Something You Should Know - What Are You Afraid of and Why? & Communication Strategies To Make You Influential

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

Ask people what their favorite number is and you will get a lot of different answers. But if you ask thousands of people, one number emerges as the clear winner? This episode begins with what that number is and why so many people like it and consider it lucky. Source: Alex Bellos author of Here’s Looking at Euclid (https://amzn.to/3wgjt3z)  What are you afraid of? Spiders? The dark? Public speaking? We are all afraid of something at some time - and that feeling of fear can be very powerful. Where does fear come from? Why are some people more afraid than others? What can you do if a fear is in the way of living your life? Listen to my guest Eva Holland. She is a writer who had some very strong fears that were holding her back. She decided to tackle the topic and look at the research about fear to help herself and to also write a book called Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear (https://amzn.to/3pK2rrW). Listen as she offers some great insight and advice about the things that make you afraid.    Although you communicate with others throughout the day, you are likely not using all the skills available to improve your ability to speak, influence and persuade others. That’s according to David JP Phillips who actually studied over 5,000 speakers to discover the skills that make them such great communicators. Listen as David joins me to explain some of these skills that you can easily use to make you more influential and better able to speak with others. To learn more about David's 110 communication skills go to: www.HeadGain.com His TED Talk is here: https://bit.ly/3cDctG9. One of my pet peeves is phantom traffic jams. They happen a lot where I live in southern California. Why do they happen and is there a solution? Listen as I explain. https://www.livescience.com/61862-why-phantom-traffic-jams-happen.html PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! We really enjoy The Jordan Harbinger Show and we think you will as well! There’s just SO much here. Check out https://jordanharbinger.com/start for some episode recommendations, OR search for The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.  Indeed is THE jobsite that makes hiring as easy as 1, 2, 3. Post, screen, and interview - all on Indeed. Get a $75 CREDIT at https://indeed.com/SOMETHING. Save time, money, and stress with Firstleaf – the wine club designed with you in mind! Join today and you’ll get 6 bottles of wine for $29.95 and free shipping! Just go to https://tryfirstleaf.com/SOMETHING Hims is helping guys be the best version of themselves with licensed medical providers and FDA approved products to help treat hair loss. Go to https://forhims.com/something Go to https://RockAuto.com right now and see all the parts available for your car or truck. Write SOMETHING in their “How did you hear about us?” box so they know we sent you! Search for Home. Made., an original podcast by Rocket Mortgage that explores the meaning of home and what it can teach us about ourselves and others.  Go Daddy lets you create your website or store for FREE right now at https://godaddy.com Discover matches all the cash back you earn on your credit card at the end of your first year automatically and is accepted at 99% of places in the U.S. that take credit cards! Learn more at https://discover.com/yes https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Today on Something You Should Know, when you ask people what their favorite number is, what number comes up most and why? I'll explain that. Then, what are you afraid of?

Are your fears a permanent part of who you are? My fear of heights felt like it was a built-in part of me as much as my spine. And it's different now. It's not gone, but it's different. And I think it's worth keeping in mind that this stuff can feel permanent, and it isn't permanent. Then, why are there phantom traffic jams and how can you stop them? And there are a lot of things you do that affect how you communicate and how influential you are, like the speed at which you speak. Our brain believes that when people say things quickly, we believe that what is being said is of less value because the person wants to hurry past it.

It devalues what you're saying. All this today on Something You Should Know. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples,

Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know.

Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hey there, welcome to Something You Should Know. It has come to my attention that some people who listen to this podcast, or any podcast, on an iPhone have been having problems ever since they updated their iOS operating system to 14.5 or 14.6. Apple is aware of the problem.

People are reporting missing episodes, old episodes showing up. People can't find shows. If you are having problems with your iPhone accessing podcasts, I'd love to hear about the problems you're having, and you can email me at mike at somethingyoushouldknow.net. And if you are having problems, there are plenty of other apps you can download that will play podcasts for you. Apple, again, is working on the problem, and hopefully we'll have it fixed soon. First up today, I want to talk about favorite numbers, or lucky numbers. You probably have one.

