class person is exactly the same boat that I'm in, right? And that whole divide and rule thing, got through that it's amazing it's brave what i love is the first thing you said there which was she had to ask herself what is the outcome i actually want right and that may seem like quite an extreme situation but let's just bring that back to a situation that most

people can relate to. Let's say a marriage, a romantic partnership, right? Where there is a disagreement or there is conflict. So much of the time, we're trying to prove that we're right, that our point of view is the correct one. As you say, if the outcome you deserve from a conversation is for the person to become more like you, it should be self-evident that the conversation is doomed. That's kind of most marital conflicts, right? But if you take a step back and say, wait a minute, what's the outcome here? Well, most of the time I hope the outcome is, I want a harmonious relationship with my partner. Being right doesn't necessarily fit with that solution. And so I think that's the first thing that was quite interesting to me,

to hear about her rationale. There was a section when you were writing about Diakon where she said, I believe, that both sides must possess what the other one needs. And I found that so powerful. I thought, wow, that's really interesting. And I broadened it out. I thought in every conversation, in any deep, meaningful conversation, it's that important that we have to acknowledge on one level that both of us have got something that the other one needs? I mean, maybe speak to that a little bit in a how.

Yeah, but also I think Mary McAleese's point was that you're brought up with a certain narrative of history, which makes you believe that you're right. that you're right, right? And to go to the point that Diakar made about needs is to see the human in the person. She had to see the human in the neo-Nazi, right? Now, just let's let that sentence settle, right? That's not an easy thing to do, right? And what did they need? They ultimately needed to be seen.

They needed to be valued and they weren't, right? They were from poverty, abuse, trauma, criminality, and they were looking for someone to blame. She needed for there to be less neo-Nazis, but she also needed to, and this is really important, she needed to overcome her own prejudices going into that conversation. And that's really hard. If you're going into difficult conversations, you have to be very aware of what you bring, the baggage, the prejudice,

the bias, the bigotry into a conversation. You have to be aware of that because until you've analysed that, until you've come to terms with it, until you've potentially erased it, again, you're probably not going to get a meaningful conversation. So she's sitting there going, well, you're a Nazi. But she didn't go, you're a Nazi. Why are you a Nazi? Don't be a Nazi. She said, well, where did you grow up? What was your mum like? What was your dad like? What was the house you grew up in like? No one had ever asked them questions like that before. No one had made them feel valued like that before. How difficult is it to look at someone who hates you and actually say, beyond the skinhead haircut, beyond the swastika tattoo, I need to find a human in you. Now, a lot of people listening will say, I'm not doing that. In fact, I was on a panel with someone once

saying, I'm never going to do that. And I said to that person, well, we're never going to evolve then. Do you want less neo-Nazis in the world? Well, yeah. Well, how are you going to do it? You're going to just march around Trafalgar Square in London with a banner on. Brilliant.

Fine. That'll make you feel good. It's quite performative. But Diakon went and spoke to these people. And in every place on earth, there are those who will reach out to extremists to try and bring them back from the brink. Not because you're trying to impose your own opinion on them,

but what you are trying to do is to show another way that there is a different path. And that the reason you are why you are may not be for the reasons you've been told it's about curiosity it's about compassion it's about understanding you know why does that person think and feel and act the way in which they do. It's very different from this judgmental society that we now have, particularly exacerbated by social media, I would say, where we judge everyone for one small thing that they say,

take it out of context, make it the whole of them. And I know I talk about this phrase a lot on this show because it's been so transformative that if I was that other person, I'd be doing exactly the same as them. That phrase really has changed my life because it's literally, if I was that person with their childhood, with their parents, with their upbringing, with their friends, with their experiences, I would almost certainly be thinking and acting in the way that they do. Now, just because you're understanding it doesn't mean you're condoning the behavior and you write about that in your book. But if you don't understand, you're never going to make any progress. You know, for me now, and I'm interested to know if you had

any similar conversations like this during your career. In the early days of this podcast, I spoke to a chap called John McAvoy. I don't know if you're aware of John, but John, maybe 10 years ago or so, was one of Britain's most wanted men. He was locked up with two life sentences having committed armed robbery. But John was here in my house and we had this gorgeous conversation. And he told me about his life and his upbringing. And he didn't have a father figure. All the male role models he had in his life were criminals. They had their own code of conduct.

They treated women really well. They were very respectful. But it was them against the system. So they had their own code of conduct. They treated women really well. They were very respectful, but it was them against the system. So they had their own code of conduct. And actually, I think it was his uncle would pick him up, maybe when he was 12, 13, and he always saw his fancy shoes and his flash car, and he was dressed well, and he would treat people well. He'd get a lot of respect. And I remember I spoke to him for two hours and 40 minutes, right? And it's still one of the most downloaded episodes on this show ever. And I remember the end of that conversation when John left and I spoke to my wife. I said, you know what, Ved? If I had John's upbringing, I reckon I'd be locked up right now

for armed robbery. I genuinely felt that. And the reason I share that is because that's the story with everyone. As Diakon, you just mentioned with these neo-Nazis, I mean, there is a reason that they think the way that they think. And you're not going to make progress until you at least understand that. You don't have to like it, you don't have to condone it, but you sort of need to understand it. Were there any conversations for you, apart from the people you've shared in your book,

that really helped you shift your perspective on things like this? So there's two things. One is an extraordinary conversation, which you can see on YouTube, of me and Sir Billy Connolly. And one of the things that Sir Billy Connolly said was that world-famous comedian, film star, huge, right? right his father was incredibly abusive right violent man and as part of the therapy that he did in LA he sat opposite an empty chair and he imagined that his father was sitting in that chair. And he asked him, why did you do these things to me?

Why did you act like that? Then he went and sat in that empty chair and answered those questions, imagining he was his father. And he said that when he did that, it was like a sack of rocks was lifted from his shoulders i mean what's more powerful than that yeah that you can live in someone else's experience someone who has given you so much pain and you sit there and you try and imagine what it was like and conversation especially active listening is trying to understand isn't it because that connection that you and I have today, that thought that how difficult it is for you to say I miss you,

it's kind of powerful, right? It's a powerful thing, right? And you telling me about how a lack of conversation could be a reason for why we medicate in other ways through alcohol, bad food, et cetera. It's super powerful for me, you know, and you saying you felt loneliness is powerful to me because that's definitely something that I feel too. And you can be, something that i feel too and you can be interestingly i interviewed the actor cynthia arrivo and she said you know she's been lonely in packed rooms right yeah together alone together active listening there's a chinese symbol oh yes for listening yes in the book which is super super powerful so can you first of all say what it is yeah what it means basically so this is great so this comes from john sutherland right who is one of the most beautiful human beings you'll ever

meet right uh former chief superintendent at the Metropolitan Police. He's written several books, fiction, nonfiction. He's a truly lovely man. But he was a crisis negotiator. So hostage taking, very strange scenarios that he would have to be involved in. And he was the guy that you would call up. He was also the guy that taught at Hendon, which is the London Metropolitan Police's big training headquarters in North London. And he showed me, when I interviewed him for this book, and specifically this chapter in Extremis, this Chinese symbol symbol ting and this is a pictogram and there are four sections and essentially what active listening breaks down as is firstly it's the ears to listen right so far so obvious it's then the eyes to see. Again, nonverbal.

But then it gets super interesting. Then it gets into the territory of what is active listening. The Chinese believe that you're not listening unless you engage with your mind, but also with your heart. So this symbol, the four sections of it, are your eyes, your ears, your heart, and your mind. So you've listened with all four? All four. But just think about listening with your heart.

If I say that, I'm listening with my heart. What do you think that means? I mean, it means many things to me, Nahal. It means you are... I mean, it means many things to me, Nahal. It means you are... To me, it means that you're feeling into the conversation. You're not just hearing the words or seeing the body language. You're feeling the energy behind all of that. What's behind what's being said? To me, that what what comes up for me when i think about listening with your heart so then you can also say love though yeah yeah listening with love well that's the thing isn't it but also but it means many things it's very evocative it is it is but how vulnerable do you have to be to listen with your heart, do you think? Because you have to feel.

Yeah. Very. Very. I think you do. And that's quite a difficult place to be, isn't it? Because it makes you vulnerable. When I'm listening to you, now we're in this kind of format. this kind of format.

But if we were talking about how your parents' health, right? When I'm listening to you, I have to also imagine what it would feel like for me. As you're telling me about your parents vulnerability and their mortality and them not being the parent you grew up with anymore then i simultaneously in order to really feel that have to be listening with my heart, don't I? I have to be thinking, what if? Or with my heart because I lost my father to a heart attack and I know what that feels like. Just imagine the added power it gives us in conversation if we're listening with our heart.