And if you ask people what is their favorite number, obviously you're going to get a lot of answers. But if you ask enough people, one number does seem to emerge. Math blogger and author Alex Belos, who's been a guest on this podcast, he asked 44,000 people what their favorite number was, and it started to become clear that number seven leads the list of favorite numbers. It turns out that humans have been fascinated by the number seven for centuries. As far back as the earliest writings on Babylonian clay tablets, there's lots of talk of the number seven. And of course there are seven dwarfs, seven sins, seven seas.

We like seven. But why do we like seven? What's so special about it? Well, Alex believes it's because it's kind of an oddball number. In other words, numbers that end in zero or five, like ten or twenty or a hundred, they sound more like estimations. And nobody wants their favorite number to sound like an average estimate.

So 7, 7 is solid. It's a solid oddball number, and that's why people like it. The second favorite number after 7 is 3, and after that is 8, which is lucky in Chinese. Number 13 actually made the top 10 of favorite numbers. And the number 1 came in 22nd. And that is something you should know. What scares you? What are you afraid of? Spiders? The dark? Clowns? Heights? Death? Public speaking? There are a lot of things to be afraid of. Some fears are easy to handle.

If you're afraid of heights, you just avoid high places and the problem goes away. But other fears can really get in the way of life. And then there's that feeling of fear. You felt it. What is it? And how do you control it? Here to discuss the fascinating topic of human fear is Eva Holland. She is a writer who's had to deal with her own fears, so she decided to really explore the science of fear. Where do fears come from? What purpose do they serve? And how do you cope with them? She's the author of a book called Nerve, Adventures in the Science of Fear.

Hey, Eva, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, thanks so much for having me. So what got you interested in this? Why did you decide to look at the topic of human fear? It came out of personal experiences for me, really dealing with a fear of heights and then sort of an acquired fear of winter driving after a couple of car accidents. There were all these pieces of my life that I wanted to understand. And it seemed to me the way to do that was to try to figure out what was happening in my brain and my body when I felt afraid. And so do you consider yourself a fearful person? I do, yeah, which doesn't always fit kind of my persona in my writing.

I write a lot about outdoor adventure and extreme sports, but I do, or I should say, I guess I did consider myself a fearful person before I started working on this book. And so when you look at the science of fear, I mean, what is fear? What is it? I guess it's an emotion, right? It is an emotion, but it's also a physical process, a physical reaction, which was interesting for me to learn about. The best definition I found in my research was from a 19th century psychologist who said, fear is the anticipation of pain.

And in scientific terms, what that means is that it's a response to perceived threat. And it's our body trying to prepare to either, you know, the classic phrase is fight or flight. Scientists now sometimes say fight, flight, or freeze. But it's our body preparing us to respond to the threat. And so that's why we get, you know, the racing heart and the goosebumps and the, you know, dilated pupils, potentially all these physical symptoms of our body gearing up to say, let's deal with this. We're afraid, let's figure it out. Well, I like that definition you gave a moment ago that fear is the anticipation of pain. And it does seem that, you know, some people just are more fearful and consequently very cautious than others. There's a spectrum. Some people seem to live life without a care in the world.

They're afraid of nothing and other people seem afraid of a lot of things. And I'm wondering what determines where you fall on that spectrum. Most of us are somewhere, you know, in the middle. Is it experiences we have or is it just part of who we are and our personality? What determines where people fall on that scale? Interesting question. Yeah, I think it's a mix. My understanding from the research is that there's a certain amount of nature involved in terms of whether we're more inherently fearful or cautious or anxious. The phrase some psychologists use is inhibited, inhibited personalities. And then there's also a piece that's based on our experiences. If we've experienced trauma, if we've sort of acquired phobias. So it really is a mixture and it is a spectrum.

Yeah. And what's interesting to me is how some people are very afraid of some things that you might not be afraid of and not afraid of things that scare the crap out of you. And it's, it seems so almost random that, you know, like I, I don't like roller coasters,

but, but I like other adventurous things, but I hate roller coasters. They scare me to death. I don't know. Well, yeah, I guess I sort of know why,

but it's interesting how it just seems to be like throwing darts at a dark board. Oh, yeah, I guess I sort of know why. But it's interesting how it just seems to be like throwing darts at a dartboard. Oh, I'm going to be afraid of that. Yeah, it can feel really random. And I think to a certain extent, it is. Part of it is it's such a fine line between fear and pleasure in some cases. You know, some people find that stomach falling away from you, feeling of a roller coaster, to be a thrill. And for you, it's horrible. And our emotions sort of operate so tightly that it can be hard to figure out. Part of the thrill is the sick feeling for the people that enjoy it.

It's not that they experience it completely differently than you do. They just process it differently. We have fears, though, that are irrational. You know, there's the fear, well, maybe maybe not all irrational but like the fear of flying people are very afraid of flying and yet the chances of anything happening are so slim and much slimmer than if you were in a car whereas you know the the fear of your stomach dropping in a roller coaster that's a real thing that happens to you. And that's what I do my best to avoid. But the fear of flying is, well, I guess if the plane does fall from the sky, that's a real problem. But it seems like an unnecessary and odd fear because there's really not much to be afraid

of. Right. There's category errors that we make sometimes in terms of like, yes, something could be dangerous in theory, but the risk assessment piece is missing. I give the example of being afraid of bears. You know, if you're lying awake in your tent at night in a campground in bear country, it's probably reasonable to worry a little bit about bears. It's very reasonable to worry about a bear if you see a bear, but it's less reasonable to worry about bears if you're lying awake in your tent at night and you're not in bear country. So it's so hard to parse, you know, what's a real threat and what isn't. And that's really what the process is that happens in our brains and our bodies is us trying to sort of parse the threat level. And we're not that good at it, it turns out, which explains, you know, stuff like the reaction to airplanes versus cars. We should all be scared to get in cars every day, but we aren't. Yeah. Well, see, I never thought of it that way, but really our ability to assess risk sucks. I mean, we're not very good at it. Yeah. Most of us are not that good at it. We err on the side of either being oblivious to certain risks or too worried about things that aren't that risky. I came across a researcher

who did some really interesting research into the question. She framed her research question as who would make the best Navy SEAL? And she thought it would be, you know, the bravest, the most impervious to fear the people who can soldier through when they're terrified. But it turns out the best Navy SEAL is someone who can accurately assess the threat level that they're facing and not overreact and not underreact. She made a really important distinction between, you know, being brave and being reckless. So what is it when people say, for example, they're afraid of spiders? Are they really afraid of spiders? Is it fear or are they just grossed out by spiders? Because being grossed out is not the same as being afraid.

Fear and disgust do share a lot in common as well. They're often sort of studied in relation to each other. I think what a person is saying when they're saying they're afraid of spiders isn't that they have a rational thought process. It's what they're expressing is that they have that physical reaction. They see a spider and despite their understanding that they're perfectly safe around a harmless house spider, they have that physical fear reaction. Their body triggers their threat response and they can't control it. That's very unpleasant. So it's not just grossed out exactly. It is a fear response, but it's not one that's grounded in any true sense of threat. It's an irrational reaction. And it's one that a lot of people struggle with. And you say fear and disgust are closely associated.

So is fear and anxiety. What's the difference? They're really hard to separate. The classic distinction is that fear is a response to an objective threat, a clear and present danger. And anxiety is about responding to a hypothetical or a perceived or a potential threat. But that gets really messy. I read a book that gave the example of a clear and present threat to be, you know, a terrorist or the nuclear bomb. But those are specters that

produce all sorts of anxiety in people who aren't currently facing either one too. You know, the people had decades of anxiety about the bomb, even if it was never likely to be dropped on them. So I think it's a really difficult thing to separate. Again, coming back to our sort of not ideal threat assessment skills, it's so hard to separate clear and present danger from potential danger. And so, as you said, we're not particularly good at assessing risk or fear, but when we feel fear, are we pretty good at handling it? It doesn't seem like it. I think we can be. My experience, ultimately the conclusion that I came to, I don't of driven to respond in a really sort of clear, sharp edged kind of way, like my brain got focused. And when I was sort of mired in anxiety,