Yeah. Imagine that, the power of that. Is there a risk that this idea of listening with these four quadrants, right? Ears, eyes, mind and heart. Is there a risk that some people will say, well, too high a bar okay i get it you guys are sitting on a table with mics running you're doing this long-form podcast sure you guys can um engage in these four quadrants of listening right but i've got a busy life and i'm rushing around so I'm just trying to play devil's advocate and go, well, how does that play out for someone who is stopping at their local cafe on the

way to the train station each morning to pick up their flat white? Does it have value in that situation as well? It has value in the sense that be engaged, right? So if I order the coffee from you, Rangan, and you hand me the coffee, but I'm not looking at you. I don't look in your eyes when I say thank you. I'm on the phone. I maybe just tap on the card. I'm not doing that, right?

But if I'm listening with my heart, I'll say thank you. And I'll make you feel seen. And I'll make you feel heard. I don't have to go, this is the greatest coffee I've ever had. And you should have a pay rise. And if I could,

and it was legally allowed, I would hug you. And if it was appropriate to do so, because I think you may well be the greatest barrister that has ever walked the face of planet Earth. I mean, you don't need to go there, right? But you do need to make someone feel seen. It's about, you know, look, grades, right?

And for someone to say, well, that feels like too high a bar, I would say, well, do you have a mind? Well, yeah. Well, do you have a heart? Yeah. Do you have emotions? Yeah. Okay, well, use them.? Yeah. Do you have emotions? Yeah.

Okay, well, use them. That's all I'm asking you to do. I'm not asking you, like I said, to jump over the counter and hug the barrister. It's not too high bar at all. It's just different grades. It's what's the appropriate thing to do in what setting. Yeah, absolutely.

So what's appropriate in this setting is going to be different from in that sort of I guess more transactional setting but feeling seen is important in all of those it is and there's a massive point here which I'm so passionate about which is we tell ourselves that we're so busy and we're rushing around

so we now think it's okay, right, to go in the supermarket checkout with your headphones in, having a conversation with someone and almost ignoring the cashier. Now, here's the thing. I am not judging you if you do that, right? Genuinely, I get the temptation to do that. But we are losing something so, so important as a society. You may not think you're doing much in that one interaction. Oh, you know, what's the harm? I'm just telling my wife I'm running late from work. I'm just popping in, just going quickly, you know, yeah. But actually, I think it's happening. It's this constant low-level degradation of happening. It's this constant low-level degradation of human connection that we don't realize is happening. And it's massive, which is why we now need, as incredible as this book is,

like it's talking, it really is, we now need to be reminded that this stuff is important. And here's the irony, 20 years ago, you would have been present with the cashier. You didn't have your podcast. You would have had Sony Walkmans having said that. So let's go back 30, 40 years ago. Let's go 40 years ago. But even then, I still think that we were more present in our interactions with the world around us. And there is something about interactions, not just with our close ones.

There's a lot of science on the importance of talking with strangers. So there's a guy called Peter Mead who is a legend in advertising, absolute legend. And one of the stories from his life is that whenever anyone wanted to work with him, he would take them to breakfast at his favourite spot. And depending on how that person treated the waiting staff, that would make up his decision as to whether he wanted to work with this person or not. So actually, as you know, it's the small things, right? It is the small things. So that cashier who we've ignored, who we've made to feel as though they don't exist,

because guarantee we have. When we've kept our headphones on and we've spoke through that whole transaction, we have told them that you don't exist. Yeah. Right? You're a robot. You know, I'm not seeing the humanity in you.

Right? And again, I'm not saying high five them and say, how are your kids? Look at the name badge, even though I do tend to do that and say their name if that is, because again, that makes you feel seen. These are little moments, right? And also what's really interesting, I think,

in all of this and health wise is there has been quite a lot of analysis about how beneficial it is to us when we are kind to others. Yeah. Right? Like it's not entirely altruistic. You could say that I'm kind and nice and empathetic for purely selfish reasons. Yeah. Because actually, it is beneficial to me. If you walk around sour-faced with your headphones on talking into your phone all day long, that's not very healthy, right? Whereas if you connect with people, if you touch them, if you, not touch them inappropriately, obviously, and check first, but if you, you know, if you're a bit of a hugger like I am, I feel great for that. People who do charitable work never come away from it saying,