I felt fuzzy. And that was the closest I could come to a useful distinction between, you know, when to listen and when to ignore is sort of fuzzy fear versus sharp fear. And I know that's quite mushy. It's not exactly scientific, but I do think we can learn to listen to our instincts. I think sometimes we try to explain away our fear and say, oh, it's nothing, it's nothing, because it's embarrassing to be afraid, you know? You don't want to be seen to be overreacting. But I think it's worth thinking about listening to our bodies when they do react and trying to say, is this something I should listen to? Or is this my body leading me astray? I want to hear a little bit more about your experience. I'm speaking with Eva Holland. She is a writer and author of the book Nerve, Adventures in the Science of Fear.

Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining

on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years.

She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Eva, talk a bit about your experiences with fear that led you to write the book and get more involved in this.

I had a severe, reasonably severe fear of heights for many years, but I didn't really recognize it as a pattern. I know that sounds sort of silly, but I would have these, what I later understood to be panic attacks in height situations, but they were so specific. I was fine on airplanes. I was fine in elevators or on bridges, generally fine on balconies. It was if I felt like I could fall. And it took me a long time to understand that. It was as much a fear of falling as a fear of heights and so if I was on a you know a steep hiking trail or maybe a balcony with kind of a flimsy railing anything where however unreasonably I felt like I could sort of tumble to my death I would I would be able unable to breathe I would be sort of gasping for breath

and picturing my own doom over and over again, sort of full panic mode. But it only happened every few years because I knew I didn't like the feeling. Like you, avoiding roller coasters, I would avoid steep hills or the monkey bars or this sort of thing, ladders. And so I didn't put the pieces together for a long time. And it was only really when I started working on this project that I sort of understood what had been happening to me this whole time. And that was interesting to realize that you could have something resembling a phobia your whole life and not even really realize it because we're so good at starting to avoid the things that we fear that sometimes we can miss the pattern.

But it seems to me, like, as I said, I have this fear of roller coasters. I have no desire to fix that. There's no motivation for me to want to do that. I'm just fine standing here while everybody else is flying around in circles because it's not a fear that gets in my way particularly, although sometimes people call me chicken or whatever. But you know what I mean? Like a lot of fears, I'm fine. I don't need to fix that. I think a lot of fears are fine the way they are. We don't need to, you know, it's a lot of work and it can be painful to try to undo these patterns. And I don't think anybody's obliged to do it just on principle. The reason why I decided

I wanted to fix my fear of heights is because what it was costing me was more than what I wanted to give up. Specifically, I had moved to a mountain community. I had developed this real love of the wilderness, hiking. I was working, you know working in extreme sports and outdoor adventure in my writing. And all my friends were mountain biking and hiking and climbing all the time. And I just didn't want to be unable to go along. I wrote about a woman in my book who was afraid of mice. And if she only had her reaction when mice were actually around, you know, that would be more reasonable. But she was terrified of mice all the time in her own home, you know, mouse free. She couldn't walk

around barefoot. She was just completely paranoid about mice being, you know, in her shoes or on her feet. And so that felt like too much to her. I think it was sort of ruining her life. You know, it was ruining her night's sleep every night, thinking about the mice running around. And so people have to make an assessment if they're going to try to do this work to unravel a phobia, for instance. What is it costing you? And is that more than you're willing to pay? You know, it seems that the mice example is a good example of this, that like the older we get, the harder it becomes to change. That if that woman had been introduced to mice when she was two years old, three years old, and hadn't had these preconceived notions of how horrible they were,

she may have never developed that fear because she'd been around them, but because something else happened and she probably wasn't around them, that in her mind, she created this fear of them. She was an interesting case because she saw her mom freak out about a mouse running across her bare feet when she was a kid. She was a kid. She wasn't predisposed to be freaked out by this mouse running across her bare feet, but her mom, you know, screamed. And, and, and so she internalized that this is something to be terrified of. And we can, we can pass on our anxieties and fears to our children in that way, which is, you know, one more thing for parents to worry about. I know that's not what anybody needs, but it can be something that you sort of absorb from the reactions of people around you as well.