I felt terrible helping that other human being. Have you ever met anyone who said, oh, I ran a marathon for this charity. And then when I handed the money over to them, I felt really terrible. No one's ever said that. Right. So your point is so vital, so vital. And while you say, because I know what you're like, right. And I totally understand why you would say, look, I don't want to judge anyone that does this, but perhaps we have to say, don't do it just for those couple of minutes. Just don't do it. You don't have to do it. Right. Like you're not, it's not that deep. Right. Like it's like, just do it you don't have to do it right like you're not it's not that deep right like it's like just give someone a sense of feeling seen i think 10 years ago and i'm you

know plucking 10 from thin air right so it could be 15 it could be whatever but i think it would have been frowned upon honestly i think as a kid even though sony walkman's existed i don't think you take your headphones off before you speak yeah yeah yeah and i think what's happened with Honestly, I think as a kid, even though Sony Walkmans existed, I don't think you would be... Take your headphones off before you speak. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think what's happened with technology, and we can apply this in many different settings, there's just been this very slow, insidious change where what was once regarded as downright rude and impolite

is now just the accepted norm. And I don't think we've at all, as a society, made a conscious decision that that's the case. I think it's just the way that tech has just infiltrated into our lives so we've become less human. So of course we feel more isolated because we're going around with damn headphones on everywhere and we're not interacting with people. and I get the temptation to do that

and so let's talk for me it's not just literally about talking it goes beyond that it's also about what do you need to do to interact with the world around you in a more intimate way? Yeah. What it's also, isn't it, is how do I make the world more meaningful for me? Right? How do I give it a sense of depth? Because ultimately, social media encourages narcissism. It it's superficial it's on the face value but actually what we do crave is meaning and depth and we can't get away from that that's

thousands and thousands of years since human beings first started to create art for instance art that wasn't representative of the real world, but was a leap of the imagination. We're searching for so much more than the world is currently giving us, right? But what we're perhaps trying to do is search for it in the wrong places, rather than search it in the most basic way of all. It's like, I need an app to make me feel better. I need this. I need that. I need that. Maybe what you just need is time with another human being. Maybe that's it. And maybe you need to look at that like you look at a gym or you look at a meeting. You need to look at it as time that you need to carve out in your week.

I mean, you're very good at this. You and Vid, you two, I know at the end of each day, you have that tea moment, right? Of human connection. And the thing is, we, like anyone else, get sucked into the business trap. So do I. And then there will go a period of time where it doesn't happen.

And we feel it. And you don't feel as close as connected. It's these little moments of connection for all of us that have immeasurable knock-on effects that we don't even realize. As we convince ourselves in the moment that yes, the right thing to do is to ignore, put the headphones on, shut yourself off from the world. It ain't true you get so much more when you give that you mentioned social media now i've been following you on social media for a number of years and me who and there have been very different trajectories well there's been many many occasions where you have been at the centre of blow-ups, should we say.

Pylons, yeah. Pylons, okay. So, you've written this fantastic book on connection and how we can have better conversations. Conversations. Has writing that book changed how you interact and engage on social media? What it's made me realise is, is that I'm not interacting on social joy, right? It's functional in that I have 100,000 plus on X and I've gone over to Threads, which is a much nicer place, which is 10,000 and 40,000 on Instagram.

But what I realised by writing this book was that I'd fooled myself into thinking I could have conversations on social media, and I can't. Because I've seen you for years trying. Yeah, I have. I've wasted, if I had it all together, probably months of my life arguing essentially with people who are complete strangers who are usually anonymous who will not change their mind and they won't change my mind and let's just be really clear there they probably won't change their mind in that setting because as we've just seen with you talking about dia khan right people do change their minds but the setting has to be right yeah and that's something actually that i didn't touch on when you spoke about mary

it was really interesting that she would have the paramilitaries coming through the front door yes right and there was a section that chapter where it was either you saying it or you referring to what she said that where you have the conversation is often as important as what is being said right right and i think that plays in here right of course you on social media is not the same as mary mccalee's talking to paramilitaries. But the common threads, or one of the common threads is, what's the location of the conversation? Is it appropriate for what you're trying to get out of it? So social media, specifically X, is designed for conflict and the algorithm picks up on conflict, exacerbates, amplifies. Therefore, you will disappear into some pretty dark places, right? So especially around race

and around gender, around climate change, the kind of culture war nonsense that we have to deal with. And I've been dragged into it. The mistake I made, Rangan, was that as a school kid, I went to quite a rough comprehensive school in Essex. And if someone came up and said something to you, you'd probably fight them, right? Because you'd want to show that you can't take liberties with me, right? And I kind of carried on that mentality on social media. But actually, how can you, when it's like hundreds of people who some might just be bots, right? They don't even exist. They're just computer designed AI rapscallions to disrupt everything. So I don't think of myself, so I've, especially after December of last year,

where I made some comments at a diversity conference where I said that being in an overwhelmingly white working environment was beginning to make me feel very lonely and isolated. And that was having an impact on my mental health. The lack of diversity in that space, in a place which is supposed to be diverse, right? Because it's in a city in the UK, was having an effect on me. I didn't want to go in there. When I did go in there, I'd look around the room and I didn't see anyone that looked like me. Now, the vast majority of like tabloid press, right wing press, far right people jumped on that as me saying that I was anti-white, that white people were affecting my mental health.

They refused to see the nuance in any of that because of course they don't want to, right? So for about a month throughout December, my social media was a cesspit of racism and bigotry and ignorance. And previously, when I've had pylons, I get stuck in. It's like a rugby scrum to me. It's like, get involved. This time, I just switched it off and let them shout at each other. Because I realised after writing this book, I'm not having a dialogue with you.

You're not interested in the answer. You've already made up your mind. And this format is, I'm not going to be able to sit with you for an hour and a half, two hours, like we're sitting here and say, this is what I really meant. And compare it to the many women that got in contact with me and said, I know what you mean. because they had worked in all male working environments where they had felt isolated and lonely. Or the number of ethnic minority people who said, thank you for speaking

out. In all of my time, 20 years at the BBC, I've never said anything that has been more important and has brought with it so much hatred but i feel for my kids i have to stand for something and especially in this world that we live in now and if you are a member of an ethnic minority standing up and saying this is how i feel there's a vast amount of people that would just try and gaslight you. That's rubbish. What do you mean? Like predominantly white middle-aged men who've never had to feel that way because they've been largely in other working environments where they've been in the majority. But when you're in the minority and you feel it and you feel it every day and you've come from London where you don't feel that, you're suddenly like, this is making me feel sad. I genuinely X, I hate it. I mean,

like I go on it now, I've heavily rationed it now. I switched it off yesterday evening. I said to my followers, I'll be back on Monday. And that's good for my mental health. The obvious question is, why would you not just delete it and never go on it again? So I think part of me doesn't want to run away from it. Part of me is like, you are not going to force me off this platform, right? I am going to ration it. I'm going to come off it because largely, I just don't care anymore, right? Before, you'd kind of see it as part of, you know, that's your brand Nihal, right? So that's the way you kind of say you've got a book coming out, or you want to say something about the football, or you want to kind of ask a question about the

politics of the day. But as, you know, my boss at Five Live pointed out to me, she said, you've got 1.2 million listeners a week, which is way bigger than your X platform, right? Like why are you worried about this? Like why are you going on there? So remember, I've been on Twitter since 2009. I've on i was the first radio one dj to use that platform oh wow as a show right the first one so i've been on there for a long time and part of me is like you know but i love instagram i much prefer instagram i love being on there i want to try and use that more and um i feel like it's just a nicer place to be you know have you ever had any trolling yeah yeah over what who would troll ron gonchaggi the man who puts out nothing but positive what did

they have to troll you about i've had it quite a lot over the years my thing and i guess we've all got to find our thing right so i'm quite clear that what i try and do and maybe this is you know we're in different roles you know you've got you know you're with bbc news yeah right yeah that's very different from what i do i've chosen to share what i've learned over decades of seeing patients with people to try and improve their lives right that? That is not trollable. Like nothing of that is trollable, is it? But I tell you, this really speaks to the concept of your book, actually.

The ongoing struggle with this podcast and social media is that I do long form because this is what gives you context and nuance. Right, yeah. But what do we do? We pull a 60 to 90 second clip from a two hour conversation to put on Instagram to raise awareness that there's a new conversation and this is a little insight into what you might get. And we're always talking about this internally because I have this discomfort sometimes with that.

I want to use Instagram to tell people, hey guys, there's a new conversation. I think you're going to learn something amazing. But what you have to do if you want anyone to see that post is it has to be punchy to a certain degree. It has to sell the conversation. And even though I write in the copy on every Instagram post when we take it, please note, this is a one minute clip from a 90 minute conversation for the full context. Listen to to the full conversation I've actually realized that people don't read that or a lot of people don't read that and they will judge and criticize

based upon a 60 second clip now I'm not playing the victim here right I have to take responsibility for what we're putting out but at the same time I haven't solved that struggle. And I think it speaks to this wider point, which is the modern world of social media, right? It's changing the way we interact. It's changing how we promote things, right? I love the impact that this show is having on people, right? One of the ways we advertise the show is on social media. Of course. So usually the trolling comes from things taken out of context. And, you know, I've learned to live with it. I am actually very relaxed about it. It used to bother me a lot.