Yeah, yeah, that's probably really true because it does seem like, I can imagine if you're a little kid and you see your parents who you, you know, they're your protectors and you see them freaked out by something, then that must be a real thing to be afraid of. Right, yeah, that must be really scary thing to be afraid of right yeah that must be really scary if if you're scared of it yeah what have an uh aren't aren't there some natural fears that humans have like we're afraid of falling or aren't there some just fears we're all programmed to be afraid of yeah there's some that are sort of deep, deep, you know, laid into us through evolution. I think some of the classics are, you know, heights, the dark, really cramped small spaces, and things like snakes or spiders. These are the things that would have killed us thousands of years ago. Now it's, you know, cars and cancer.

But in the old days, it was, you know, going too deep into the wrong cave or a snake or that sort of thing. And so those are some of the harder ones to shed because they're just encoded within us in a way. afraid of mice or you're afraid of whatever it is and you would like to not be, is there any sort of like one size fits all kind of approach to fixing that? There's not a one size fits all, but there are a lot of different ways to tackle it. I tried three different therapies. One was a drug treatment. One was a kind of a classic exposure therapy, sort of gradual immersion. And one was a more trauma-based therapy called EMDR, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. So there's a lot of options out there. Some of them are more DIY. You know, I was able to go out and buy a book on how to do exposure therapy myself. But there's a lot of knowledge in the medical

community too about how to tackle these things. And it can seem sort of embarrassing or not like a big enough deal to say, oh, I don't need therapy for this. But there are options to sort of work through these things and different treatments will have different effectiveness for different people, which can be hard and frustrating. But I do think it's worth looking into, if you're feeling like your fear is constraining you and making your life smaller than you want it to be, I do think there are options available and it's worth looking into what might work for you. It seems often that people's

fears get wrapped up in their identity. You know, Aunt Mabel doesn't like spiders so make sure there's no spiders around and Uncle Fred is afraid of flying so whenever it's time to go somewhere, you know Fred's going to take the car, he's never going to get on a plane. And there's no discussion about it,

because Fred's fear of flying is part of who he is. And in some ways it feels like either it isn't very changeable or it isn't something they want to change. And so how changeable is it? I mean, is it part of who people are or are fears, if you're really willing to take a shot at it, you can probably do something about it. It's way more changeable than I realized. I, to be totally honest, you know, I expected to be writing kind of a mushy epilogue to my book where I said, well, I didn't change my fears at all, but I sure learned a lot of science along the way.

That was what I expected to be ending my book with. And my life was completely transformed by the work I did, if I'm not being too dramatic to say that. My fear of heights felt like it was a built-in part of me as much as my spine. And it's different now. It's not gone, but it's different. And I think it's worth keeping in mind that this stuff can feel permanent, and it isn't permanent. Well, everybody's afraid of something, sometime. And it's interesting to understand how it works, and that there's help if it's getting in the way. Eva Holland has been my guest.

She is a writer and the name of her book is Nerve Adventures in the Science of Fear. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you, Eva. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Fantastic. Thanks so much. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan,

the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong?

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New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. You probably don't think about this a lot, but when you talk with someone, or in a small group, or to a large group, there's a lot going on. Your message, what you are conveying to people, is coming through the words you say, how you say them, how you gesture, your facial expressions,

even the way you do or don't tilt your head. All of those things and more make up your message. Some people do this all very well and it looks almost effortless, but almost all of us could improve some of our communication skills by doing a few things differently. And the person who really understands this is David J.P. Phillips. He spent seven years studying 5,000 speakers to discover the skills that made great communicators so great. He's done TED Talks on the subject, and he has other videos, and he has courses to help people become better communicators. His website is davidjpfillips.com, and he joins me to discuss how all of us can be better

communicators in all situations. Hi, David. Welcome. Thank you. I would guess that most people think of themselves as pretty good communicators. I mean, they get through the day. They talk with people. They ask questions. They answer questions. They have conversations.

It all seems to work out okay. Do you not think people are pretty decent communicators? I'd say no. A lot of people are fluent in their native language, but they're not fluent in communication. Far from it often. Because they're doing or not doing what? What is it that's causing them not to be good communicators? As you know, I studied 5,000 speakers for seven years

to find 110 common skills we all use when we communicate. And the average person makes use of about 30 of them, which means that it invites loads of misunderstandings and unclarity in their presentation or communication that they do. So what do you think is one of the most important things people miss that could really make their communication better if they if they did it what what could they do well i'd say that one thing that you do as well is pace changes where you use your base pace is fairly slow which means that you signal importance in what you say our brain believes that when people say things quickly we believe that what is being said is of less value because the people the person wants to hurry past it it devalues what you're saying and being

able to in a presentation go from really slow to being a lot quicker when you speak through passages, just creates that variation that people need. I usually say this, hey, you as a communicator and presenter, you the conductor, you tell the person in the audience what they're supposed to listen to through your voice. Well, and also along those same lines is is the power of i think the pause is that when people who just talk a mile an hour but if you're talking and you stop talking even people who are looking down at their phones will look up to see why you stop talking and you get their attention back it's poetry man that is I love it. That's one of my favorites. Definitely.

And yet people are afraid to pause, I think, because they think they'll lose the audience when it actually has, I think, the opposite effect much of the time. Oh, yeah. The absolute opposite. That's the conundrum here. Because when you're an amateur, you hate pausing because it puts you in the center. But when you're a professional, you love them. You're like 5,000 people in front of you in the center, but when you're a professional you love them You know Five thousand people in front of you and you launch a pause you look at every single pair of eyes in there and you absorb their energy and

and then You launch into the world word of the number. It's it's beautiful Let's talk about one communication problem that I'm very aware of. I hear it a lot when I interview people for this podcast, and that's filler words. Things like, um, ah, you know. Because I have to edit out some of them because there are some people who use them so much that it really gets in the way of their message. Saying, um, ah, or you know, or there are other ones too, right? Uh, eh, uh, uh, ah, super common, super common.

And we commonly use them when we don't know what we're going to say, lose train of thought, or when we lie. So it's usually not a good thing to have in your language. And my guess is, my experience is, that people don't really know that they use filler words like um and ah, or at least they don't know they do it as much as they do it. Well, I've been coaching Michael for 20 years, and I'd say that 99.9% don't know about them. And even if you tell them that they do them, they don't know. So you have to make them aware of that they have them before you can actually remove them through coaching. They're so unaware of it. And how do you get people to stop it? I have figured out that the most efficient method that I've ever found was that your brain finds it

easier to switch from one behavior to a different behavior, like stop smoking, start chewing gum. And the same thing goes for here. Stopping doing filler sounds is difficult, but exchanging it for something else is easier. So the trick is to, as soon as the filler sound comes, you do a breathe in, an inhale, and it shouldn't be audible. It shouldn't go, but instead a small, silent breathe in.

And when you do that, instead of just stopping, you remove it much, much easier and faster. So demonstrate for me the before and after. Oh, well, you can't actually then hear it. If I were to say, hey, Michael, it would be an inhale instead. So, hey, Michael, how are you doing? Well, I have certainly noticed people who say, um, ah, you know, a lot, because often when I'm interviewing people, they say it. I remember, I think it was, I don't know, a year or so ago, I actually counted, and basically in a 20-minute segment, this person said, um, ah, or you know. I can't remember the exact number now, but it was hundreds of times.

So I agree with you. I think it's really important that people try to be more aware of that because it does seem to muddy the message when you're umming and ah-ing and you-knowing all the time. Let's talk about gestures. They seem to be important, not only in public speaking, but even when you're talking to people in a small group or one-on-one. Gestures mean a lot, and yet we don't think too much about them. They just sort of happen. Far, far, far longer before we got the spoken word, we use gestures to communicate with each other. And it's so ingrained in us.