And I have reflected on why those things might have bothered me in the past. And also, I don't sit my head in the sand. Like sometimes I go, yeah yeah that's a good point actually I'm like oh I can learn something there next time I put something out like this I can be a bit more careful and I think learning to deal with criticism effectively

I think that's actually a part of how you have a good conversation because sometimes in a conversation you're going to get criticised learning to not be defensive and actually seeing well is there any truth here that i can learn from i think that's pretty powerful yeah it is it is don't be the smartest in the room yeah right like i'd like to think at my age i'm still really open to really different ideas that challenge me. There's a really brilliant book

called Beyond Grievance by Raki Besan, which is really about how not all disparity is down to discrimination, right? And what he's essentially saying is that there is a race relations industry that look at all disparities that ethnic minorities have with white people and put it all down to racism. And actually you need to explore those issues in a much more deep and nuanced way to understand, are there cultural issues? It's not just economic issues.

Because if it's just down to race, why is it that Nigerian boys perform better than Jamaican boys at school? It's not down to race. There it that nigerian boys perform better than jamaican boys at school it's not down to race there are other issues there it may be the fact that 60 of jamaican households um i've been told were uh single parent families right that's not the case in nigerian households right so those kind of interesting questions and it's interesting i think from my white audience predominantly white audience on bbc5 live to hear two people of color having that conversation you know yeah and that conversation is kind of electrifying i had a really really robust conversation with john barnes the legendary liverpool i think i heard that right it was robust right and it went viral and lots of people were talking about it. Similarly, I had a really robust conversation, which definitely did go viral with Gary Neville, the Manchester United

footballing legend about, you know, the World Cup in Qatar and his own reasons for going out there, et cetera, et cetera. And it was brilliant, you know, it was brilliant. But it was respectful. But it was respectful. Yeah. We didn't raise our voices. We didn't shout at each other, right? We didn't talk over each other. And you can, and this is going back to the history of Great Conversation and Samuel Johnson was that in those coffee houses,

it was fashionable to be polite so as well as drinking your coffee which was this newfangled thing that was all the rage you had to be polite you know and that's another thing that we're losing in discourse and through conversation how do we disagree respectfully is a really important part of great conversation and difficult conversation. How do we learn? And look, we have to fight against the forces that are encouraging us to reduce each other to labels and to cast each other as heroes or villains. We really have to resist that. And it's going to be really difficult. You know, billions of people are going to the polls this year,

whether it be India, America, the UK, of course, billions of people around the world. In human history, there has never been more people going to vote. That's why writing a book about conversation is, it's become incredibly timely. Yeah. Because we have to constantly remind ourselves that there are forces who monetize division.

It's a business model, Rangan. Yeah. It's a business model. On Tuesday of this week, I was in London and I spoke to the US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy. Amazing. And he shared with me that currently one in six US adults are not talking to a member of their family because of political differences. That's remarkable. You're not talking to another member of your family, not because of something they've done, but because they see the world differently.

I mean, the language that is used to reduce your opponents in America in political discourse is terrifying. It's infantile. It's terrible. And it creeps over here. We're whatever years behind, three, five years behind what America does. And we have to be really careful that we don't become, it's all about leftists or, you know, rightists. I think that's a real take home from your book and hopefully from this conversation with people that whenever you're falling into the trap of labeling someone for whatever reason, right? Their political party, dare I say it, their football team, whatever it might be, just know that you are on a slippery slope. You are going to start to think about them through that lens unless you're very, very mindful and careful about it.

Well, this is why the language around Islamists, right, to tar an entire faith, and actually some people don't. They just go, Muslims, Muslims are not welcome here. Now ask any Jewish friend of yours or Jewish person where that dehumanisation ends, ask them and they'll tell you because they have a family member who was a direct victim of where that dehumanisation is. And don't think for a second that your dehumanising of someone

is a million miles away. This is why conversation is important, right? Meaningful conversation, how to have better conversations, it matters because if you're dehumanizing someone, you cannot. It is simply impossible to have a productive and meaningful and deep conversation with them. And it is a slippery slope. Once we start othering people, once we start being unable to converse with them, where does it end? Well, we know some of the places that can end. So it's not just about making us feel good because we better connected with our partner or our friends. That is a great bonus for sure. That's a great benefit, but it's much bigger than that, isn't it? Good conversation is much bigger than just our personal relationships.