I do this demonstration in my TED talk where I use the opposite gestures to what I'm saying. And it just blows people's minds because they can't hear what I'm saying. They can just see my gestures. Describe as best you can, since we can't see it, what you mean by your message is saying one thing and your gestures are doing the opposite. So, yeah, imagine if I speak to you and I say, hey, Michael, I'd like to invite you to a party. And at the same time, I am doing thumbs down and I'm showing my entire palm is showing stop, stop, don't come. I do loads of those kind of gestures at the same time as I'm inviting you to the party. And there is no

way that the message coming across to you will be positive because the gestures say the opposite. What I found absolutely fascinating after doing this for so long was that I found something called synchronicity, which has to do with this. And it goes like this, that when your gestures, your body language, your face, your voice, and your words all say exactly the same thing, then we love the person. There is no discrepancy. But you know the feeling when you walk into a room and you get this gut feeling like something is off with the person. I can promise you to 100% that one of these five layers are out of sync with that person when they communicate. And that creates so much misunderstanding.

So what's the advice then with gestures? What generally is the thing to do? I'd say that when you've prepared your presentation and you're ready to go, or let's say you've prepared your presentation, your slides, your structure, your script, then you add gestures that's kind of the one of the last things that you do and what you then add is these five different

gestures you use signs so any kind of sign language or signs with your hand that can show like thumbs up for instance you add what is called imaginary props imaginary props could be like so i called my wife and then you pick up a phone and you pretend that you're holding a phone with your fingers and then you have drawings so you draw me there whatever you're talking about and then number four is progression so for instance q1 q2 q3 q4 and you show that with your hand as you progress through each of these and then the fifth one is effect which means that that gave me goosebumps these are the five main kind of categories for gestures which you then apply to your presentation talk about facial gestures facial expressions and and the importance of them and how to do it so you have about 40

different muscle comedy combination in your face which can produce approximately 5,000 nuances of facial expressions it's only maybe one in 20 that has that naturally 19 of us actually need to practice facial expressions otherwise we're missing out on like the main way of communicating through video. So people are communicating through Zoom and Team and Skype at the moment, and their face is dead on in center, but 19 out of 20 aren't using the primary communication skill in that case. Another thing I notice is people's volume because loudness volume sends a message if you talk loud you're saying something and if you talk soft that says something what's what's exciting with volume and

the volume that you speak in is that it is directly correlated to your own perceived confidence so if I meet a person who isn't confident or they're nervous and I ask them to increase their volume by 20 percent something mind-blowing happens and that is that just by increasing your volume by 20 percent it affects about 15 of the other skills and it makes the person more confident. So immediately when you increase your volume by 20 percent you can see the person straightening their spine they stand stand more stable their head becomes straight instead of angled their emphasis become better and stronger and so on and so forth so that's a pretty cool one so anybody who feels less

confident can increase the volume by 20% if they're not already screaming of course when we think about speakers speakers speak, but what other tactics, strategies, tricks can people use or do you use that kind of spice up whatever it is you're saying? I love using sound effects. Stand-up comedians usually do it. I'm not a stand-up comedian, but I love doing things like when i show a chart in powerpoint i go where i go and then you go to your computer and you go and using sound effects really really makes your entire experience as a speaker

it just it's just more fun and it's more entertaining and it definitely comes through in a better way. So that's one of my favorites. And the second one I wanted to mention, which could be inspiring to some as well, is self-laughter. And that is that just before you say something that should be perceived as funny, you go, I'm just going to

tell you this one, Michael. And then you launch into it. And that little self-laughter increases the anticipation of laughter. And it makes people more inclined to laugh at what you're going to say. So it's a cool little trick that you can use as well. I know you talk about, and you're one of the few people that I've heard actually discuss it specifically as a topic, and that's the melody of your voice and the importance of changing the melody. So talk about that and explain what you mean by melody. It means that you have a standard melody, so you speak in a particular melody, but then it's important that you sometimes go into a different melody to say that this is important.

And perhaps we could have a look at these different things because they could be of importance to you. You see, melody, when changed, creates focus and contrast and meaning. And people who are good at shifting melody can spellbind people it's just again one of many skills but it's a pretty cool one to use as well and i just want to summarize it saying this as well we've been talking about public speaking and on stage michael but every single one of these can be used in real life. Every single one. You know, when you go to dinner and you're having a conversation using self-laughter or using facial expressions, it makes a heck of a difference.

Even in your relationship. Why do you think there's so many misunderstandings? So easily. I think the major misunderstanding is because the way you say it does not correspond to how you say it, the because that sends a message to the audience. But often you'll see people talking with each other or even in small groups with their arms crossed. It's probably one of the most common ones, you know, that we cross our arms. And the thing is, when you cross your arms is that you then leave the evaluation of why you crossed your arms to the person that you're speaking to. So the other person on the other side now has to figure out why did you cross your arms. And they do that consciously or subconsciously. And they might come to the conclusion that you're bored or that you're

negative or that you don't want to listen. But it could actually mean that you were just cold or you just anatomically you wanted to move position so you can't read too much into those body languages if you don't combine them with micro expressions and facial expressions so that you can like measure all the layers at the same time but the point of this is that you are responsible for what you send out so as a speaker no you can't cross your arms as a speaker you've got to be aware of what you do with your arms because they're constantly sending a message. And the clearer that message is, the less the audience has to think, does he mean this? Does it mean that?

I know one of your skills, you talk about the head tilt. And I like that one. So explain what you mean by tilting your head well it goes like this that when a person when i if i were to see you now michael and you would tilt your head slightly to the right or the left doesn't matter that would signal a higher level of active listening that would then make me more confident in how i can speak to you and how much I can speak to you. So the tilt of the head signals active listening skills. Now, I've met so many people that I've coached who don't have it.

They've never picked it up. So then I say to them, hey, try tilting your head just slightly to the left or the right the next time you want a person to speak to you. And they come back to me and they say, hey, I'm blown away. How can this be so powerful? And the interesting thing with good listeners is that they're more likable. So people like good listeners because there's nothing that people love more than speaking about themselves. And if they've got somebody listening actively actively to that they love that person so tilting your head and nodding your head if you combine those two well done well and i think it's

worth repeating that yes these skills they may sound as if they're for professional speakers speaking to a group on a stage kind of thing but all of these skills can be used in one-on-one communication or in small groups, any situation where you want to come across as a better speaker. My guest has been David J.P. Phillips. He is a communications expert. He spent seven years studying 5,000 speakers to discover what makes a great communicator. He has a TED Talk on this, and I'll put a link to the TED Talk in the show notes for this episode. He also has a website where you can

learn more about his work. The website is davidjpfillips.com, and there'll be a link to that in the show notes as well. Thanks, David. I'm sure you have found yourself in a phantom traffic jam, you know, when traffic comes to a stop for no reason. I have often sat at a complete standstill on an interstate highway and wondered, how can this be? How does traffic on a multi-lane highway come to a complete stop? Well, it turns out it's because someone up ahead of you slowed down, and then the car behind him or her slowed down, and then the next car behind them slowed down, and it moves backwards in a wave until actually somebody has to stop.

Usually me, it seems. And there is this professor at MIT who has been researching this, and according to him, a big part of the problem is tailgating. In fact, if we all did something called bilateral control, that is, we increase the distance between us and the car in front, so that you have the same amount of space between you and the car in front of you and you and the car in front of you, and you and the car behind you. That would reduce phantom traffic jams a lot, because that extra space would take up the slack when people slowed down, so you didn't have to slam your brakes on, and then the guy behind you slams his brakes on, and back it goes.

This professor says that under reasonable conditions today, you can get 1,800 cars per lane per hour to pass by a certain point on a highway. With bilateral control, you could almost double that, and you might save at least some of the $121 billion a year that traffic congestion costs the U.S. economy. And that is something you should know. Often at this point in the podcast, I ask you to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts because it helps us. And someone said, well, so how does it help? How could that possibly help? Well, the way it was explained to me is that Apple has this algorithm that uses the velocity, the volume, and the quality of the ratings and reviews to approximate

how good a podcast is, how good a quality podcast it is, and how that algorithm treats your podcast will help determine where it shows up in the rankings on Apple Podcasts. So a great way to support this podcast is to add your review to the volume, velocity, and quality of the ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager,

but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook.

Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple,

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