Oh, it really is. It is the, I think, great conversation, meaningful conversation, deep conversation, effective conversation, is the glue which binds our society together. And if we lose the ability to be able to converse with each other in a meaningful way, we will start to fracture. And we don't want to live in a fractured society. We want to live in a society which is moving together in the same direction

to achieve the same goals, the same shared goals. We may have different ways of getting to it, but the shared goals. Sundar Katwala wrote in his book, How to Be a Patriot, is actually what patriotism is, isn't othering people. It isn't saying no to refugees. Patriotism is trying to understand and work on how we can all live together. That's patriotism. How can we effectively live together? What's more patriotic than that? Wanting the best for your country, for everybody who is in that country, right? Now, that might sound simplistic and it might be quite hard for some people to understand. Look, I'm not above on social media calling someone a racist, right? If they're a racist, they're a racist and

they've said something racist. But equally, I also know i'm not having a conversation with that person i'm just saying you said something racist to me so you're a racist now i'm going to block you and we're going to move on so i just block people now whereas before i would have engaged them and i wouldn't want to give them the benefit that they thought that they'd wound me up so much that i've had to block them but actually i thought that's not how it works is it and that's the story It's a self-created story in our minds that, yeah, they're going to be thinking that of me if I do that, which, frankly, you don't even know is true anyway. No. And why do I care? Why do I care that this anonymous person with a picture of their depiction of St. George, who wasn't even English on their Twitter thing. It's like, dude, come on,

man. Like, you know, why do I care about this stuff? But, and I want to make this really clear through our conversation, right? I am addicted to my phone. There's quite often times where my kids are looking at me going, why are you playing Tetris? We're talking to you, right? I am still working on this. I am at war with myself with this, right? And having this conversation today has reminded me of my own failings, right? And my own fallibility in this and that how, like so many people listening to this podcast and watching this podcast, we are on a journey. It's not perfection I'm looking for. It's progress. Yeah, I love that. I've got to ask you about this brilliant phrase that John Sutherland said,

because it's got me thinking ever since I read it yesterday, set your mind to receive and not to broadcast. It's such a beautiful sentiment, isn't it? He's the guy who mentioned the Chinese symbol of active listening as well, right? The same guy. There's a similar kind of... Of course. This also goes back to Johan Hari's book, Stolen Focus and Social Media, which is social media is all about transmitting, right?

It's not about receiving. You're just broadcast, broadcast, broadcast, post, post, post, post. You're not even that concerned really on the replies. You're concerned on the likes and the shares, but not really on the replies, right? And again, it also goes back to, are you listening to understand or are you listening to respond, right? Are you listening to broadcast or are you listening to receive? And that again is about active listening. So I'm listening to you when you speak. I know you're listening to me because you've got slightly far a brow. You're really concentrating. You're in the moment. You're

trying to be there with heart, mind, ears and eyes, right? I can see it. But if I was, say this, like you're talking to me and I'm on my phone swiping going, yeah, yeah, John Sutherland's brilliant, man. Right? Professor Michael Posner, right, from Oregon University, did studies that show that when you are interrupted in conversation, in flow, in a meaningful task, it will take on average 23 minutes for you to get back to that state of focus that you were in. So let's just imagine this. You and Jeremy, your mate, are sitting down and something bad's happened in Jeremy's family. I hope it never happens, but it will, right? And your phone is on the table in between the two of you, right? And Jeremy's just began to tell you about what's happening here. And your phone buzzes

because you've just hit a thousand likes on your Instagram post that you put up an hour before you met Jeremy. So Jeremy has to start again, taking 23 minutes to get to that point. Now, if it's a fairly kind of superficial conversation, that's fine. But if it is a deep and meaningful conversation, it will suffer. Because ultimately, Rangan, what am I telling you by putting that mobile phone down in front of you on the table? What I'm telling you is that what you are saying to me is only of equal value to a Facebook update or a BBC News update. Now, what is that?

If I sat down with you and went, listen, just before the conversation, Rangan, I just want to tell you that everything on Facebook and Instagram and X and threads is as important as this conversation is at least it's honest

I mean you've got to admire the honesty right you've got to admire the honesty but let's have a little moment to how deep that conversation

do you think would go right it's not just about deep conversations I'm pretty militant on stuff like that because i actually genuinely believe that for relationships our phones have become one of the most toxic invaders into our relationships that question you know for me i think that when you're trying to interact with someone, whether it's your wife or your friends or whoever it might be, if that phone is present and the eyes start going, you know, I think it's

toxic for relationships. Like I really do. And again, I'm not trying to put myself out as the, someone who's perfect at this. I'm really not, but I do try so hard with this. Like I'm very rarely, I'm very rarely on my phone around my kids. Oh, I wish I could say that. But that's a purposeful thing. That's a purposeful thing. Now I'll go to a different room or a different place if I need to do something on my phone. Some people may call that over the top. I don't know if it is or not. I'm just trying to do the best I can. And for me, I think we all know what it feels like when you know that person you're talking to is distracted and half listening to you and not showing you that they're listening. So I don't want my kids to feel that. It's not

always easy. Occasionally, I'm sure it does happen, but by and large, I try not to. And I don't want my kids to feel that. It's not always easy. Occasionally, I'm sure it does happen, but by and large, I try not to. And I don't know. Well, can I tell you two people who agree with you? Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. They didn't give their kids technology, right? Now, this is Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Now, if they weren't willing to do it,

what message does that send out about their own products, products that made them billionaires? Yeah. There's something deeply uncomfortable about that as well, isn't there, in terms of what's happened with those products. But I think there's a wider point there. It's about conversation. It's not just about how we communicate. It's what messages we're emitting when we're being communicated with, right? It's like, are we, it's that Chinese symbol. It's like, you're not showing that person

that you are listening with eyes, ears, heart, soul, mind, everything. If you've been distracted. Just it don't have it like i don't have my phone in my bedroom anymore right i don't go to i don't use it as an alarm anymore right i want it downstairs i want it away from me right i'm so glad we are now in this conversation and our phones are not here. Right. I'm without question addicted to it. I am trying to wean myself off it. It's pernicious. Right. Do not think that this machine is innocuous, that it's innocent. It isn't any of those things. Right. It is a scourge on our ability to genuinely communicate with each other and ration it. Like, I don't want to get rid of my phone. I'm never going to get rid of my phone. I love taking photos.

I did an Instagram Live earlier on today. I do love aspects of my phone. But it's taken up space. I recently judged the British Book Awards. And just delving into these six works of fiction was magical, magical. You know, just watching a film without my phone next to me so I could be present, so I could discuss it with my kids. It's just magical.

present so i could discuss it with my kids it's just magical look if we've changed our behaviors or if this technology has changed our behaviors firstly become conscious of the fact it has and secondly do something about it right won't be easy no overcoming any addiction isn't easy but you have to admit you're addicted in the first place. And I don't think we admit to ourselves how addicted we are to our phones. Like how many of us measure our screen time and set alerts in place? All of it exists within your phone to be able to do that. But how many of us do it? Now, for someone who's heard us talk and has recognized that, yeah, you know what?

I need to upskill my conversation skills. All I'm thinking about at the moment is my diet or my movement or my sleep. I'm not giving attention to my ability to have quality conversations. Hopefully, you've made the case for them throughout our conversation that that is critically important for health, happiness, relationships, whatever it might be, right? It's important for everything, but they don't know where to start. What would you say to them? Start by focusing on your listening skills, not your talking skills, right? So think about ting. Ding. When you're listening, how are you listening? Are you processing? Are you listening with your heart? Are you emotionally engaging with the person in front of you? Are you bringing your

own prejudices to a conversation, a difficult conversation? So start not with the person in front of you? Are you bringing your own prejudices to a conversation, a difficult conversation? So start not with the other person, but with you. And don't start by thinking about, well, I want to have a quality of conversation. I want to be able to be some kind of bon vivant, like Stephen Fry. I want to have an entire room engaged with my wit and my bon ami, right?

Like, don't get involved in that. Think about how do I listen? That's the start, right? From there, everything else will come. And remember my daughter's phrase from her school. Am I listening to respond or am I listening to understand, right? And my advice would be 10 times out of 10, you should be listening to understand? Right? And my advice would be 10 times out of 10,

you should be listening to understand. Right? And therein lies where the good response comes from because you've understood what that person is saying. Yeah, I love that now. Honestly, I think the book's fantastic. I think it's coming from you. That is an unbelievable compliment.

Like it genuinely is. No, it's awesome. And it's, from you that is an unbelievable compliment like it genuinely no it's it's awesome and it's as you say for yourself i think it gives a language to what i guess we might feel we've done intuitively for a number of years but it's really nice to read it and see oh that's why the approach we often try and take with our guests works and often works so well because we're actually applying a lot of these tools. So yeah, I really appreciate you writing the book and thanks for coming on the show. Oh man, it's been a, I only wrote the book so I could come on the show. I mean, I had no plans of writing a book, but you know, I just wanted to be on your podcast, like hanging out with you normally. I'd had enough of, quite frankly.

Well, I hope it was worth it. And to finish off, I love you, man. And I miss you. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation

that you can teach to somebody else. Remember, when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday Five. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email,

I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I'd be consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something

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